Deconstructing the Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations

Previous work showed that people find explanations more satisfying when they contain irrelevant neuroscience information. The current studies investigate why this effect happens. In Study 1 (N=322), subjects judged psychology explanations that did or did not contain irrelevant neuroscience information. Longer explanations were judged more satisfying, as were explanations containing neuroscience information, but these two factors made independent contributions. In Study 2 (N=255), subjects directly compared good and bad explanations. Subjects were generally successful at selecting the good explanation except when the bad explanation contained neuroscience and the good one did not. Study 3 (N=159) tested whether neuroscience jargon was necessary for the effect, or whether it would obtain with any reference to the brain. Responses to these two conditions did not differ. These results confirm that neuroscience information exerts a seductive effect on people’s judgments, which may explain the appeal of neuroscience information within the public sphere

Brain Branding: When Neuroscience and Commerce Collide

Products that align themselves with basic and clinical neurosciences do well in the market. There are reasons to be wary about such brain branding when commercial interests threaten to compromise scientific and clinical values. We describe three concerns. The first, exemplified in drug development and dissemination, is of the insidious effects of blurred boundaries between academia and industry. The second, exemplified by the sale of brain fitness products, if of commerce getting ahead of the motivating science. The first, exemplified by some functional imaging practices, if of the misuse of neuroscience in the marketing technology. We propose three reasons for why brain branding appears to work. First is the seductive allure of neuroscience as providing seemingly deeper explanations of complex phenomena. The second is the persuasive power of pictures, which converges with the allure of neuroscience in brain imaging. The third is the context in which many physicians and patients find themselves. The relative lack of control over the course of chronic diseases may dispose physicians and patients to believe claims made by companies that align themselves with neuroscience. We outline circumstances when clinicians, patients, and consumers should question the usefulness of diagnostic tools and therapeutic interventions

How Seductive is the Reductive Allure? Exploring the suggested bias for scientific explanations containing irrelevant reductive information

Earlier studies have shown that when assessing explanations of psychological phenomena, there is a bias for explanations including references to neuroscience, even when these references contain logically irrelevant information (Fernandez-Duque, Evans, Christian & Hodges, 2015; M inahan & Siedlecki, 2016; Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson and Gray, 2008; Weisberg, Taylor & Hopkins, 2015). Recently, it was suggested that this bias applies to reductive explanations within many sciences, i.e., explanations reducing a phenomenon to more fundamental parts, regardless of explanation logic (Hopkins, Weisberg & Taylor, 2016). The current study expands upon these findings through a methodological improvement, investigating individual preferences for reductive information within social science, psychology and neuroscience. The results did not indicate a bias towards reductive information. However, results and ratings were not consistent across the scientific fields. It was shown that participants were less able to separate a good explanation from a bad explanation for neuroscientific phenomena. The implications of these findings are discussed

The Seductive Allure of Seductive Allure

The idea of fMRI’s “seductive allure” is supported by two widely cited studies. Upon closer analysis of these studies, and in light of more recent research, we find little empirical support for the claim that brain images are inordinately influential

The seductive allure of technical language and its effect on covid-19 vaccine beliefs and intentions

Previous research has demonstrated a ‘seductive allure’ of technical or reductive language such that bad (e.g., circular) explanations are judged better when irrelevant technical terms are included. We aimed to explore if such an effect was observable in relation to a covid-19 vaccinations and if this subsequently affected behavioural intentions to take up a covid-19 vaccine. Using a between subjects design we presented participants (N=996) with one of four possible types of vignette that explained how covid-19 vaccination and herd immunity works. The explanations varied along two factors: (1) Quality, explanations were either good or bad (i.e., tautological); (2) Language, explanations either contained unnecessary technical language or did not. We measured participants’ evaluation of the explanations and intentions to vaccinate. We demonstrate a ‘seductive allure’ effect of technical language on bad vaccine explanations. However, an opposite ‘repellent disdain’ effect occurred for good explanations which were rated worse when they contained technical language. Moreover, we show that evaluations of explanations influence intentions to vaccinate. We suggest that misinformation that includes technical language could be more detrimental to vaccination rates. Importantly, however, clear explanatory public health information that omits technical language will be more effective in increasing intentions to vaccinate

Neuromyths for educational research and the educational field

status: publishe

Visual Attention and the Neuroimage Bias

Several highly-cited experiments have presented evidence suggesting that neuroimages may unduly bias laypeople’s judgments of scientific research. This finding has been especially worrisome to the legal community in which neuroimage techniques may be used to produce evidence of a person’s mental state. However, a more recent body of work that has looked directly at the independent impact of neuroimages on layperson decision-making (both in legal and more general arenas), and has failed to find evidence of bias. To help resolve these conflicting findings, this research uses eye tracking technology to provide a measure of attention to different visual representations of neuroscientific data. Finding an effect of neuroimages on the distribution of attention would provide a potential mechanism for the influence of neuroimages on higher-level decisions. In the present experiment, a sample of laypeople viewed a vignette that briefly described a court case in which the defendant’s actions might have been explained by a neurological defect. Accompanying these vignettes was either an MRI image of the defendant’s brain, or a bar graph depicting levels of brain activity–two competing visualizations that have been the focus of much of the previous research on the neuroimage bias. We found that, while laypeople differentially attended to neuroimagery relative to the bar graph, this did not translate into differential judgments in a way that would support the idea of a neuroimage bias

Look Again: Effects of Brain Images and Mind-Brain Dualism on Lay Evaluations of Research

Brain scans have frequently been credited with uniquely seductive and persuasive qualities, leading to claims that fMRI research receives a disproportionate share of public attention and funding. It has been suggested that functional brain images are fascinating because they contradict dualist beliefs regarding the relationship between the body and the mind. Although previous research has indicated that brain images can increase judgments of an articleʼs scientific reasoning, the hypotheses that brain scans make research appear more interesting, surprising, or worthy of funding have not been tested. Neither has the relation between the allure of brain imaging and dualism. In the following three studies, laypersons rated both fictional research descriptions and real science news articles accompanied by brain scans, bar charts, or photographs. Across 988 participants, we found little evidence of neuroimagingʼs seductive allure or of its relation to self-professed dualistic beliefs. These results, taken together with other recent null findings, suggest that brain images are less powerful than has been argued