Recent Picture of David G. Myers

Table of Contents

1 A Social World - Martin Bolt

Part I: Believing
2 Behavior and Belief - David G. Myers
3 The Inflated Self: A New Look at Pride - David G. Myers
4 Reasons for Unreason - David G. Myers
5 Should We Believe in the Paranormal? - David G. Myers

Part II Influencing
6 Is Anyone Getting the Message? - David G. Myers and John I. Shaughnessy
7 The Cost of Rewards - Martin Bolt
8 Conformity: A Way Out - Martin Bolt
9 When Groupthink Strikes - Martin Bolt

Part III: Relating
10 Why Do the Rich Feel So Poor? - David G. Myers and Thomas Ludwig
11 Liking and Loving - Martin Bolt and John Brink
12 And Who Is My Neighbor? - Martin Bolt
13 Do Bad Things Really Happen to Good People? - Martin Bolt
14 Blessed Are the Peacemakers - David G. Myers and Steven D. Hoogerwerf

Part IV: Studying
15 Called to Understand - Martin Bolt

Notes

Acknowledgments

With appreciation we acknowledge our collaborators who worked with us in preparing several essays in this book. To John Shaughnessy, Thomas Ludwig, John Brink, and Steven Hoogerwerf go our sincere thanks. We are indebted to many friends and colleagues who read these essays in earlier form and offered constructive suggestions and criticisms. Special thanks are also due Jean Brasser and Kathy Adamski for their predictably excellent typing and word-processing skills in the final preparation of the manuscript.

As is true in most cooperative efforts of this type, the primary responsibility for the various chapters was divided between us. The authors primarily responsible for each chapter are named in the table of contents. Earlier versions of certain essays have appeared elsewhere:

Chapter 2: Christianity Today (18 November 1980).

Chapter 3: C. Ellison, ed., Your Better Self (Harper and Row, 1983); Psychology Today (August 1979); Christian Century (1 December 1982).

Chapter 4: D. G. Myers, The Inflated Self (Seabury, 1980); D. G. Myers, Social Psychology (McGraw-Hill, 1983).

Chapter 5: Science Digest (August 1981); Christianity Today (15 July 1983).

Chapter 6: Church Herald (21 March 1980); Christian Ministry (January 1981); Military Chaplain's Review (Summer 1981).

Chapter 9: The Banner (19 and 26 September 1975); CAPS Bulletin, vol. 7, no. 2 (1981).

Chapter 10: Saturday Review (28 October 1978); Christian Century (30 May 1979).

Chapter 13: The Banner (28 December 1979). 

1

A Social World

THE COLLEGE BOARD recently invited the million high-school seniors taking its aptitude test to indicate "how you feel you compare with other people your own age in certain areas of ability." Sixty per cent reported themselves as better than average in "athletic ability." In "leadership ability" 70 per cent rated themselves as above average, 2 per cent as below average. In "ability to get along with others," less than 1 per cent of the 829,000 students who responded rated them selves as below average, 60 per cent rated themselves in the top 10 per cent, and 25 per cent saw themselves among the top 1 per cent.

Judging from the students' responses, America's high-school seniors are hardly plagued with inferiority feelings. Why then do so many psychologists and preachers lament our low self-esteem? How do we really feel about ourselves - and what should we as Christians be doing about self-image? Think back to last Sunday morning's sermon. Can you recall the major points or the theme? Psychologist Thomas Crawford and his associates went to the homes of people from twelve churches shortly before and after they heard a sermon opposing racial injustice. When asked during the second interview whether they had heard or read anything about racial prejudice or discrimination since the previous interview, only 10 per cent spontaneously recalled the sermon. When the remaining 90 per cent were asked directly whether their preacher "talked about prejudice or discrimination in the last couple of weeks," more than 30 per cent denied hearing such a sermon.

Is this typical of the impact of sermons? How might each of us who must teach, speak or write do so with more effect than these preachers? And what can we do to receive maximum benefit from what we hear and read?

Now imagine that you and some others have come to participate in a psychological study of emotional cues. By what appears to be random choice, one of the participants, actually an accomplice of the experimenter, is selected to perform a memory task. She is to receive painful shocks for any error made while you and the other participants note her emotional response. After watching her grimace in response to a number of seemingly painful shocks, you are asked to evaluate her. How will you respond? With compassion and sympathy? Probably not. When observers are powerless to alter a victim's fate, they tend to reject and devalue her - as if such a bad thing couldn't happen to a good person.

This research finding tells a lot about how we view victims of oppression. Do we acknowledge that bad things can happen to good people? Or do we just mirror the thoughts of Job's friends, believing that people get what they deserve?

These three examples, taken from forthcoming chapters, illustrate the broad concerns of social psychology. How we think about ourselves and others (the ratings of the high-school seniors), influence one another (the sermons) and relate to each other (the evaluations of the punished woman) are what the discipline is all about. Certainly these are not new concerns. Conformity and independence, love and hate, persuasion and peacemaking all form the fabric of everyday life. They are familiar and visible - in poetry, philosophy and theology, on the streets and in our churches.

While the questions social psychologists ask are hardly new, their approach is unique. They look for answers through careful observation and experimentation. This systematic, scientific approach to human social behavior is a young discipline. It is, in fact, a twentieth-century phenomenon. And while much mystery remains, important insights into human relationships are already emerging.

In this book we hope to communicate some of the fascination of the search, to present some of the more provocative findings and to consider the implications of these findings for Christian belief and everyday life. These issues, and therefore this book, are for all Christians who wrestle with the task of living obediently and who want to influence others to make Jesus Christ the Lord of their lives.

Believing, Influencing, Relating: A Three-Part Study

Part I of our book explores recent research on how and what people believe. Social psychologists have learned some surprising things concerning the relationship of faith and works. Studies have also been done on how we think about ourselves. What kinds of complexes do we really suffer from? The findings provide a fresh retelling of ancient biblical wisdom. We will also examine some disturbing new experiments which suggest how and why people come to form false beliefs.

A fundamental aspect of our social nature is how we influence and are influenced by our fellow human beings. In Part II we explore the nature and extent of this social influence. For example, what kinds of messages are most memorable and persuasive? Do rewards persuade too? We will look not only at how persuasive rewards are, but how much actual constructive change they effect. The implications for Christian parenting and Christian education are telling. The scriptural command "Be not conformed..." will assume new meaning as we look at how readily social forces shape our behavior and our beliefs. We will see how "groupthink" creeps into the local church and suggest how we can think together as Christians without falling into such traps.

Our social relationships provide the basis for our deepest satisfactions as well as our most difficult challenges. Part III will explore some of the central themes that run through our relationships with one another. We will examine comparisons people make with each other and the strange phenomenon of "poortalk" that often results. Analyzing the research done on human attraction, we'll see what makes us naturally move toward certain people - and compare that tendency with Christ's command to love. When will we offer aid to those in need? Studies on altruism show how much our willingness to help is influenced by situational factors. Our willingness may be further complicated by our need to believe in a just world. Recent findings indicate that the "justice motive" may lead to more than Christian compassion. We conclude Part III with some of the key principles that are foundational for all Christian peacemaking.

"It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen 2:18 RSV). And thus God created us interdependent, not self-sufficient; social, not isolated. Join with us now as we explore some of psychology's recent findings regarding our social nature and probe their significance for Christian faith and practice.   

Part I

Believing

BELIEF IS CENTRAL in the Christian life. Paul tells us we are saved by grace through faith. Jesus, during the storm on the Sea of Galilee, asked his fearful disciples why they had so little faith. How do we come to believe what we believe? How can we be sure that what we believe is true?

Part I takes up these and related issues. Chapter two considers how faith and obedience relate. Popular wisdom stresses the impact of our attitudes on our actions. In the church, teaching and preaching follow this thinking by aiming to change the heart, assuming obedience will follow. This chapter examines the less commonsensical idea that behavior determines beliefs.

Among our most central beliefs are those we hold about ourselves. The notion that most of us suffer from unrealistically low self-esteem has become widely accepted within the Christian community. Presumably we need to develop a healthier, more positive self-image. Chapter three looks at the other side of the coin. Do most people actually have a "self-serving bias"? Is pride the more common error? Does an inflated self-perception alienate us from God and lead us to disdain one another? How can recognizing our pride as sin draw us to Christ and to a positive self-regard rooted in his grace?

Objectivity - or the lack of it - can also drive a wedge between people. While in the past social psychologists have viewed us as rational animals, recently their attention has shifted to errors in our thinking that may prejudice our judgments of others. Chapter four examines the way people form and sustain false beliefs reinforces St. Paul's contention that human wisdom is not nearly so wise as God's foolishness.

Chapter five asks, Why do people believe in paranormal events and powers in the face of great evidence against their existence? The point is not that psychic phenomena do not exist but that, whether they do or not, illusory thinking almost guarantees that people will invent such beliefs. At issue is our whole understanding of ourselves and others:

Do we have paranormal abilities? Or are we finite creatures of the one who declares "I am God, and there is none like me"?

2

Behavior and Belief

PEOPLE GENERALLY ASSUME that our beliefs and attitudes determine our actions. So if we want to change the way people act, their hearts and minds had better be changed. This assumption lies behind most of our teaching, preaching, counseling and child rearing. But if social psychology has taught us anything during the last twenty years it is that the reverse is equally true: we are as likely to act ourselves into a way of thinking as to think ourselves into action.

Let's take a peek at this action-attitude research, see how it squares with the biblical understanding of faith and action, and then consider practical implications for church life and Christian nurture.

Action and Attitude

Social psychologists agree that attitudes and actions have a reciprocal relationship, each feeding on the

other (figure 1). In fact, the effect of our attitudes on our actions seems not so great as most people suppose.¹ The attitudes people express toward the church, for example, are only moderately related to their church attendance on any given Sunday. The fact is, any particular action, such as going or not going to church on June 1, is the product of many influences, not just one's attitude toward the church. So it is not surprising that attempts to change people's behavior by changing their attitudes often produce only modest results. Habits like smoking, television watching and bad driving practices are not affected much by persuasive appeals.²

Although attitudes determine our behavior less than commonly supposed, the complementary proposition - that behavior determines attitude - turns out to be far more true than most people think. We are as likely to believe in what we have stood up for as to stand up for what we believe. Many streams of evidence converge to establish this principle. Consider two:

The foot-in-the-door phenomenon. A number of experiments indicate that if you want people to do a big favor for you, it's wise to get them to do a small favor first. In the best-known demonstration of this, Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser wanted California housewives to place a large, ugly "Drive Carefully" sign on their front lawns. Tests showed that they were more likely to do this if they had first been asked to do the smaller favor of signing a safe driving petition.³

In this situation, as in countless other experiments demonstrating the effect of action on attitude, the behavior (signing the petition) was a chosen, public act. Time and again, social psychologists have found that when people bind themselves to public behavior and perceive this as their own doing, they come to believe more strongly in their action. Also, the effect on the housewives' attitudes was evident in their subsequent willingness to perform an even more substantial action, demonstrating the reciprocal influence of action and attitude.

