We have shown that people seem all too ready to accept explanations that allude to neuroscience, even if they are not accurate reflections of the scientific data, and even if they would otherwise be seen as far less satisfying.

Zur Untermauerung von geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Behauptungen wird heute gerne auf die Hirnforschung verwiesen. Wie ein Experiment nun erstmals gezeigt hat, lassen sich Nichtfachleute von neurowissenschaftlich verbrämten Argumenten derart blenden, dass sie logische Mängel derselben nicht mehr zu erkennen vermögen.

Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to generate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific information. Even irrelevant neuroscience information in an explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with people's abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of this explanation. We tested this hypothesis by giving naïve adults, students in a neuroscience course, and neuroscience experts brief descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of four types of explanation, according to a 2 (good explanation vs. bad explanation) x 2 (without neuroscience vs. with neuroscience) design. Crucially, the neuroscience information was irrelevant to the logic of the explanation, as confirmed by the expert subjects. Subjects in all three groups judged good explanations as more satisfying than bad ones. But subjects in the two nonexpert groups additionally judged that explanations with logically irrelevant neuroscience information were more satisfying than explanations without. The neuroscience information had a particularly striking effect on nonexperts' judgments of bad explanations, masking otherwise salient problems in these explanations.

It appears people are easily persuaded by ideas when presented alongside neurological jargon. Experiments by Deena Weisberg and colleagues at Yale give us an insight into how neuroscientific explanations exert a powerful influence on our beliefs. Participants were divided into four groups, each of which read brief explanations of psychological phenomena (none of which required a neuroscientific explanation); half the participants read good explanations, the other half bad explanations (i.e. they merely restated a description of the phenomenon). In addition, half the participants saw spurious neuroscientific justifications for the explanation specifying an area of activation in the brain (irrelevant to the explanation), whilst the other half did not. Participants then had to rate how satisfied they were with the explanations given for each phenomenon. Participants could tell the difference between the good and bad explanations, but for novices and students taking a cognitive neuroscience course, the presence of the irrelevant neuroscientific information led them to judge the explanations, particularly the bad explanations, more favourably. On the other hand, the expert participants (who had completed advanced degrees in subjects like cognitive neuroscience or cognitive psychology) rated the good explanations a bit worse when accompanied by a spurious neuroscientific explanation (though this has yet to be replicated in other experiments).