That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Believing Lies

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

In the information age, we are exposed to an incredible volume of lies. Unfortuantely, we tend to fall for them. In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss why and how we fall for lies. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kergolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. In my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. You know, right now, it doesn't matter where you live in North America. It doesn't matter whether it's Canada, the United States. Unfortunately, I'm not as savvy or at least up to date with the rest of the world. I keep my eye on some things, but not this. But both in Canada and the United States, we're going through elections. In the United States, it's a big federal election. Here in British Columbia where I live, it's a provincial election.

But what I find interesting about this is that we know and that we accept that politicians lie to us. Like they lie to our faces. And we just accept this. We just, you know, and we actually believe the lies. And this can happen personally too. You know, you might, you know, I was talking with my partner and her sister's man is lying to her. It's blatantly obvious that he's lying to her. And she believes it.

She just accepts what he's saying is truth. And why? Why do we believe these lies? So on today's podcast, why we believe the lies. Let's start with one where our significant other tells us that they love us. Now we believe that, right? We want to believe that. Now, we've been over this before, and I guess a theme for my podcast has become that you can explain a lot of human behavior with just understanding a few key principles of the brain. Now, in this case, it goes back to our prefrontal cortex and worldview, all right? And I guess by repetition, key way to learn, you'll really embrace this concept. But our left prefrontal cortex, and there definitely seems to

be a left bias. There's a bit of debate here, but there's definitely a part of the left prefrontal cortex that plays a key role in maintaining our worldview. So our worldview, our partner, in maintaining our worldview. So our worldview, our partner, our significant other loves us. And the left's job is to preserve that. It's to fight for that story. So even when there's conflicting evidence, the left part of the brain is trying to main stability. And that's the best way to think about it. Your prefrontal cortex and the left part of your prefrontal cortex wants stability, and that stability stems from that worldview. All right, our partner loves us. Now, as evidence accumulates, the job of the right prefrontal cortex, and again, this is sort of more whole brain, but there's definitely a rightward bias, but it's to maintain that world. It's to update that worldview. Sorry, not maintain it. So the job of the right prefrontal cortex, and it's to maintain that world. It's to update that worldview. Sorry, not maintain it. So the

job of the right prefrontal cortex, and it's largely the right prefrontal cortex, is to update that worldview. All right. And once there's enough information, you know, it gets to the point where it's irrefutable, the right prefrontal cortex will basically modify your worldview. And at some point, you will come to accept that your partner or significant other may not love you. This is true in politics as well, if you think of the elections that are going on. And I don't want to get political here,

so I'm not going to name names. But in the United States, there's two candidates. And no matter which candidate you support, what they're saying aligns with your worldview, right? You believe that that's the way the world works and that it all makes sense to you. Now, in some cases, we switch our point of view for both the candidates in question. There are people that have switched from liking A to B and from B to A. there are people that have switched from liking A to B and from B to A, and this argument holds true for them as well. Basically, there'd be enough evidence accumulated that the right

prefrontal cortex would kick in and say, okay, I'm sorry, left hemisphere, but that old worldview where we thought A was the best person out there, that's no longer valid. And now it's B or vice versa, of course. So one of the big reasons why we believe lies is that they align with our worldview. They fit in and questioning that worldview can be problematic. Now this ties into number two, and I just feel like, again, the amygdala. And I just want to point out here, because a couple of readers have emailed in and said, it's not just the amygdala for emotion i just want to point out here because a couple of readers have emailed in and said it's not just the amygdala you know for emotion and yes i'm well aware of that the emotional system is is quite complex and it involves midbrain structures it involves

uh the insular cortex it also involves the amygdala so let's just talk about the emotional part of the brain well the emotional response is there as well. When you hear the lie, you have an emotional response. So let's say that you have doubts about your significant other loving you still. And I'm not questioning my own relationship if you're listening, but let's say your significant other, you know, you question whether they really love you. All right. Well, basically there's an emotional side to that, which is, yes, they really love you all right well basically there's an emotional side to that which is yes they do love me all right so your amygdala responds and it's positive and it reinforces that feeling which causes you to accept the lie all right it overrules logic because your emotional system is going heck this feels good So even though there's a lot of evidence here,

you know, emotionally, this feels right. So I'm going to accept the story. And to go back to politics as another example, you know, whether it's candidate A or candidate B, they do appeal to emotion. Both of them do, you know. Do you love your country? Do you love freedom? Do you believe in, you believe in universal education or health care?

Do you believe in freedom of income and less taxation? And those are logical arguments, but they always appeal to emotion. Just watch a political commercial. There's flags waving. There's scenes that are supposed to either get you angry if they're talking about their opponent or to get you feeling happy and warm if they're talking about themselves or their cause. And that is the amygdala biasing decisions. And it biases your beliefs.