Sometimes action and attitude feed one another in a spiraling escalation. In his well-known experiments, Stanley Milgram induced adult men to deliver supposedly traumatizing electric shocks to an innocent victim in an adjacent room.⁴ People were commanded to deliver the shock (said to be punishment for wrong answers on a learning task) in steps gradually increasing from 15 to 450 volts. The troubling result - that 65 per cent of the participants complied right up to 450 volts even while the supposed victim screamed his protests - seems partly due to an effective use of the foot in-the-door principle. Their first act was trivial (15 volts), and the next (30 volts) was not noticeably more severe. By the time the supposed victim first indicated mild discomfort the participant had already bound himself to the situation on several occasions, and the next act was, again, not noticeably more severe. External behavior and internal disposition can amplify one another, especially when social pressures induce actions that are increasingly extreme. And so it is that ordinary people can become unwitting agents of evil.

Effects of moral and immoral acts. All this suggests the more general possibility that acting in violation of one's moral standards may set in motion a process of self-justification which leads ultimately to sincere belief in the act. Experiments bear this out. People induced to give witness to something about which they have doubts will generally begin to believe their "little lies," at least if they felt some sense of choice in the matter. Saying is believing. Likewise, harming an innocent victim - by muttering a cutting comment or delivering shocks - typically leads aggressors to disparage their victims, especially if the aggressors are coaxed rather than coerced into doing so.⁵ Wartime provides the most tragic real-life parallel to these laboratory findings: here we know too well how immoral acts corrode the moral sensitivity of the actors.

Fortunately, the principle cuts in the other direction as well. Moral action has positive effects on the actor. Experiments demonstrate that when children are induced to resist temptation, they tend to internalize their conscientious behavior, especially if the deterrent is mild enough to leave them with a sense of choice.⁶ Moreover, children who are actively engaged in enforcing rules or in teaching moral norms to younger children subsequently follow the moral code better than children who are not given the opportunity to be teachers or enforcers.⁷ Generalizing the principle, it would seem that one antidote for the corrupting effects of evil action is repentant action. Evil acts shape the self, but moral acts do so as well.

These few examples illustrate why the attitudes-follow-behavior principle has become an accepted theory in contemporary social psychology. Since the phenomenon is more clearly established than its explanation, social psychologists have been busy playing detective, trying to track down clues that would reveal why action affects attitude. One explanation suggests that we are motivated to justify our actions as a way of relieving the discomfort we feel when our behavior differs noticeably from our prior attitude. An alternative explanation is that when our attitudes are weak or ambiguous, we observe our actions and then infer what attitudes we must have, given how we have acted. What we say and do can sometimes be quite self-revealing! Neither of these views necessarily implies that the effect of action is a mindless irrational process. Our thinking is stimulated by our action. The reasons we develop to explain our actions can be real and intellectually defensible. As one student explained, "It wasn't until I tried to verbalize my beliefs that found I was really able to understand them."

Regardless of what explanation is best, we can find a practical moral for us all: each time we act, we strengthen the idea behind what we have done. We increase our inclination to act in the same way again. If we want to change ourselves in some important way, we had better not depend exclusively on introspection and intellectual insight. Some times we need to get up and do something - begin writing that paper, make those phone calls, go see that person - even if we do not feel like moving. If Moses, Jonah and others had waited until they felt like doing what God was calling them to do, their missions would never have been accomplished. (Indeed, if not acted on, ideas often begin to fade until recharged by new action.) Fortunately, we often discover that once we have written the first paragraph or made the first call, our commitment and enthusiasm for what we are doing begins to take hold of us and drive us forward with its own momentum.

Action and Faith

The social psychological evidence that action and attitude generate one another in an endless chain - like chicken and egg - affirms and enlivens the biblical understanding of action and faith. Depending on where we break into this spiraling chain, we will see how faith can be a source of action or how it can be a consequence of action. Both perspectives are correct, since action and faith, like action and attitude, feed one another.

Christian thinking has usually emphasized faith as the source of action, just as conventional wisdom has insisted that our attitudes determine our behavior. Faith, we believe, is the beginning rather than the end of religious development. For example, the experience of being "called" demonstrates how faith can precede action in the lives of the faithful. Elijah is overwhelmed by the Holy as he huddles in a cave. Paul is touched by the Almighty on the Damascus Road. Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos are likewise invaded by the Word, which then explodes in their active response to the call. In each case, an encounter with God provoked a new state of consciousness which was then acted on.

This dynamic potential of faith is already a central tenet of evangelical thought. For the sake of balance, we should also appreciate the complementary proposition: Faith is a consequence of action. Throughout the Old and New Testaments we are told that full knowledge of God comes through actively doing the Word. Faith is nurtured by obedience.

Reinhold Niebuhr and others have called attention to the contrast in assumptions between biblical thought and the Platonic thought that permeates our Western culture today. Plato presumed that we come to know truth by reason and quiet reflection. This view, translated into Christian terms, equates faith with cerebral activity - orthodox doctrinal propositions, for example.

The contrasting biblical view assumes that reality is known through obedient commitment. As O. A. Piper has written in the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, "This feature, more than any other, brings out the wide gulf which separates the Hebraic from the Greek view of knowledge. In the latter, knowledge itself is purely theoretical... whereas in the Old Testament the person who does not act in accordance with what God has done or plans to do has but a fragmentary knowledge."⁸ For example, the Hebrew word for know is generally used as a verb, something you do. To know love, we must not only know about love but we must act lovingly. Likewise, to hear the word of God means not only to listen but also to obey.

We read in the New Testament that by loving action a person knows God, for "he who does what is true comes to the light" (Jn 3:21 RSV). Jesus declared that whoever would do the will of God would know God, that he would come and dwell within those who heed what he said, and that we would find ourselves not by passive contemplation but by losing ourselves as we take up the cross. The wise man, the one who built his house on rock, differed from the foolish man in that he acted on God's Word. Merely saying "Lord, Lord" does not qualify us as disciples; discipleship means doing the will of the Father. Over and over again, the Bible teaches that gospel power can only be known by living it.

Our theological understanding of faith is built on this biblical view of knowledge. Faith grows as we act on what little faith we have. Just as experimental subjects become more deeply committed to something for which they have suffered and witnessed, so also do we grow in faith as we act it out. Faith "is born of obedience," said John Calvin. "The proof of Christianity really consists in 'following,' "declared Soren Kierkegaard. Karl Barth agreed: "Only the doer of the Word is its real hearer."

C. S. Lewis captured this dynamic of faith in his Chronicles of Narnia. The great lion Aslan has returned to Narnia to redeem his captive creatures. Lucy, a young girl with a trusting, childlike faith in Aslan, catches a glimpse of him and eventually convinces the others in her party to start walking toward where she sees him. As Lucy follows Aslan, she comes to see him more clearly. The others, skeptical and grumbling at first, follow despite their doubts. Only as they follow do they begin to see what was formerly invisible to them - first a fleeting hint of the lion, then his shadow, until finally, after many steps, they see him face to face. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer concluded in The Cost of Discipleship, "Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.... You can only know and think about it by actually doing it."⁹

Christians will surely want to understand and communicate their faith as rationally defensible. Yet when Jesus counseled that the kingdom of God belongs to those who come like a child, he reminded us that codified intellectual understanding need not precede faith. Jesus called people to follow him, not just to believe in a creed. Peter dropped his nets, leaving all behind, when Jesus called him. Only much later did he verbalize his conviction with the declaration: "You are the Christ." Although we must remember that justification is the gift of God - Peter does not achieve his own conversion - the meaning of faith is nevertheless learned through obedient action.

Implications for Church Life and Christian Nurture

How can we apply these principles to, say, leading a church, to planning worship, and to nurturing personal faith? First, a top priority for churches must be to make their members active participants, not mere spectators. Many dynamic religious movements today, ranging from sects like the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and the Unification Church to charismatics and discipleship-centered communities, share an insistence that all on board be members of the crew. That is easier said than done, but it does provide a criterion by which to evaluate procedures for admitting and maintaining members. As a local church makes decisions and administers its program, it should constantly be asking, Will this activate our people and make priests of our believers? If research on persuasion is any indication, this will best be accomplished by direct, personal calls to committed action, not merely by mass appeals and announcements.

In worship, too, people should be engaged as active participants, not as mere spectators of religious theater. Research indicates that passively received spoken words have surprisingly little impact on listeners. Changes in attitude resulting from spoken persuasion are less likely to endure and influence subsequent behavior than attitude changes emerging from active experience.¹⁰ What's needed is to have listeners rehearse and act on what they hear. If the church is liturgical, then the congregation needs to participate actively in the ritual. The public act of choosing to get out of one's seat and kneel publicly before the congregation in taking Communion is but one example. Going forward to demonstrate repentance or commitment, giving a public testimony or participating in believers' baptism are others. When the people sing responses, write their own confessions, contribute prayer, read Scripture responsively, take notes on the sermon, utter exclamations, bring their offerings forward, pass the peace, make the sign of the cross, or sit, stand and kneel - acts that viewers of the electronic church do not perform - they are making their worship their own.

The principle has its limits, of course. We can become so preoccupied with doing things that we no longer have time to quietly receive God's Word of grace and direction for our lives. Like the Pharisees, we can substitute our deeds for God's act, or think that any kind of action will do. To say that action nurtures growth in faith is not to tell the whole story of faith. But it does tell part of the story.

