That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-Santa Claus and Belief

Episode Date: January 7, 2023

For this week's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss the Neuroscience of belief, using Santa Claus as a prominent example. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Byte, and welcome to 2023. This is our first drop of the new year, and I'm excited. I had a great break and some good time off, and I hope you all did as well. So I'm going to start this bite with a topic that's a little bit, well, sad. I realized this Christmas, in fact, I've known this for a while, that my son no longer believes in Santa Claus. Yep, at 15, he's finally figured it out. Now, I suspect he figured it

out quite a long time ago. But, you know, at some age, kids tend to stop believing in Santa Claus, and it just doesn't have to be about Santa Claus. You could translate this into, why do we believe in anything? And the reason we believe in things is because our brain is a statistical brain. It relies on statistical information. So when we develop a belief about something, Santa Claus for instance, we process the information that we're getting and we take in the source. Now we're going to come back to the source in a second, but if we believe the source, then this adds weight to the idea that the belief is true. So Santa Claus is real. So your parents tell you that Santa Claus is real, and you trust the source. So this adds weight or statistical bias to the idea that Santa Claus is real. And the more information we get as

young children about this belief, the more we believe it's true. So for instance, I used to leave out cookies and a glass of milk for Santa with my son. And then when he'd gone to bed, we'd pour out some of the milk and take a big bite of the cookie. So then in the morning, he would check to see if Santa had some of the milk and had some of the cookie. And because that information was there and he was too young to figure out what his parents were doing, this added statistical bias or statistical information supporting the idea that Santa Claus was real. Now, is there any evidence to the contrary? As kids get older and as we process more information, our beliefs

are shaped because there's an opposite belief. In this case, Santa Claus is not real. And slowly, kids get information that shows that this is true. So then there's statistical information stating that Santa Claus is real, and there's statistical information stating that Santa Claus is not real. And as that accumulation of evidence stating that Santa Claus is not real increases, sadly, our belief that Santa Claus is real is outweighed by this new belief that Santa Claus is not real. So as we get older, this is what changes. Basically, our beliefs are biased by new information. And this is true about anything. You could imagine thinking that someone you've met is super nice. They're a really great person and that the information you have

says that that's true. So that biases this belief that the person is nice. But then the more you get to know them, the more you realize that they're not nice. And our brain accumulates information, prefrontal cortex and other regions. And what happens is this belief that the person isn't nice outweighs the belief that they are. And that becomes what we believe to be as the truth. And finally, there's the source of information. Our weighting of information that we get is heavily biased on our strength in our trust or belief of the source. So when we're very young, we believe our parents 100%. So that biases that information and really weights it really well. But as we get older, sadly, we start to realize there's sources of information out

there that might know a little bit more than our parents, or might be saying something that we believe a bit more. So the source of information shapes our beliefs as well. So there you go, a little bit on the neuroscience of Santa Claus, and a great start to 2023. We'll have a full episode of the podcast on Sunday, where I'll be talking about New Year's resolutions and the neuroscience behind making and breaking resolutions. Now, remember, you can check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. There's links to our Etsy store. There are links to Patreon where you can support us. Of course, follow me on Twitter, at thatneuroscienceguy. You can DM me ideas.

The rest of this season is entirely devoted to ideas that have been sent in by you. And of course, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and please subscribe. My name is Olive Kregolson

and I'm that neuroscience guy. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you on Sunday for a full episode of the podcast.