That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Being Gullible

Episode Date: March 26, 2023

Did man really walk on the moon? Did Kramer really fight off a mugger while driving a bus to save someone's pinky toe? Sometimes people tend to believe things that are likely untrue, even if there is little or no evidence to support them. In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind gullibility, and what makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kergolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. Did men actually land on the moon? Or was it faked in a soundstage somewhere in the American Midwest? Was COVID-19 actually made in a lab in China? Is there really a group of lizard people who look like humans secretly ruling all of us? On today's podcast, the neuroscience of gullibility and conspiracy theories. Everyone can be a bit gullible sometimes, you know, someone says

something and you believe it, and then you kind of go, oh, heck, that can't be true. What's really cool about this is research has actually pinpointed a part of the brain that seems to play a key role in this gullibility process. Here's how it works. Basically, when we hear something or we read something, our first tendency is to actually believe it. We just sort of seem to process the information and assume it's true. We just sort of seem to process the information and assume it's true. But there's a key part of the frontal lobe, the ventral media area of the prefrontal cortex. It's basically a little softball-sized part of your brain right in the front, just above your eyes.

And basically, a part of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, and again, we're dealing with a sub-reg region, but we'll go with the broader name. Basically what that part of the brain does is it causes you to pause. And that pause is crucially important. Without that pause, you assume that what you've heard or read is true and you just keep on processing. But that pause is the time to reflect. And that's where you go, oh no, that can't be right. And there's research to back this up, really cool research. There is a group of researchers from the University of Chicago. And basically what they did is they took a group of people with damage to this part of the brain, and they took a group of people with damage to this part of the brain and they took a group of people without damage to this part of the brain. And what they did was they gave them some, a series of sort of slides, if you will, about things that may or may not be true. And some of them were,

you know, quite believable and some of them were not believable. And what they found was that the people who had damage to the ventral medial area of the prefrontal cortex, they were more likely to believe the more outrageous claims that were made on some of the slides. Whereas people with an intact ventral medial area of the prefrontal cortex were less likely to do this. There's other evidence that supports this as well. If you just do this in people without any kind of damage to the brain, so for instance, you repeat this experiment, what you find is that if they tend to believe something,

then the ventral medial area, the prefrontal cortex, is less active than if they question it. So you're talking about a statement that would be something a little bit outrageous, like, I believe that inside every basketball, there's a Mars bar. If you are likely to believe that there was less activity in the ventral medial area of the prefrontal cortex, but if you were going to pause and question that, then there's more activity in the ventral medial area of the prefrontal cortex. So it's a really, really crucial part of the brain in terms of gullibility, because it's the pause.

What's cool about this is if you look at certain groups and why they might be more gullible, well, we know that children can be a bit more gullible. For instance, most of us believed in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus or some outrageous claim, depending on where you grew up in the world. But as kids, you just took it as faith. Your parents said it, you read about it, and you said, this has to be true. Now, why is that? Well, because the prefrontal cortex is the last part

of the brain to truly develop. And the ventral medial area is part of that. So in kids, that ventral media area just isn't there. And it's actually there. That's not true. It's just not fully developed. And because it's not fully developed, they are lacking that pause, which is when you question. And that's why they believe these things. This is also true in the elderly. As we get older, our brains slowly begin to deteriorate. I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but we lose about 25,000 neurons a day from the time you're 20, so your brain is slowly atrophying. And the prefrontal cortex is an area that does take a bit of a beating. And in the elderly, they can be more gullible as well. This is why phone scammers,

for instance, target elderly people, because they're more likely tollible as well. This is why phone scammers, for instance, target elderly people because they're more likely to believe the phone scam. And again, if you look at the elderly, people that are more likely to be susceptible to something or be gullible have a reduced volume in the prefrontal area. So that area is smaller and not functioning as well. Whereas people that are elderly that are less likely to be gullible have an intact or regular sized ventral medial area. And another one you could throw out there is alcohol. When we've had a bit of alcohol, we're more likely to believe what we're told. And as I've said many times on this podcast, well, guess what?