The action-attitude principle can also help us with Christian education and Christian nurture. Since researchers have found that the attitudes we form by experience are most likely to affect our actions, we might consider new methods of encouraging faith. For example, few Christian families appreciate and reap the benefits of family worship. Old Testament family practices helped people remember the mighty acts of God. When today's Jewish family celebrates the Passover by eating special foods, reading prayers and singing psalms, all of which symbolize their historical experience, they are helped to renew the roots of deep convictions and feelings. As Tevye exclaimed in Fiddler on the Roof, "Because of our traditions every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.... Without our traditions our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof." Among Christians, family celebrations are becoming more common during Advent. With a boost from the church, home-based activity could be extended to celebrate all the great themes of the church year.

Although church and family ritual may sometimes degenerate into a superficial religious exercise, few of us appreciate the extent to which the natural ritual of our own personal histories has shaped who we are. Many of the things we did without question in childhood have long since be come an enduring part of our self-identities. Indeed, because we have internalized our own rituals, we find it difficult to recognize them as rituals; but it is easy to recognize other people's rituals.

The overarching objective on which all these points converge is this: we want to create opportunities for people to enact their convictions, thereby confirming and strengthening their Christian identity. Biblical and psychological perspectives link arms in reminding us that faith is like love. If we hoard it, it will shrivel. If we use it, exercise it and express it, we will have it more abundantly.

3

The Inflated Self: A New Look at Pride

Poised somewhere between sinful vanity and self-destructive submissiveness is a golden mean of self-esteem appropriate to the human condition. -Stanford Lyman

THERE IS NO DOUBT about it. High self-esteem pays dividends. Those with a positive self-image are happier, freer of ulcers and insomnia, less prone to drug and alcohol addictions. Researchers have also found that people whose ego is temporarily deflated - say, by being told that they did miserably on an intelligence test - are more likely to disparage other people or even express heightened racial prejudice. More generally, people who are negative about themselves tend to be negative about others. Low self-esteem can feed contemptuous attitudes.

What people believe about themselves can have a profound impact on their lives. Those who believe they can control their own destiny - who have what researchers in more than a thousand studies have called "internal locus of control" - achieve more, make more money and are less vulnerable to being manipulated.¹ Believe that things are beyond your control, and they probably will be. Believe that you can do it, and maybe you will.

Knowing this may encourage us not to resign ourselves to bad situations but to persist despite initial failures, to strive without being derailed by self-doubts. But as Pascal taught, no single truth is ever sufficient because the world is not simple. Any truth separated from its complementary truth is a half-truth. That high self-esteem and positive thinking pay dividends is true. But in heralding this truth let us not forget another more disturbing truth - the truth about the pervasiveness and the pitfalls of pride. To remind us of this neglected second truth, consider social psychology's new look at pride.

The Self-serving Bias

It is popularly believed that most of us suffer the "I'm not OK - You're OK" type of low self-esteem. As Groucho Marx put it, "I'd never join any club that would accept a person like me." Carl Rogers described this low self-image problem when he objected to Reinhold Niebuhr's idea that original sin is self-love, pretention, pride. No, no, replied Rogers, Niebuhr had it backwards. People's problems arise because "they despise themselves, regard themselves as worthless and unlovable."

The issue between Niebuhr and Rogers is very much alive today. And what an intriguing irony it is that so many Christian writers are now echoing Rogers and the other prophets of humanistic psychology at the very time that research psychologists are amassing new data concerning the pervasiveness of pride. Indeed, the orthodox theologians, not the humanistic psychologists, seem closer to the truth. As writer William Saroyan put it, "Every man is a good man in a bad world--as he himself knows."

Researchers are debating the reasons for the phenomenon of the self-serving bias, but they now generally agree that it is both genuine and potent. Six streams of data merge to form a powerful river of evidence.

Stream 1: Accepting more responsibility for success than failure, for good deeds than bad. Time and again experimenters have found that people readily accept credit when told they have succeeded (attributing the success to their ability and effort), yet attribute failure to such external factors as bad luck or the situation's inherent "impossibility." Similarly, in explaining their victories athletes have been observed to credit themselves, but they are more likely to attribute losses to something else: bad breaks, bad officiating, the other team's super effort. Situations that combine skill and chance (games, exams, job applications) are especially prone to the phenomenon. Winners easily attribute their success to their skill, while losers attribute their losses to chance. When I win at Scrabble it's because of my verbal dexterity; when I lose it's because "who could get anywhere with a Q but no U?"

Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly at the University of Waterloo observed a marital version of self-serving bias.² They found that married people usually gave themselves more credit for such activities as cleaning the house and caring for the children than their spouses were willing to credit them for. Every night, my wife and I pitch our laundry at the bedroom clothes hamper. In the morning, one of us puts them in. Recently she suggested that I take more responsibility for this. Thinking that I already did so 75 per cent of the time, I asked her how often she thought she picked up the clothes. "Oh," she replied, "about 75 per cent of the time."

Stream 2: Favorably biased self-ratings: Can we all be better than average? On nearly any dimension that is both subjective and socially desirable, most people see themselves as better than average.³ Most American business people, for example, see themselves as more ethical than the average American business person. Most community residents see themselves as less prejudiced than others in their communities. Most French people perceive themselves as superior to their peers in a variety of socially desirable ways. Most drivers, even among those who have been hospitalized for accidents, believe themselves to be more skillful than the average driver.

The College Board recently invited the million high- school seniors taking its aptitude test to indicate "how you feel you compare with other people your own age in certain areas of ability." Judging from the students' responses America's high-school seniors are not plagued with inferiority feelings. Sixty per cent reported themselves as better than average in "athletic ability," only 6 per cent as below average. In "leadership ability" 70 per cent rated themselves as above average, 2 per cent as below average. In "ability to get along with others," less than 1 per cent of the 829,000 students who responded rated themselves below average, 60 per cent rated themselves in the top 10 per cent, and 25 per cent saw themselves among the top 1 per cent. To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the question seems to be "How do I love me? Let me count the ways."

Stream 3: Self-justification: If I did it, it must be good. If we have done something undesirable that cannot be forgotten, misremembered or undone, then often we justify it. In chapter two we noted how social psychological research has established that past actions influence our current attitudes. Every time we act, we amplify the idea lying behind what we have done, especially if we feel some responsibility for having committed the act. In experiments, people who oppress someone - by delivering electric shocks, for example - tend later to disparage their victim. Such self-justification is all the more dangerous when manifest in group settings: Iran justified its taking of hostages as a just response to morally reprehensible American policies in Iran; the United States saw the moral lunacy on the other side. So everyone felt righteous, and a stand-off resulted.

Stream 4: Cognitive conceit: Belief in our personal infallibility. Researchers who study human thinking have often observed that people overestimate the accuracy of their beliefs and judgments. So consistently does this happen that one prominent researcher has referred to this human tendency as "cognitive conceit."

The I-knew-it-all-along attitude demonstrates this phenomenon. Often we do not expect something to happen until it does, at which point we overestimate our likelihood to have predicted it. Researchers have found that people who are told the outcome of an experimental or historical situation are less surprised at the outcome than people told only about the situation and its possible outcomes.⁴ Indeed, almost any result of a psychological experiment can seem like common sense - after you know the result. The phenomenon can be demonstrated by giving half a group some purported psychological finding and the other half the opposite result. For example:

Social psychologists have found that, whether choosing friends or falling in love, we are most attracted to people whose traits are different from our own. There seems to be wisdom in the old saying that "opposites attract."

Social psychologists have found that, whether choosing friends or falling in love, we are most attracted to people whose traits are similar to our own. There seems to be wisdom in the old saying that "birds of a feather flock together."

Have people (1) write an explanation for whichever finding they were given, and (2) judge whether their finding is "surprising" or "not surprising." In hindsight, either result can seem obvious so that virtually all will say "not surprising." "Anyone could have told you that."

Many of the conclusions presented in this book may have already occurred to you. In retrospect, doesn't the action-attitude principle discussed in chapter two seem quite obvious? Likewise, do we really need research psychologists to rediscover the pervasiveness of pride? And let's look ahead to some of the equally obvious ideas to be examined in future chapters:

1. Human reason is sound; hence, given a reasonable exposition of Christianity, people can be held responsible for making a rational decision to choose faith (chapters four and six).

2. Paranormal happenings, documented by science, testify to realities beyond nature and even point to demonic supernatural powers (chapter five).

3. People will become most committed to those beliefs and actions they perceive to be personally rewarding (chapter seven).

4. Teaching our children to be more independent is the best way to deal with the problem of "conformity to this world" (chapter eight).

5. The greater the cohesiveness among members of a local church, the more likely they will grow in faith and practice (chapter nine).

6. The combined effects of two decades of inflation and recession have created an economic mess that has eroded our buying power (chapter ten).

7. Although we certainly note and admire physical beauty, appearance is not a major factor in our evaluations of others. Beauty is, after all, only skin deep (chapter eleven).

8. Selfishness is the overriding reason people fail to help those in distress (chapter twelve).

9. Victims of injustice typically elicit our sympathy. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, "The martyr cannot be dishonored" (chapters thirteen and fourteen).

If all of these ideas seem as obvious as those presented thus far, be forewarned! The chapters that follow will challenge these myths, just as we have already sought to refute the myths that the heart must change before behavior does and that most people suffer from self-deprecation.

By the time we finish, however, their opposites may also seem commonsensical. They are readily supported by a stockpile of ancient proverbs. Since nearly every possible outcome is conceivable, wise sayings await every occasion. Are "two heads better than one?" Or do "too many cooks spoil the broth"? Is "a penny saved a penny earned," or is it "pennywise, pound foolish"? If a social psychologist reports that separation intensifies romantic attraction, some one is sure to reply, "Of course: 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' " Should it turn out the reverse, the same person may remind us, "Out of sight, out of mind." No matter what happens, someone would have known it all along.

Stream 5: Unrealistic optimism: The Pollyanna syndrome. Margaret Matlin and David Stang have amassed evidence pointing to a powerful Pollyanna principle - that people more readily perceive, remember and communicate pleasant than unpleasant information.⁵ Positive thinking predominates over negative thinking.

In recent research with Rutgers University students, Neil Weinstein has further discerned a tendency toward "unrealistic optimism about future life events."⁶ Most students perceived themselves as far more likely than their classmates to experience positive events such as getting a good job, drawing a good salary and owning a home, and as far less likely to experience negative events such as getting divorced, having cancer and being fired. Likewise, most college students believe they will easily outlive their actuarially predicted age of death (which calls to mind Freud's joke about the man who told his wife, "If one of us should die, I think I would go live in Paris").