And it means even if they're lying to you, you might believe the lie. And the reason you're believing the lie is because emotionally it feels good. All right. The lie is good. You know, it's as simple as, you know, I just got a new haircut. What do you think? And the person says, well, I love your haircut. Well, even if you don't believe them or you don't like your own haircut, you feel good and you go, well, they do like my haircut. So maybe it's not that bad. That's the emotional system. They're doing its job. It's not that bad. That's the emotional system there doing its job.

The third reason why we believe the lies is because of what we see. It's our sources of information. And it's also our belief in sources of information. Now, in this case, I will name some names, but I'm not going to take a stand. Let's take American news media and CNN versus Fox. Now, let's start from a very rational point of view here. If you're a fan of CNN, you might have a tendency to believe that what Fox is telling you isn't true or isn't real, and vice versa. If you watch Fox and you think Fox is great, then you probably believe that CNN is distorting the story or not telling you the truth. But in either event, that means someone is believing a lie.

All right. And if you, I'll just say this for the record. If you think CNN or Fox is telling you the 100% truth, they both aren't. They're both biased and they both have points of view. The truth is probably in the middle somewhere. We should hopefully all know that. But in any event, whether you like CNN or Fox, at some level, you believe the lie that they're telling you. And the reason you believe the lie that they're telling you is because it's CNN or Fox News.

These are reporters that are on our television. And for most of us, getting to be a newscaster on a television show would be a big deal. It's outside of our scope of reality. So we just take what they say is truth. I'll extend this further. How many movie stars have promoted diets or opinions that we believe just because they're movie stars? What does a movie star know about a lot of these issues? Now, some of them are very well informed.

All right. Some of them do their homework, if you will. But a lot of them aren't. But we believe it's because they're famous and we just take it for granted. You know, I will throw Tom Brady under the bus here. His diet is famous and people believe it because he's Tom Brady. He's an amazing football player. I was never a Tom Brady fan, but you can't argue with what he accomplished. But at the end of the day, people believe his dietary advice because he's Tom Brady and not

because he knows what he's talking about. So this source of information, our belief in that source of information is powerful. If we flip this back to personal relationships, again, who's telling you, right? You have to question that. If your closest friend tells you something about your significant other, maybe you believe them because you think, well, my closest friend, I've known them a long time. So you weight that source of information heavily and that might weight why you feel. So the source of information might be why we believe the lies. And I've said this before, if you're getting your news from social media, stop, please stop. Because those are just

opinions and they're very rarely factual, even though they claim to be. So we believe lies because of the source of information. If the person telling us is a big deal, they're important, they're a famous politician, we believe what they say. And there's numerous historical examples of this. A lot of people believed what Adolf Hitler said because he was the leader of the German nation. So literally an entire country, for the most part, swallowed what he was saying because of who he was. And that's a great example of believing the lie.

And this is true throughout human history. Last but not least, why we believe lies? Peer pressure. All right. Our friends might have an opinion. All right. Hey, this is true. This is the way the world really works. All right. And because of that peer pressure, you believe the lie you're being told. Now, again, I want to go back to the example of Nazi Germany between the early 30s and 1945, when a lot of people didn't actually believe in the Nazi ideology. That's a common myth. The Nazis didn't win a majority in the election, right? They forced their way into power or

coerced their way into power. But if you see all of these people saying that this is true and this is the way it works, there is a tendency to believe what's happening. And there's a hilarious example of this in psychology. There's a very cool study where basically someone who's well-dressed and, you know, just looks like someone you would sort of trust, I guess is a good way to put it, stares up at the sky and is pointing at something that's not there. And typically when someone does this before long, people start to look and stare, even if there's nothing there.

Now, if you have three or four people already doing this, then even more people join in. It's just this innate peer pressure we have to believe the lie. In this case, a simple lie that there's something interesting to look at, even though there isn't. So why do we believe the lies? Our worldview, the lie aligns with our worldview, so our left brain supports the story. An emotional response, the lie appeals to our emotional system, which reinforces the decision that this must be correct. Sources of information, it's what we see and hear around us. It could be television, it could be a reliable friend, but we believe a lie

because we trust the source of information. And peer pressure. All right. We have this innate midbrain driven desire to conform comes back to fight or flight or survival. So we conform to the norm because we're hardwired to do that. And that's why we believe the lies. Anyway, I hope you found that interesting. Don't forget the website, that neuroscience guy.com. There's links to Etsy. We still have our shirts. Not going to comment anymore beyond that. And Patreon. Thank you so much to those of you that support us. A simple donation, a one-time donation, a dollar a week, $5 a month. It all goes to graduate students or a graduate student in the Craig Olson Lab, who is also helping to keep this podcast on the air. Of course,

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