In my first two posts on this subject, I said that when we are "transported " by a literary work, 1) we have "poetic faith " in even the most improbable things, and 2) one can demonstrate this faith experimentally, and 3) the experiments suggest a dual system in the brain, a rapid system that believes what is perceived and a slower system that judges the probability of what is perceived and believes or disbelieves accordingly. (Forgive me for going on at this length, but this topic has fascinated me since I was a boy.)
We don't show this credulity just with literary works. We show it in everyday life all the time. as "lie blindness." Psychologist Daniel T. Gilbert cites research showing that "people are particularly poor at ignoring, forgetting, rejecting or otherwise failing to believe that which they have comprehended."
Charles F. Bond, Jr. and Bella M. DePaulo (who also blogs for PT) have described this work in an elaborate meta-analysis. They synthesized research from 206 documents and 24,483 judges who were trying to recognize lies. They derive a number of conclusions, for example, that people are more accurate in judging audible than visible lies. But the upshot, they conclude, is that the average person discriminates lies from truths at a level slightly better than chance. "In their daily interactions people accept without reflection much of what they hear. "
Science writer Natalie Angier summarizes this line of research: "In more than 100 studies, researchers have asked participants questions like, Is the person on the videotape lying or telling the truth? Subjects guess correctly about 54 percent of the time, which is barely better than they'd do by flipping a coin. Our lie blindness suggests to some researchers a human desire to be deceived, a preference for the stylishly accoutred fable over the naked truth. "
This "truth effect" or "lie blindness" makes sense evolutionarily. Your basic hominin gets away faster from something that looks like a snake-and suffers fewer fatal snakebites-if she believes right away that what she has seen is a snake and immediately jumps back without checking. We would have lower odds of surviving higher odds of being snakebit if we went though the full two-step process of first perceiving, then assessing (as described by Gerrig and Gilbert in my previous post).
The experimenters, of course, use face to face lies, not the lies and pretenses that make up admired works of literature. But when Angier refers to "the stylishly accoutred fable, " she is hinting at literature and what literary critics have traditionally called "the willing suspension of disbelief, " which might better be called "poetic faith. " In other words, our lie blindness parallels our willingness to believe in the pretenses and lies of stories, plays, and movies.
So far as evolutionary psychology is concerned, however, the two situations are completely different. Suppose I see a snake on my closet floor and jump back (I'm writing from Florida, after all). In life, we need to believe and act on something novel in our environment--it might be a life-threatening danger. If we are mistaken, if it was just a belt that feel off a pair of trousers, all I lose is my effort. If I had not acted, though, I might be dead. But that's not at all the case with the arts. There what we are perceiving cannot be a danger, and we know it. Yet we believe anyway, even though that "poetic faith" or "suspension of disbelief" can serve no evolutionary purpose. Why do we do it then?
If we can understand why we don't disbelieve fictions, we may be able also to understand why we can't detect lying in life. I think we can understand, and I think the answer is surprisingly simple. It has to do with the way our brains work when we are comprehending a narratve. Stay tuned for my next and last blog about the "willing suspension of disbelief. "
Items I have referred to:
Angier, Natalie. 2008 "A Highly Evolved Propensity for Deceit." The New York Times Dec. 23: Section D, Page 1.
Bond Jr., Charles F. and Bella M. DePaulo. 2006 "Accuracy of Deception Judgments." Personality and Social Psychology Review 10.3: 214-34.
Gilbert, Daniel T. 1991. "How Mental Systems Believe." American Psychologist 46.2 (Feb): 107-19.
I am also drawing on an essay of mine and my latest book:
Holland, Norman N. 2008. "Spider-Man? Sure! The Neuroscience of Suspending Disbelief." Interdisiplinary Science Reviews 33 (4):312-320. Available at http://tinyurl.com/c4f6v8.
Holland, Norman N. 2009. Literature and the Brain. Gainesville FL: PsyArt Foundation. Available at www.literatureandthebrain.com.