Stream 6: Overestimating how desirably we would act. Researchers have found that under certain conditions most people will act in rather inconsiderate, compliant or even cruel ways. When similar people are told in detail about these conditions and asked to predict how they would act, however, nearly all insist that their own behavior would be far more virtuous. When researcher Steven Sherman called Bloomington, Indiana, residents and asked them to volunteer three hours to an American Cancer Society drive, only 4 per cent agreed to do so. But when a comparable group of other residents were called and asked to predict how they would react were they to receive such a request, almost half predicted they would help.⁷

Other streams of evidence could be added: We more readily believe flattering than self-deflating descriptions of ourselves. We misremember our own past in self-enhancing ways. We guess that physically attractive people have personalities more like our own than do unattractive people. To summarize the argument: It's true that high self-esteem and positive thinking are adaptive and desirable. But unless we close our eyes to a whole river of evidence, it also seems true that the most common error in people's self-images is not an unrealistically low self-esteem, but rather a self-serving bias; not an inferiority complex, but a superiority complex. In any satisfactory theory or theology of self-esteem, these two truths must somehow coexist.

Objections to the Self-serving Bias

Many will no doubt find this portrayal of the pervasiveness of pride either depressing or somehow contrary to what they have experienced and observed. Let me anticipate some of the objections. I hear lots of people putting themselves down, and I'm sometimes hampered by inferiority feelings myself.

Let's see why this might be. First, not everyone has a self-serving bias. Some people (women more often than men) do suffer from unreasonably low self-esteem. For example, several recent studies have found that while most people shuck responsibility for their failures on a laboratory task or perceive themselves as having been more in control than they were, depressed people are more accurate in their self appraisal.⁸ Sadder but wiser, they seem to be. There is also evidence that while most people see themselves more favorably than other people see them (thus providing yet another demonstration of the "normal" self-serving bias), depressed people see themselves as other people see them.⁹ This prompts the unsettling thought that Pascal may have been right: "I lay it down as a fact that, if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world." Now that truly is a depressing thought.

Second, those of us who exhibit the self-serving bias (and that's most of us) may nevertheless feel inferior to certain specific individuals, especially when we compare ourselves to someone who is a step or two higher on the ladder of success, attractiveness or whatever. Thus we may believe ourselves to be relatively superior yet feel discouraged - because we fall short of certain others, or fail to fully reach our own goals.

Third, self-disparagement can be a self-serving tactic. As the French sage La Rouchefoucauld detected, "Humility is often a... trick whereby pride abases itself only to exalt itself later." For example, most of us have learned that putting ourselves down is a useful technique for eliciting strokes from others. We know that a remark such as "I wish I weren't so ugly" will elicit at least a "Come now. I know people who are uglier than you." Researchers have also observed that people will aggrandize their opponents and disparage or even handicap themselves as a self-protective tactic. The coach who publicly extols the upcoming opponent's awesome strength renders a loss understandable, while a win becomes a praiseworthy achievement. Thus self-disparagement can be subtly self-serving.

Perhaps all this "pride" is just an upbeat public display; underneath it people may be suffering with miserable self images.

Actually, when people must declare their feelings publicly, they present a more modest self-portrayal than when allowed to respond anonymously. Other evidence also points to the conclusion that most people really do see themselves favorably and not just describe themselves that way to researchers. Self-serving bias is exhibited by children before they learn to inhibit their real feelings. And if, as many researchers believe, the self-serving bias is rooted partly in how our minds process information - I more easily recall the times I've bent over and picked up the laundry than the times I've overlooked it - then it will be an actual self-perception, more a self-deception than a lie. Consider finally the diversity of evidence that converges on the self-serving bias. If it were merely a favorability bias in questionnaire ratings, we could more readily explain the phenomenon away.

Is not the self-serving bias beneficial?

It likely is, for the same reasons that high self-esteem and positive thinking are beneficial. Some have argued that the bias has survival value - that cheaters, for example, will give a more convincing display of honesty if they believe in their honesty. Belief in our superiority can also motivate us to achieve and can sustain our sense of hope in difficult times.

However, the self-serving bias is not always beneficial. For example, in one series of experiments by Barry Schlenker at the University of Florida, people who worked with other people on various tasks claimed greater-than-average credit when their group did well and less-than-average blame when it did not.¹⁰ If most individuals in a group believe they are underpaid and underappreciated, relative to their better-than-average contributions, disharmony and envy will likely rear their ugly heads. College presidents will readily recognize the phenomenon. If, as one survey revealed, 94 per cent of college faculty think themselves better than their average colleague, then when merit salary raises are announced and half receive an average raise or less, many will feel an injustice has been done them.

Does not the Bible portray us more positively, as reflecting God's image?

The Bible offers a balanced picture of human nature. We are the epitome of God's creation, made in his own image, and yet we are sinful too. Two complementary truths. This chapter is affirming the sometimes understated second truth. The experimental evidence that human reason is adaptable to self-interest strikingly parallels the Christian contention that becoming aware of our sin is like trying to see our own eyeballs. Self-serving, self-justifying biases influence the way we perceive our actions, observes the social psychologist. "No one can see his own errors," notes the psalmist (Ps 19:12 TEV). Thus the Pharisee could thank God "that I am not like other men" (Lk 18:11 RSV).

The apostle Paul must have had such self-righteousness in mind when he admonished the Philippians to "in humility count others better than yourselves" (2:3 RSV). Paul assumed that our natural tendency is the opposite, just as he assumed self-love when arguing that husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. Jesus assumed self-love too when he commanded us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The Bible does not teach self-love; it takes it for granted.

In the biblical view pride alienates us from God and leads us to disdain one another. It fuels conflict among individuals and nations, each of which sees itself as more moral and deserving than others. The Nazi atrocities were rooted not in self-conscious feelings of German inferiority but in Aryan pride. The conflict between Britain and Argentina in 1982 involved a small amount of real estate (the Falkland Islands) and a large amount of national pride. If you and I pride ourselves on being in the top 20 per cent of drivers, then we will likely pass off traffic safety campaigns as pertaining to those idiotic other drivers.

For centuries pride has been considered the fundamental sin, the deadliest of the seven deadly sins. If I seem confident about the potency of pride, it is not because I have invented a new idea but because I am simply assembling new data to reaffirm an old, old idea.

These researchers seem like killjoys. Where is there an encouraging word?

Are not the greater killjoys those who would lead us to believe that, because we're number one, we can accomplish anything? If we believe we can do anything, it means that if we don't - if we are unhappily married, poor, unemployed or have rebellious children - we have but ourselves to blame. Shame. If only we had tried harder, been more disciplined, less stupid.

To know and accept ourselves, foibles and all, without pretensions, is not gloomy but liberating. As William James noted, "To give up one's pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified." Likewise, the biblical understanding of self-affirmation does not downplay our pride and sinfulness, as some would now have us do. Recall how Jesus' Sermon on the Mount hints at the paradoxical ways by which comfort, satisfaction, mercy, peace, happiness, and visions of God are discovered: "Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor; the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them!" (Mt 5:3 TEV).

"Christian religion," said C. S. Lewis, "is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in [dismay], and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay."¹¹ In coming to realize that self-interest and illusion taint our thoughts and actions, we take the first step toward wholeness. The new insights gained from psychological research into vanity and illusion have profoundly Christian implications, for they drive us back to the biblical view of our creatureliness and spiritual poverty, the view which in our pride we are prone to deny.

Christians furthermore believe that God's grace is the key to human liberation - liberation from the need to define our self-worth solely in terms of achievements, prestige or physical and material well-being. Thus, while I can never be worthy or wise enough, I can with Martin Luther "throw myself upon God's grace." The recognition of our pride draws us to Christ and to a positive self-esteem rooted in grace. This was St. Paul's experience: "I no longer have a righteousness of my own, the kind that is gained by obeying the Law. I now have the righteousness that is given through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God, and is based on faith" (Phil 3:9 TEV). The Lord of the universe loves me, just as I am.

There is indeed tremendous relief in confessing our vanity, in being known and accepted as we are. Having confessed the worst sin - playing God - and having been forgiven, we gain release, the sense of being given what we were struggling to get: security and acceptance. The feelings we can have in this encounter with God are like those we enjoy in a relationship with someone who, even after knowing our inmost thoughts, accepts us unconditionally. This is the delicious experience we enjoy in a good marriage or an intimate friendship, where we no longer feel the need to justify and explain ourselves or to be on guard, where we are free to be spontaneous without fear of losing the other's esteem. Such was the experience of the psalmist: "Lord, I have given up my pride and turned away from my arrogance...I am content and at peace" (Ps 131:1-2 TEV).

What then is true humility?

First, we must recognize that the true end of humility is not self-contempt, which leaves people still concerned with themselves. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, humility does not consist in handsome people trying to believe they are ugly or clever people trying to believe they are fools. When Muhammad Ali announced that he was the greatest, there was a sense in which his pronouncement did not violate the spirit of humility. False modesty can actually lead to an ironic pride in one's better-than-average humility. As a pastor of one modest church remarked, "We are a humble people, and we're proud of it!" (Perhaps some readers have by now similarly congratulated themselves on being unusually free of the inflated self-perception this chapter describes.)

True humility is more like self-forgetfulness than false modesty. As my colleague Dennis Voskuil writes in his book Mountains into Goldmines: Robert Schuller and the Gospel of Success, the refreshing gospel promise is "not that we have been freed by Christ to love ourselves, but that we have been set free from self-obsession. Not that the cross frees us for the ego trip but that the cross frees us from the ego trip."¹² This leaves people free to esteem their special talents and, with the same honesty, to esteem their neighbor's. Both the neighbor's talents and our own are recognized as gifts and, like our height, are not fit subjects for either inordinate pride or self-deprecation.

Obviously, true humility is a state not easily attained. "There is," said C. S. Lewis, "no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.... If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too." The way to take this first step, continued Lewis, is to glimpse the greatness of God and see oneself in light of this. "He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of [the pretensions which have] made you restless and unhappy all your life."¹³

4

Reasons for Unreason

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!... in apprehension how like a god!
William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.

