Einstein effect: People believe more nonsense if they think they were told by a scientist

Discontinuity is the antithesis of inspiration. The complexity of the present time seems to require the disclosure of our hopes if we want to survive. This life is nothing but a blooming osmosis of mythical understanding. Does it sound like nonsense? Because that's the way it is. 

These utterances were created using the New Age Bullshit Generator, an algorithm that combines newfangled "buzzing" words and seemingly intelligent formulations to create phrases that sound profound. 

An international group of researchers recently presented people with some "pseudo-assertive statements" created by a generator to find out if they consider these statements more plausible if they come from a scientist or spiritual guru. 

A total of 10,195 participants from 24 countries answered questions related to the alleged reliability of the statements; they were also asked about the degree of religiosity. 

The results show that people generally find statements more plausible if they come from a scientist, compared to a spiritual guru. 76 percent of participants rated the "scientist's" nonsense at or above the midpoint of the confidence scale, compared with 55 percent for the "guru". 

In addition, people with a high score of religiosity still preferred the statement of a scientist over a spiritual guru, but this preference was relatively weaker than in the general sample. Religious people also gave higher confidence ratings to gurus compared to the general sample, but still lower than to scientists.  

The authors believe that the results they obtained may be related to what was previously called the "Einstein effect", when trusted sources of information are trusted because of the social authority they possess. 

"From an evolutionary point of view, respect for authorities such as teachers, doctors and scientists is an adaptive strategy that ensures effective cultural learning and knowledge transfer. Indeed, if a source is considered an authoritative expert, people are willing to believe statements from this source without fully understanding them," the researchers say. 

In other words, the concepts that Einstein could comprehend are beyond the intellectual level of most people, so there needs to be some confidence that he knows what he is talking about.

However, in some cases, as the team suggests, incomprehensible statements from authoritative sources can be evaluated not only in spite of, but also due to their incomprehensibility, which can be demonstrated by the example of the speech of some spiritual leaders - we can call it the "Guru effect". 

A slightly different interpretation of the results states that the credibility of what someone says and who they are depends on individual and cultural factors, such as the political ideology and worldview of the perceiver. 

"In the absence of means of rational evaluation of the statement and reliable source information, people are likely to make a conclusion about reliability based on beliefs about the group to which the source belongs (for example, "conservatives", "scientists"). In this process, the similarity between one's own worldview and the worldview of the group to which the source belongs can serve as an indirect sign of the benevolence and reliability of the source," the authors note. 

Previous studies have shown that Christians require less evidence for religious claims (the effectiveness of prayer to treat illness) than for scientific claims (the effectiveness of drugs to treat illness). In addition, it turned out that Evangelical Christians are more likely to accept statements that contradict their personal views if these views are attributed to the religious leader of the ingroup than to the religious leader of the outgroup.

In this study, the authors preferred to contrast a "scientist" and a "spiritual guru" instead of a "religious leader", because they wanted to make sure that they chose an authority not related to any particular religion, given that the study was conducted in different countries. 

"While religiosity and spirituality are overlapping but not interchangeable concepts, self-reported religiosity has been positively associated with belief in spiritual phenomena such as destiny, spiritual energy, and an interconnected universe. Consequently, we expected that religiosity would be associated with an increased susceptibility to the "chatter" of spiritual authorities," the authors say. 

Although there are differences in different cultures as to who is considered the more reliable source of information, the authors emphasize that at some point in the past, scientists overtook spiritual and religious leaders as the main reliable sources of information, at least in terms of explaining the phenomena of the physical world. 

It's no secret that today the information coming from scientists is considered trustworthy: many advertising and political campaigns around the world rely on scientists to confirm their products and ideas. Fortunately, scientists and science in general encourage a good dose of skepticism when grandiose statements are made. 

The study was published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.