Alcohol shuts down the prefrontal cortex. Now, that's not entirely true, but you get what I'm trying to say. It definitely reduces the functional capability of the prefrontal cortex. So when we drink alcohol, one of the things we're turning off is this ventral medial area. And because we're turning it off, guess what? We don't have that pause. So what we're told, we tend to believe. Now, I'm just going to jump back to something we've talked about before in the past. If you remember, we sort of have this working theory that I've been promoting in the podcast

that the left-hand side of the brain is responsible for maintaining the worldview and the right-hand side of the brain is responsible for questioning the worldview. Well, that's where the pause comes in. It gives you a chance to question and sort of say, hey, maybe what I've just been told isn't true. That's not part of the worldview, and I should step away from that. Now, what does that have to do with conspiracy theories? Well, part of conspiracy theories is some level of gullibility in a sense. Now, there's some other things that underlie believing in conspiracies, and again, tied to neuroscience. So basically, there's sort of three things that you have to create within the brain to make people more prone to believing conspiracy theories. One of those is anxiety.

make people more prone to believing conspiracy theories. One of those is anxiety. People are more anxious today than they were 10 years ago. There's plenty of psychological research that shows us that. And what does anxiety do in terms of the brain? Well, we've had an episode on this, but if you remember, there's the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. It's a network within the brain involving the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal gland. And the primary purpose of that axis is the control and release of cortisol. And if you have lots of cortisol flowing around, you tend to be more anxious. And when you're more anxious, there's more activity in the insular cortex, and there's more activity in the amygdala. So first, we have to create anxiety. So first we have to create anxiety. Second,

we have to create stress. Well, stress and anxiety differ slightly in terms of the brain, but they're also largely similar. So again, we have a podcast episode on stress, but you're talking about the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis again. So again, cortisol comes into play. And like I said, when you stress people out or you make them anxious, you see this increase in cortisol. And again, you need activity in the insular cortex and the amygdala. So there's two of the three things you need. And you also need a sense of powerlessness. So you need people to feel like they're not in control. And again, that's done by perception of the outside world. So that's back to the left brain, right brain idea. The left brain has this worldview and the right brain might adapt that

worldview that you believe you're less power, you have less power over the situation or less control. And if you create those three conditions, anxiety, stress, and a sense of lack of control, people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. And again, research has shown this. Research has created situations and studies where one group of people basically is primed that they have no control over a situation. Another group is primed that they do have control over a situation. situation another group is primed that they do have control over a situation and then a claim is made and people that have less sense of control are more likely to believe the claim and you can do the same thing with stress and anxiety if you create a situation where people are stressed they're more likely to believe a conspiracy claim and if you create a situation when people are anxious, they're more

likely to create or believe a conspiracy theory. And if you put all three of these together, a world where there's anxiety and there's stress and a sense of lack of control, people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. And I hate to say it, but that was COVID-19. theories. And I hate to say it, but that was COVID-19. COVID-19 increased everyone's anxiety for the most part. It increased stress. And we know this, this has been well studied and, you know, we know this factually and people definitely felt a loss of control. You know, we were told to stay inside our homes and we had a sense of loss of control. And of course, think of all the conspiracy theories that have been promoted in the past couple of years. And this is why people are more likely to believe them.

So in terms of being gullible, the key thing is this area of the ventral medial area of the prefrontal cortex. It gives you that pause and that pause is that time when you sit back and you reflect. And again, if you're told something, you know, and you're not sure whether to believe it or not, you know, that idea, you can't really control the ventral media area. But obviously, if you step back and think about it, that gives you the same thing.

But the ventral media area does this at a subconscious level where the brain is primed to accept what it's told. And this area says, no, hang on, let's question this. And if you want to take this a step further and you want to get into the world of conspiracy theories, well, then anxiety and stress in being, having a lack of control, well, that promotes a tendency to believe in conspiracies. Now, there's no way to really tell who's going to believe in a conspiracy versus who isn't. That comes down to individual differences, you know, the material you're exposed to, and any number of other factors. But if you do want someone to believe in conspiracies,

you make them anxious, and you make them stressed, and you make them feel powerless. Anyway, that is the neuroscience of gullibility and conspiracy theories. Thank you so much for listening. Remember the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com, links to the Etsy store, links to Patreon. Thank you to everyone that supports us. Just a reminder, a dollar a month, $5 a month, a dollar a week. You just sign up, you put in your credit card and all that money goes to helping graduate students in my lab, including Matt, who does all the sound editing for the podcast. None of it goes to me. I don't need your money and I don't want your money.

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