T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

COLLEGE STUDENTS listening to a lecture are told they are about to be fooled: a performer will use clever tricks to make them believe he can read their minds. A gentleman steps to the front of the room and, true to the prediction, deftly performs his sleight of mind, startling his audience volunteers with eerie revelations about their own thoughts. When the demonstration is over, the lecture hall buzzes with the remarks of excited students who believe they have witnessed a true clairvoyant.¹

How could they have been so gullible? They had been told outright that the man had no special powers. Why, for that matter, are paranormal phenomena so attractive to credulous minds? Today's pied pipers need only pipe and people will follow as readily as ever. Devotees of Edgar Cayce and Jeane Dixon and believers in dream telepathy, out-of-body experiences, psychokinesis, astrology, demonology, levitation, reincarnation, horoscopes and ghosts are all enthralled by mysterious phenomena that seem to defy scientific explanation.

While skepticism about extraordinary claims will some times prevent one from recognizing truth, the converse is also true. A completely open mind is vulnerable to having garbage thrown in. New research in psychology shows how the mind collects garbage. As chapter three hinted, a basic fact about human nature is our capacity for illusion and self- deception. Contrary to Hamlet's paean of praise, we are not always "noble in reason" and certainly not "infinite in faculty."

How do we form and sustain false beliefs about ourselves and others? And how do these illusory thinking processes lead people to believe in paranormal phenomena? This chapter and the next will suggest some answers.

Illusory Thinking

Our preconceptions control our interpretations and memories. Recent experiments indicate that one of the most significant facts about our minds is the extent to which our preconceived notions bias the way we view, interpret and remember the information that comes to us. Sometimes our minds block from our awareness something that is there, if only we were predisposed to perceive it. While reading these words you have probably been unaware, until this moment, that you are looking at your nose.

Our prejudgments can also induce us to see what we already believe. Three recent psychological experiments demonstrate the incredible biasing power of our beliefs. One, by Charles Lord and his Stanford University colleagues, helps explain why pondering ambiguous evidence often fuels rather than extinguishes the fires of debate among people who hold strongly opposing opinions.² They showed college students, half of whom favored and half of whom opposed capital punishment, two purported new research studies. One study confirmed and the other disconfirmed the students' existing beliefs about the crime-deterring effectiveness of the death penalty. Both the proponents and opponents of capital punishment readily accepted the evidence which confirmed their belief but were sharply critical of the disconfirming evidence. Showing the two sides an identical body of mixed evidence had therefore not narrowed their disagreement but increased it. Each side had perceived the evidence as supporting its belief and now believed even more strongly. Is this what happens when liberals and conservatives scrutinize the biblical evidence regarding sensitive issues such as men's and women's roles?

Researchers Craig Anderson and Lee Ross experimented with the biasing power of beliefs by planting false beliefs in people's minds and then trying to discredit those beliefs.³ They invited their Stanford University student subjects to consider whether people who tend to take risks make good firefighters. Each participant in the experiment considered two cases. Some were shown a risk-taker as a successful fire fighter and a cautious person as an unsuccessful one; others were shown cases suggesting the opposite. After forming their theory that risk-takers make better or worse firefighters, the subjects were asked to explain how they reached their conclusions. Those who were led to believe in the superiority of risk-takers typically reasoned that a willingness to risk is conducive to bravery in saving occupants from a burning building. Those who theorized the superiority of cautious people often explained that successful fire fighters are careful rather than impulsive and thus less likely to risk their own and others' lives.

Once formed, each rationale could exist independent of the initial information. Thus when the subjects were informed that the cases were merely manufactured for the experiment, their new beliefs nevertheless survived mostly intact. The students retained their explanations and therefore continued to believe that risk-prone people really do make better or worse firefighters than do cautious people.

Experiments such as this have gone on to indicate that, paradoxically, the more closely we examine our theories and understand and explain how they might be true, the more closed we become to any information that shows otherwise. It makes one wonder: What are the consequences of creating a scientific theory, or a religious (or antireligious) doctrine, and then explaining and defending it? Do false theories and doctrines, once defended, become difficult to refute?

We sustain erroneous beliefs, too, by our tendency to recreate memories according to our present impressions. The extent to which our current beliefs control our attempts to remember the past is evident in studies of conflicting eyewitness testimonies. University of Washington psychologists Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer showed people a film of a traffic accident and then asked them questions about what they had seen.⁴ People who were asked "How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" gave higher estimates than those asked "How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" A week later they were asked whether they recalled seeing any broken glass. Although there was no broken glass in the accident, subjects who were asked the question with "smashed" were more than twice as likely to report broken glass as those asked the question with "hit."

Our preconceptions can similarly affect how we interpret and recall information from the Bible. Our prior beliefs often influence the questions we bring to the Bible and the answers we get from it. Do we want to know the biblical view of military spending? Those on both sides find the Bible supporting their position. It. seems as if people are reasoning:

Military strength is right (wrong).

The Bible teaches what is right.

Therefore the Bible advocates (does not teach) military strength.

Although the biblical interpretation is not really so arbitrary as this example might suggest, never is our thinking free from the control of our assumptions. Our basic belief system is important, for it shapes our understanding of everything else.

We overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs. The intellectual conceit evident in our judgments of past knowledge (the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon described in chapter three) extends to estimates of our current knowledge. For example, Amos Tversky at Stanford University and Daniel Kahneman at the University of British Columbia asked their subjects to estimate how many foreign cars were imported into the United States in 1968.⁵ The subjects were instructed to respond with a range of figures broad enough to make it 98 per cent certain that the true figure would be included. But nearly half the time the true answer was outside the range in which they were 98 per cent confident.

This overconfidence phenomenon has become an accepted fact among researchers. If people's answers to a question are only 60 per cent correct, they will typically feel 75 per cent sure. Even if people feel 100 per cent sure, they still err about 15 per cent of the time. What produces this over-confidence?

Experiments such as one conducted by P. C. Wason indicate that one reason we're so sure is our reluctance to seek information that might disconfirm what we believe.⁶ Wason gave British university students a three-number sequence, such as 2-4-6, and asked them to guess the rule he had used to devise the series. (The rule was simple: any three ascending numbers.) Before they submitted their answers, the subjects were allowed to generate their own sets of three numbers, and each time Wason would tell them whether or not their set conformed to his rule. Once they were certain they had the rule, they were to announce it.

The result? Seldom right but never in doubt! Twenty-three out of twenty-nine people convinced themselves of a wrong rule. They had formed an erroneous theory about the rule and then searched only for confirming evidence rather than attempting to disconfirm their intuitive hunches. Other experiments confirm that people eagerly try to verify their beliefs but are not inclined to seek evidence which might disprove their beliefs. Here again we tend to maintain false beliefs.

Anecdotes and testimonies are more persuasive than factual data. Many recent experiments have found that people's minds are swayed more by vivid examples than by reliable but abstract statistical information. For example, one recent University of Michigan study found that a single vivid welfare case had more impact on opinions about welfare recipients than did factual information running contrary to the particular case. When Ronald Reagan told audiences about the young man who used food stamps to buy an orange and then used the change to buy vodka, he exploited the power of a vivid and memorable anecdote.

Entrepreneurs exploit people's eagerness to infer general truth from a striking instance. For example, U.S. state lotteries (which typically return less than half of the billions they take in) exploit the impact of a few vivid winners. Since the statistical truth always stays buried in the back of people's minds, the system seduces them into perceiving a lottery ticket as having much greater earnings potential than it actually does.

We are often swayed by illusions of causation, correlation and personal control. The one foible of human thinking known by nearly every student of psychology is the nearly irresistible temptation to assume that when two events occur together, one has caused the other. For example, since there is a relationship between people's educational attainments and their earnings, between certain child-rearing styles and the personalities of children exposed to them, and between health practices and longevity, we too readily jump to the conclusions that education pays financial dividends, that specific parenting styles have observable effects and that changes in nutrition and exercise habits can extend life expectancy.

Sometimes a merely accidental association between two events can create a false belief that one is causing the other. Superstitious behaviors are often produced by the power of coincidence. If an act just happens to be performed before a rewarding event occurs, it is easy to get the idea that the act must have caused the reward. Of course, only occasionally will a reward indeed follow the behavior. But this erratic, "intermittent reinforcement," as experimental psychologists call it, is especially conducive to persistence. If a hungry pigeon is every so often given a food pellet regardless of what it is doing, the pigeon will often develop some ritualistic behavior and, even after the pellets have been discontinued, perform that act 10,000 times or more before quitting.⁷

Our correlation-causation confusion is compounded by our susceptibility to perceiving a correlation where none exists. Observing random events, people easily become convinced that significant relationships are occurring - when they expect to see significant relationships. As part of their research with the Bell Telephone Laboratories, William Ward and Herbert Jenkins showed people the results of a hypothetical fifty-day cloud-seeding experiment.⁸ They told their subjects which of the fifty days the clouds had been seeded and which of the days it had rained. This information was nothing more than a random mix of results; some times it rained after seeding, sometimes it didn't. People nevertheless were convinced - in conformity with their intuitive supposition about the effects of cloud seeding - that they really had observed a relationship between cloud seeding and rain. This experiment and others like it indicate that we easily misperceive random data as confirming our beliefs. With incredible ease we make sense out of nonsense.

Our tendency to perceive random events as though they were meaningfully related feeds the frequent illusion that chance events are subject to our personal control. Ellen Langer has demonstrated this with creative experiments on gambling behavior.⁹ People were easily seduced into believing they could beat chance. If they chose a lottery number for themselves, they demanded four times as much money for the sale of their lottery ticket as did people whose number was assigned by the experimenter. If they played a game of chance against an awkward and nervous person, they were willing to bet significantly more than when playing against a dapper, confident opponent. In these and other ways Langer consistently observed that people act as if chance events were subject to their personal control.

A phenomenon called "regression toward the average" often helps create illusions of control. For example, students who score extremely high or low on a test are more likely, when retested, to fall back ("regress") toward the middle than to become even more extreme. When you're at the bottom the only way to go is up. Likewise, parents who are extremely high or low in intelligence or religiousness or political activism should expect most of their children to be less exceptional on that dimension (to "regress" toward normality).

Sometimes we recognize that events seldom continue at an extreme. Experience has taught us that when everything is going great, something will soon go wrong, and that when life is dealing us terrible blows we can usually look forward to things getting better. Often, though, we fail to recognize this regression effect. When things are exceptionally bad, whatever we try - going to a psychotherapist, starting a new diet exercise plan, reading a self-help book - is more likely to be followed by improvement than by worsening. Thus it seems effective - even if it had no effect.

Consulting psychologists are often called when employee morale is in the pits or the sales curve is at its lowest ebb. After the consultant's suggestions are implemented, morale and sales improve, and everyone celebrates the consultant's keen insights. Similarly, a football coach who rewards his team with lavish praise and a light practice after their best game of the season and harasses them after an exceptionally bad game, may soon conclude that rewards produce poorer performance in the next game while punishments improve performance. Parents and teachers may reach the same conclusion after reacting to extremely good or bad behaviors. It seems, suggest Tversky and Kahneman, that nature operates in such a way that we often feel punished for rewarding others and rewarded for punishing them.¹⁰

Our erroneous beliefs may generate their own reality. There is yet another reason why false beliefs, once formed, are so resistant to correction. People's beliefs may lead them to act in ways that elicit an apparent confirmation of those beliefs.

At the University of Minnesota, Mark Snyder has conducted several experiments that demonstrate this self-fulfilling phenomenon. In one of these studies, conducted with Elizabeth Tanke and Ellen Berscheid, men students had a phone conversation with women they mistakenly thought (from having been shown a picture) were either exceptionally attractive or unattractive.¹¹ The women were unaware of the experiment. Analysis of just the women's comments during the conversations showed that those women who were presumed to be attractive were in fact more warm and likable on the telephone than the women who were presumed unattractive. The men's erroneous beliefs had led the women to act in ways that made the stereo-typical belief - that beautiful people are desirable people - a reality.

We are misled by a number of other foibles of human thinking. Many other research findings testify to the magnitude of human folly. We often do not know why we act a certain way. We make false assertions about what we have done, why we did it and what we will do in the future. We underestimate the impact of social situations on others' behavior. We are too quick to assume that people's actions mirror their inner dispositions and attitudes. We are convinced by repeated assertions, even if we know them to be of dubious credibility. We overestimate the brilliance and competence of people who by happenstance are in positions of social power, even if we know they were assigned to that position arbitrarily.

Since we know that these errors creep into even sophisticated scientific thinking, it seems safe to conclude that none of us is exempt from them. Human nature has apparently not changed since the psalmist observed three thousand years ago that ''no one can see his own errors."

Let me hasten to balance the picture lest you succumb to the cynical conclusion that all beliefs are absurd. Disciplined training of the mind - the chief aim of education - can help restrain our unbridled imagination. Indeed, it is a tribute to human wisdom that we can so elegantly analyze the imperfections of human wisdom. Were I to argue that all human thought is illusory, my assertion would be self-refuting, for it too would be but an illusion. It would be logically equivalent to contending that all generalizations are false, including this one. Besides, many of these errors in human intuition spring from thinking mechanisms that are generally useful. If, for example, things are sometimes subject to our control and sometimes not, we will maximize our actual control by assuming that we are in control, even if this assumption sometimes creates a superstitious illusion of control.

A Call to Humility

The seductive power of illusory thinking is enormous. It penetrates all realms of human thought, warping our perceptions of reality and prejudicing our judgments of people.

The implications of this are enormous. For theologians, it questions the assumption of human rationality that undergirds the "I choose God" theology of modern fundamentalism - the assumption that, since our reasoning is sound, we are capable of making a rational decision for Christ. By contrast, the Reformed theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin assumes that human reason is fallen and incapable of dispassionately weighing the evidence and deciding for Christ. Thus "God chooses me" and, through the Spirit, enables my response.

For psychologists, research on illusory thinking suggests a new humility regarding the truth of our unchecked speculation. Since we can conceive and defend almost any theory, we must check our theories against the data of God's creation. To appreciate the unreliability of armchair speculation is to admit that we need careful, scientific study of human thought and behavior.

For each of us, personally, research on human error helps us understand Jesus' admonition to "judge not." We can easily wrong people by our overconfident conclusions - say, that Billy's school problems stem from his permissive parents or that the quiet woman in the room next door is hostile. Nor do we need to feel intimidated by other people's certainty. The belief we can hold with greatest certainty is the humbling conviction that some of our beliefs contain error. We are, after all, not gods but finite men and women. Each of us peers at reality through a glass, darkly.

If all this research reinforces Paul's declaration that human wisdom is not nearly so wise as God's foolishness, well, that's OK. Faith and trust require humility. Not only is it all right to have doubts, but it is intellectual pride, even self-deification, not to grant the likelihood of error within our beliefs. Indeed, faith runs deeper than belief. Belief is founded on reason; faith is a gift of God. Even in times of deepest doubt, faith compels hope and gives the courage to risk. As P. J. Bailey wrote in "A Country Town,"

Who never doubted never half believed;

Where doubt, there truth is, - 'tis her shadow.

5

Should We Believe in the Paranormal?

FOR MILLIONS OF AMERICANS, the evidence for extrasensory perception (ESP) is compelling: Jeane Dixon's gift of prophecy enabled her to foresee President Kennedy's assassination. Police psychics Dorothy Allison and Peter Hurkos solve cases that dumbfound detectives. Ordinary people have spontaneous dreams of dreaded events - only to discover that their dreams are reality. In widely publicized laboratory experiments, parapsychologists (psychologists who study "paranormal" happenings) have been astonished at gifted psychics who against all odds can discern the contents of sealed envelopes, influence the roll of a die or draw a picture of what someone else is viewing at an unknown remote location.

Why then are research psychologists overwhelmingly skeptical of all such claims? Is it simple closed-mindedness, bred by a mechanistic world view that has no room for supernatural mysteries? And how should Christians view such claims? Should we welcome them as evidence for the supernatural? Fear them as evidence of the demonic? What implications do such claims have for our understanding of ourselves and others?

When confronted with extraordinary claims, we are vulnerable to two errors. We maybe either too open or too closed to the evidence. Being totally skeptical may sometimes lead us to reject the truth. The disciple Thomas found belief in Jesus' resurrection impossible until "I see in his hands the print of the nails,... and place my hand in his side" (Jn 20:25 RSV). During the eighteenth century scientists scoffed at the notion that meteorites had extraterrestrial origins. And twenty years ago how many of us would have believed claims for cosmic black holes and mysterious subatomic particles?

On the other hand, as we saw in chapter four, naivete' can make us gullible to all sorts of falsehoods. In times past people were convinced that bloodletting was therapeutic, that their personality could be predicted from the bumps on their head, and that fairies really existed. Obviously there must be reasonable efforts to validate paranormal claims. An open but critical stance is best for sifting truth from fantasy.

The Paranormal: Grounds for Skepticism

Being skeptical of paranormal events does not necessarily mean doubting the existence of a supernatural world. Paranormal means that which is outside the range of ordinary experience and is not scientifically explainable. Supernatural refers to that which is outside the physical world. The supernatural might, therefore, break into the natural world in paranormal, ways. (It might also break through in normal ways.) But paranormal events as a group do not necessarily tell us anything about the supernatural world - including whether or not it exists. How should Christians, then, view the paranormal?

We can no more disprove the possibility of paranormal phenomena than we can disprove the existence of Santa Claus. But what if we could discover no reliable evidence for Santa Claus, and what if there were good reasons for thinking his existence unlikely? Would we not, pending new and convincing evidence, withhold belief? In the case of ESP (extrasensory perception), the most respectable of the paranormal claims, there are at least a half-dozen grounds for withholding belief.

1. Parapsychology's defenders and critics agree: There has never been a reproducible psychic experiment, nor any individual who can consistently exhibit psychic ability. British psychologist C. E. M. Hansel typifies the skepticism of most research psychologists: "After a hundred years of research, not a single individual has been found who can demonstrate ESP to the satisfaction of independent investigators."¹ Even John Beloff, past president of the Parapsychological Association, seems to agree. "No experiment showing the clear existence of the paranormal has been consistently repeated by other investigators in other laboratories."²

At the 1981 American Psychological Association convention one symposium examined the case for and another the case against ESP. Ironically, nearly the same words were spoken at each. Parapsychologists said that what their field needs to give it credibility is one reproducible phenomenon and a theory to explain it. The critics agreed. parapsychology is the only discipline that (1) lacks a phenomenon and (2) lacks a theory that would lead us to expect any such phenomenon. Moreover, the critics stand ready, as they have for years, to confirm the abilities of any true psychic or to reproduce one bias-free ESP phenomenon. But parapsychologists have not been interested in sending their ESP all-star team to a psychic showdown. Sensitive psychics cannot perform under such pressure, they say; ESP is too elusive, too easily disrupted by the presence of skeptics.

2. Spontaneous psychic experiences also fail to pass scrutiny. Perhaps ESP is indeed not the sort of phenomenon that one repeats on demand in an experiment. Maybe it's more like the eruption of Mount St. Helens - a real and observable phenomenon, but one that occurs unbidden. If so, would-be psychics could go to the Las Vegas and Atlantic City craps tables, which skim off but 1.4 per cent of the money bet. Their motive could be charitable - say, to divert money from the gambling industry into the hands of hungry people. And they don't have to bet on demand. They could just stand there and wait for spontaneous premonitions to erupt. A psychic need only beat chance by 3 per cent to clear the same profit as the house usually does. But the casinos continue to operate, showing, as always, the expected return.

Or consider the predictions of would-be seers. Not only did Jeane Dixon never predict anything so precise as "John Kennedy will be elected and then assassinated," but she changed her mind before his election, saying that Richard Nixon would be elected in 1960. More recently she predicted that Pope Paul would enjoy a year of good health (he died), that the Panama Canal treaties would be defeated in Congress (they were approved), that Marie Osmond would not marry (two months later she did), and that Ted Kennedy would be elected President in 1980 (he wasn't). No celebrated psychic has been shown to have a better-than-guessing batting average. Yet the money continues to roll in from those who love to believe.

Do the spontaneous premonitions of ordinary people fare better? How about our dreams? Do they foretell the future, or do they only seem to because we are more likely to remember or reconstruct dreams that seem to come true? A half century ago, when the Lindbergh baby was kidnaped and murdered but before the body was discovered, two Harvard psychologists invited the public to send in their dream reports concerning the whereabouts of the child.³ Of the 1,300 dream reports received, all spontaneously experienced by people who felt they might have significance, how many accurately perceived the child as dead? Five per cent.

3. Among professional psychics is a long history of fraud. For years, stage performers of ESP have been convincing audiences of their wondrous powers. The most notorious of these have been debunked, often by magicians who do not take kindly to those who exploit their magical art and distort people's understanding of reality. Magician James Randi, for example, has duplicated the feats of stage psychics and offered $10,000 to anyone who can demonstrate psychic powers before a group of informed experts like himself.

Is there in all the world anyone who can read others' minds, move remote objects or perform any of the feats described at the beginning of this chapter? Randi's offer has been well publicized for nearly twenty years. On occasion he has even surrendered his cashier's check to an impartial jury which had to judge whether the psychic feat was actually performed as claimed under the agreed-upon conditions. As of this writing, fifty-seven have submitted to a test. All have failed.

Honest parapsychology researchers have at times been deceived by subjects, such as spoon-bender Uri Geller, who were later discovered to be using trickery. To demonstrate the vulnerability of scientists untrained in magic, two teenage magicians in 1979 approached Washington University's newly funded parapsychology laboratory. Over the next three years the two defied the laws of nature by projecting mental images onto film, effortlessly bending keys and spoons, causing clocks to slide across a table, affecting objects in sealed jars and performing other such marvelous feats. Although the researcher who directs the laboratory had been cautioned against trickery and reminded of the need to have magicians present, he ignored the warnings and proclaimed that "these two kids are the most reliable of the people that we've studied."⁴ Having demonstrated the need for tighter safeguards in parapsychological research, the two in 1983 appeared at a news conference to reveal their psychic sham. Their many psychic feats had been nothing more than magic stunts.

4. The fact that most people believe in ESP, and even believe that they have personally experienced it, is now understandable. Some people wonder: If ESP does not exist, then why in one recent national poll did 64 per cent of college graduates say they believe in it? And why, in another national survey, did 58 per cent of Americans claim to have "personally experienced" ESP?

In chapter four we described the explosion in our knowledge of how people form false beliefs. We noted the evidence that people's minds are as much swayed by vivid anecdotes as by dry facts. This vulnerability to the dramatic helps explain why even forewarned college students may misinterpret a magician's tricks as genuine ESP.⁵

Moreover, people fail to recognize chance events for what they are. Ordinary events seem extraordinary. Given the billions of events occurring in the world each day, some incredible coincidences are bound to happen. Here is my favorite: The King James Bible was completed when William Shakespeare was forty-six years old. In Psalm 46, the forty-sixth word is "shake," and the forty-sixth word from the end (ignoring Selah, a symbol) is "spear." (Perhaps it is even more incredible that someone discovered this!) When "police psychics" fire hundreds of predictions, their verbal shot guns are bound to score a few "amazing" (coincidental) hits, which the media are only too happy to report. However, the unglamorous fact is that researchers have found that police psychics do no better than could you or I, given the same information about a case. After the Atlanta police department had scrutinized the psychic visions of Dorothy Allison and more than five hundred others in their search for the child killer, it remained for dogged police work to solve the case.

Other times, what seems like ESP is neither that nor a sheer coincidence. Driving down the highway a husband remarks to his wife, "I wonder what ever happened to Steve Thompson?" Astonished, his wife replies, "I was just about to say the same thing!" Both are unaware of what stimulated their common memory of Steve, perhaps a voice like his on the radio moments before or an image from a passing billboard. Given how difficult it is for people to assess the mysterious workings of their minds, they naturally attribute such shared thoughts to mental telepathy.

As we saw in chapter four, one of the most startling facts about the human mind is the extent to which preconceived notions bias the way information is interpreted and remembered. Our prejudgments can, for example, induce us to see and recall what we already believe. Many psychic predictions are vague enough to allow a variety of later interpretations. Most people will later, once they know the facts, tend to recall and interpret the prediction as fulfilled, matching the precise occurrence with the one way the general prediction could fit. Even when shown purely random events, people in experiments easily become convinced that significant relationships are occurring - if they expect to see them. Conversely, premonitions that clearly fail are usually forgotten. The 95 per cent whose dreams incorrectly anticipated the fate of the kidnaped Lindbergh baby surely forgot their dreams sooner than did the 5 per cent whose premonitions were accurate.

Researchers have used these deficiencies in human intuition to manufacture false beliefs in ESP. Fred Ayeroff and Robert Abelson asked 100 Yale students to try to transmit mentally one of five possible symbols to another student, who would guess what was being transmitted.⁶ When the students were further drawn into the drama of experiment by choosing their own symbols and being given a warm-up period, more than 50 per cent of the time they felt confident that they were experiencing ESP. But their actual ESP success rate was just about what chance would give: 20 per cent.

These mental processes are some of the ingredients in human nature's recipe for convincing us of phenomena that may not exist. Indeed, these illusory thinking tendencies are so powerful that whether psychic powers exist or not, it seems almost inevitable that humanity would convince itself of them.

5. The accumulating evidence that the mind is dependent on the brain works against the presumption that mind can function (or travel) separate from brain. Some Christian writers have touted ESP as proof of a nonmaterial essence in human nature, but books and articles along this line often show an unawareness of both the scientific status of ESP and of the emerging biblical and scientific consensus that human nature is a bonded mind-body unity. Investigations of the correspondence between our brain states and our emotions, thoughts and actions indicate that the mind is linked to the body as closely as is a telephone message to the electrical events in the phone line. This modern view parallels the ancient wholistic view of the Hebrew people, expressed in the radical Christian hope of a resurrected mind-body unit. In both views, the idea that human minds could travel and communicate independent of human bodies has become as questionable as the idea that telephone messages could travel independent of the phone equipment.

6. The Bible counsels us to be skeptical of those who claim godlike abilities. We humans have always had a hard time accepting our finiteness. In the creation story, humanity's fall occurred when man and woman denied their human limitations. Today occultists and other believers in ESP are again proclaiming the human potential to mimic God: to be omniscient - reading others' minds and knowing the future; to be omnipresent - traveling out of body and viewing events in remote locations; to be omnipotent - moving or even destroying objects with the mind's hidden powers. Science, in questioning such self-deifying claims, sides with biblical faith, which proclaims that our hope lies not in ourselves, our mental powers or the immortality of our disembodied minds, but in a Being who created and accepts our limits and who promises to resurrect us. Not surprisingly, surveys reveal that people who have given up believing in such a Being are more likely to find paranormal claims credible. As George Tyrell declared, "If [people's] craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the supernatural, be not fed on true religion it will feed itself on the garbage of any superstition that is offered to it." When people no longer wrestle with the real mysteries of religious faith, they become susceptible to the unsubstantiated mysteries of pseudoscience.

For all these reasons, open skepticism seems the informed response to the modern avalanche of psychic claims. Most scientists and magicians keep themselves open to belief should any demonstrable phenomenon be discovered. Christians, too, must keep their eyes and ears open to the full potential of God's creation. Are proponents of ESP equally willing to say what would cause them to question their belief? What would it take? How many failed attempts to demonstrate a reproducible psychic phenomenon? How many years of casinos getting their expected returns? How many psychic hoaxes? How many failures to pass Randi's $10,000 challenge? How much evidence concerning the dependence of mind on brain? How much biblical revelation about our human limits?

The Supernatural: Can a Skeptic Believe?

I have often been asked, How can you question these paranormal claims and then turn right around and believe other equally paranormal (beyond-the-normal, unexplainable) claims? After all, aren't the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus, and life after death also paranormal claims? Consider three replies.

First, the question is no different from asking, How can one disbelieve in Santa Claus, yet believe in Jesus? All of us believe some things while disbelieving others. Belief in some claims that are not scientifically confirmed does not require believing all unproven claims. Faith in Christ is not blind credulity.⁷

Second, not all truth is scientific. The beauty of a Mozart piano concerto or the love of a father for his son are not easily measured by the tools of science. Nonetheless, they are real. History, philosophy and theology are disciplines which also offer insight into truth. Yet they are not scientific. If evidence from such sources can be amassed to substantiate certain untestable religious claims, doubting the claims may be the more difficult position to defend.

Third, a clear difference lies between the easily testable claims of ESP and the not-scientifically-testable claims that God exists. Take, for example, those who claim to see colored auras surrounding people's bodies. Magician Randi proposes a simple test of this claim. His typical conversation with such psychics goes something like this:

Randi: Do you see an aura around my head?

Psychic: Sure!

Randi: Can you still see the aura if I put this magazine in front of my face?

Psychic: Of course.

Randi: Then if I were to step behind a wall barely taller than I am, you could determine my location from the aura visible above my head, right?

Randi reports that no aura-seer has yet agreed to take this simple test. Just because most Christian beliefs are not similarly refutable does not prove that they are true. It simply means that they are a different type of claim. It is true, however, that (1) they have not been refuted, (2) they are essentially congenial with what we know from extrabiblical sources about human nature, and (3) they are defensibly worthy of our commitment.

Fourth, the Bible warns us against being misled by self-professed psychics. The Mosaic law was definite: "Don't let your people practice divination or look for omens or use spells or charms, and don't let them consult the spirits of the dead" (Deut 18:10-11 TEV). In Isaiah the Lord scoffs at the Babylonians' pagan beliefs: "Keep all your magic spells and charms.... You are powerless in spite of the advice you get. Let your astrologers come forward and save you.... They will be like bits of straw" (Is 47:12-14 TEV).

True, the Bible does offer its own paranormal claims - Joseph's predictive dreams, Elisha's dividing the Jordan River with his cloak, Jesus' miracles. But the action is attributed to divine power, not human skill or even human manipulation of divine power. The will and the act are God's. As for biblical prophecy, much of it was less a prediction of the future than an inspired understanding of where the present course was leading. A modern Amos might not name the date of the world's next war, but he would discern that if the nations of the world do not turn from their wicked ways a war without winners is likely. While much Old Testament prophecy was clearly predictive of the future, Moses counseled a scientific attitude toward predictions: "If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD and what he says does not come true, then it is not the LORD's message" (Deut 18:22 TEV).

This is the same spirit that Carl Sagan echoes today: "Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense." Skepticism protects us from those who would exploit us. Jim Jones seduced people into his cult partly by using psychic fakery to convince them of his extraordinary gifts.⁸ Pseudoscience and the occult always threaten genuine science and religion by distracting people from pursuing truth and godly living.

Skepticism can be carried to an extreme or degenerate into a cold, closed-minded cynicism. Henrik Ibsen's play The Wild Duck portrays the potentially harmful effects of destroying people's comforting illusions without replacing them with something better. But skepticism can also be a healthy part of the search for truth. Those who would "worship God with their minds" search for truth, believing that it is better to hope for things genuine than things unreal, better to base our lives on the rock of reality than the sands of illusion. Proper skepticism acknowledges mystery. Clearing the decks of pseudomysteries can free us to ponder the genuine mysteries of faith and life.

Christians should welcome all evidence for the existence of a supernatural world. Unfortunately fakes and well-intentioned but mistaken people have sometimes smeared all who believe in the supernatural. The attempts at proof (including those of many Christians) have often been either uninformed or tended to aggrandize the performer rather than bring us into the presence of the Holy One. Such people tend to believe that we can force the hand of psychic forces or divine power by rituals, powers of concentration or prayers prayed in utter belief (that is, human effort to have faith). But a Christian view is that God's power is for him alone to control. We cannot manipulate him. It is our role to seek to live obediently in his will.

On this much the believers and skeptics of the paranormal agree: at issue is not just whether ESP exists but our whole understanding of human nature. It is the basic question raised in this part of this book: How are we to believe what we believe, especially about ourselves and others? Do we possess divine, supernatural attributes? Or are we finite creatures of the One who declares, "I am God, and there is none like me"? Judaism and Christianity have historically maintained that we do not inherently possess extraordinary supernatural powers. We are the creatures of the one great supernatural being, the Creator God who occasionally gives special gifts to individuals for the good of the body. An inflated self-image tempts us to deny our limits and see ourselves as beings who possess God's supernatural powers.

So, no, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus, and no, human beings appear not to have divine powers. But don't worry. It's okay. We can have dignity without having deity. The One who is deity has redeemed us and is restoring us to creaturely dignity.

Part II
Influencing

"YOU ARE THE SALT of the earth, ... the light of the world." "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations." "Do not be conformed to this world." "Obey God rather than men"
(Mt 5:13-14; 28:19; Rom 12:2; Acts 5:29 RSV). To be in the world but not of it: that is God's call. To influence the world but not be tainted by it. Social influence - how we shape and are shaped by our social worlds - is the focus of Part II. Sometimes our communication has a disappointing impact. Chapter six asks, What factors make for memorable, persuasive communication? How may those who teach, speak or write do so with greatest influence? And what can all of us do to get the most from what we hear and read? We will examine principles of effective communication and consider how they may be applied within the Christian community.

While chapter six deals with the form of our messages, chapter seven concerns their content. To shape attitudes and behavior we frequently rely on rewards. In fact, the Christian message itself is often presented in terms of what faith will do for us. While rewards can be effective in changing behavior, they may have hidden costs. The frequent appeal to personal need and the ready use of rewards in our proclamation of the gospel may not only foster self-centered religion but in the long run undermine the message's credibility.

Chapter eight moves on to how the world can influence us. While we want to be shaped by God, others may influence our thoughts and actions more than we are willing to admit. In some cases, social pressure leads us to yield against our better judgment; with Peter we may say by our actions that we "do not know the man" (Mt 26:69-75 RSV). In other cases conformity extends beyond our actions to the core of our beliefs and values. Greater independence is not the solution to conformity. This chapter proposes a solution both biblically and sociologically sound.

Within God's community there are problems, too. In chapter nine we will see how the desire to maintain harmony can become so strong that it results in a loss of critical judgment. Fear of conflict can lead to "groupthink." When groupthink hits the church, doctrine and practice are not critically examined, and we grow neither in our understanding of God's Word nor in its application to the problems of contemporary living. Here we try to answer, What causes groupthink in the church, and how can it be cured?

6

 Is Anyone Getting the Message?

A YOUNG COUPLE, Martha and Leon, happily file out from Sunday worship at Faith Church, congratulating the pastor for his fine message on Christian love. Later that week when her friend Sally, who was ill on Sunday, asks her about the sermon, Martha can recall little of its content. Perhaps, Sally surmises, she is just upset and distracted by how unloving Leon has been lately.

Is this typical or atypical of the impact of sermons? Those of us who teach or preach become so easily enamored by our spoken words that we are tempted to overestimate their power. Ask college students what aspect of their college experience has been most valuable, or what they remember from their freshman year, and few will recall the brilliant lectures which their faculty gave.

Would the same be true of people reflecting on their church experience? A recent award-winning study by University of California psychologist Thomas Crawford indicates that sermons sometimes have surprisingly little impact.¹ Crawford and his associates went to the homes of people from twelve churches shortly before and after they heard sermons opposing racial bigotry and injustice. When asked during the second interview whether they had heard or read anything about racial prejudice or discrimination since the previous interview, only 10 per cent spontaneously recalled the sermon. When the remaining 90 per cent were asked directly whether their minister "talked about prejudice or discrimination in the last couple of weeks," more than 30 per cent denied hearing such a sermon. It is hardly surprising that the sermons had so little impact on racial attitudes!

When you stop to think about it, the preacher has so many hurdles to surmount, it's no wonder that preaching so often fails to affect our actions. As figure 2 indicates, the preacher must deliver a message which not only gets our attention but is understandable, persuasive, memorable and likely to compel action. Our concern here is with neither theological content nor oratorical style, but with how to create and receive a memorable, persuasive message. What factors make for effective communication? How might ministers apply these

factors in the construction of more potent messages? For that matter, how might any of us who teach, speak or write do so with greatest effect? Finally, what can we lay people do to receive maximum benefit from what we hear and read? Recent research has revealed five keys to help us answer these questions.

Five Keys

1. Vivid, concrete examples are more potent than abstract information. We noted in chapter four that our judgments and attitudes are often more swayed by specific illustrations than by abstract assertions of general truth. For example, research studies show that a few good testimonials usually have more impact than statistically summarized data from dozens of people. Not surprisingly, the mastectomies performed on Betty Ford and Happy Rockefeller did more to increase visits to cancer detection clinics than all the reports of the National Institute of Health. Likewise, viewing the movie Jaws gave many swimmers a fear of sharks which no factual data on actual shark attacks could eliminate.

Concrete examples are not only more compelling, but they are also better remembered. Joanne Martin and her colleagues at Stanford University have observed that concepts are better remembered when concrete details are included.² They had Coast Guard recruits read one of the following paragraphs and then write everything they could recall from it. Those who read the following abstract description of what happens when a Coast Guard regulation is broken recalled only 27 per cent of the words afterward:

If a new Seaman Apprentice breaks a Coast Guard regulation, and this frequently happens, then he usually gets caught. If he gives serious personal excuses for what he did, then the Executive Officer usually will not accept such excuses. Executive Officers usually refer the matter to mast. Usually in these cases the defendant is found guilty. If the new Seaman Apprentice is found guilty, then he will be sentenced with a variety of punishments.

Other recruits read a concrete instance of this information:

Robert Christensen, a new Seaman Apprentice, reported for duty on the CG Cutter Seagull two days late. His excuse for being late was that his father had become seriously ill while he was visiting home. The Executive Officer did not accept his excuse. He referred the matter to mast. Seaman Apprentice Christensen was found guilty and sentenced to one month extra duty, a $50 fine each month for two months, and one month restriction.

Those given this anecdotal paragraph not only recalled almost twice as many words as those given the abstract paragraph; they were about twice as likely to recall concepts such as "found guilty."

No experienced writer will be surprised by this finding. As William Strunk and E. B. White assert in their classic The Elements of Style, "If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is on this: the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete. The greatest writers - Homer, Dante, Shakespeare - are effective largely because they deal in particulars."³ Preachers and teachers should do the same, and so should we listeners, by conjuring up our own examples when the speaker begins to get abstract.

However, a sermon is never just a string of unrelated examples; the preacher aims to communicate a basic point. We might say that theological truth is to a good sermon what the base of an iceberg is to its tip. Jesus' vivid parables, for example, embodied basic truths in memorable pictures. And what pastor has not received compliments from adults for a simple but concrete children's sermon? The children may have been unable to grasp the analogy being drawn, but the adults understood and remembered it. This illustrates the power of principle number one: vivid, concrete examples are more potent than abstract information.

2. Messages which relate to what people already know or have experienced are more easily remembered. Public speaking experts have long supposed this to be true. Aristotle urged speakers to adapt the message to their audiences. Experimental psychologists have confirmed the point; messages that are unrelated to people's existing ideas or experiences are difficult to comprehend and are quickly forgotten. This paragraph, from an experiment by John Bransford and Marcia Johnson, is an example of such an "unattached" message:

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do.... After the procedure is completed, one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their proper places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is a part of life.

When Bransford and Johnson had people read this paragraph as you just did, without connecting it to anything they already knew about, little of it was remembered. When people were told that the paragraph was about sorting laundry, something familiar to them, they remembered much more of it - as you probably could now if you reread it.⁴

When a message builds on our knowledge and experience, we not only more easily understand and remember it, but we are also more likely to recall it when that knowledge or experience comes again into consciousness. In other words, a message that is hooked to some cue - something we will think about or experience again - is more likely to come to mind in the future. When the cue pops up, it may call to mind the message associated with it. For example, one preacher said that much American religion was like waiting room Muzak - bland and soothing. A year after this "Sound of Muzak" sermon was preached, we found ourselves eating dinner in a room with music softly playing in the background. Some one noticed the music - and recalled the sermon.

If preachers and teachers are to build their messages on their people's knowledge and experience, then they must know their people. One advantage which local pastors, teachers and youth workers have over mass-media preachers is a more intimate knowledge of the experiences of their people. When pastors systematically seek out their parishioners for deep conversation, they are engaging in sermon preparation as well as pastoral ministry. When we parishioners freely talk to our pastors about our concerns, we help them know what sermon themes will touch us as well as what we need. This is another implication of principle number two: messages which relate to what people already know or have experienced are most easily remembered.

3. Spaced repetition aids memory. As every student of human learning knows well, we remember information much better if it is presented to us repeatedly, especially if the repetitions are spaced over time rather than grouped together. Experimental psychologist Lynn Hasher has found that repeated information is also more credible.⁵ When statements, such as "The largest museum in the world is the Louvre in Paris," were repeatedly presented, people rated them as more likely to be true than when they had been sho