Hidden Brain Host Explains Why We Lie to Ourselves Every Day

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Drilling down further now into the capacity and the complexities of the human mind. Shankar Vedantam, host of the popular podcast “Hidden Brain” has been reporting on human behavior for decades. He says that buying into false beliefs, in other words, deluding ourselves can actually be a good thing sometimes. A helpful tool to get us through the hard parts of life. And here he is telling our Hari Sreenivasan about useful delusions, the power and paradox of the self-deceiving brain.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Shankar Vedantam, thanks for joining us. The book is called “Useful Delusions,” it might as well be called why we lie to ourselves. What is a useful delusion?

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, AUTHOR, USEFUL DELUSIONS: Well, a story, Hari. Some years ago, I was having dinner with a friend whom I knew from college. And the friend told me that he believes, a very smart guy, a good friend of mine, he told me that he was convinced that the United States was behind the 9/11 attack, that the CIA and FBI had planned the attacks and the United States had carried out these attacks as a way to trigger a justification for the war in Iraq.

SREENIVASAN: Wow.

VEDANTAM: And I remember arguing with him, I don’t know if it was an hour or for two hours, but I would argue until I was hoarse about how his theory was wrong and it was a delusion. And at the end of the evening, of course, you know, I hadn’t convinced him, and he came away thinking that I was the one who had the delusion. So, this conversation and conversations like this, all of us have had the experience of talking to a neighbor or talking to a friend, hearing people espouse crazy views and finding that argument and logic and reason don’t often fix those views. And in many ways, my book is really a way of understanding how delusions operate, the psychology and the science behind them, but also potentially how to take this knowledge and then do something about dangerous delusions.

SREENIVASAN: Yes, I definitely want to talk about the sort of plight of the so many Americans today having to deal with the relatives who believe in conspiracy theories in a bit. But stepping back a second, you know, when do we pick up these practices. I mean, it seems like as children, parents are teaching us that it is kind of OK and we should be lying at certain times.

VEDANTAM: That is right. So, I think when think about delusions, many of us think about the delusions that we have at the level of our beliefs. A belief that, for example, the United States carried out the 9/11 attacks or a belief that the Republicans are good or belief that Democrats are bad or beliefs that our parents are good or our groups are good or our country is good. These are beliefs that we have. But at an even more elementary level our brains are actually doing this all of the time, Hari, our brains are actually constantly coming up with theories and models of the world. And in fact, when you look at the signs of delusions, it turns out that it’s not just a result of brainwashing, this is a facet of how our brains actually are designed to operate. Our brains are designed in some ways to mediate between the outside world and the inside world. And one of the ways in which they mediate between the outside world or the inside world, is not by presenting reality in its complete accuracy to us but in coming up with the delusions that might help us actually adapt and be more functional in the world. And I can give you many examples of this, but certainly it does start in childhood. But even before, I would say, parents start teaching their children things, it begins almost at the point at which we open our eyes and start to take in the world for the first time.

SREENIVASAN: So, you’re saying some of this is biological then, at a core sort of brain function level the fact that we need to recognize patterns and make shortcuts so that we can make decisions faster, that’s just part of what feeds into this sort of higher-end delusion?

VEDANTAM: That’s exactly right. You know, one model I have or an analogy I have is that imagine for a second, Hari, that you were not the individual of Hari but you were the nation of Hari. And you had — you appoint the ambassadors to go out to different countries. You wouldn’t expect the ambassador you’ve appointed to tell you everything that’s happening in this other country because you would quickly get overwhelmed, you would expect this ambassador in some ways to filter what she is hearing and seeing so that she presents you with things that you can actually take advantage of and act on. The second thing that you expect this ambassador to do if she’s a wise ambassador is to pay attention to what has worked for you in the past and what is being useful for you to hear in the past. And so, the ambassador is not just filtering the information of the outside world, but selectively presenting to you things that can nudge you in one direction or another. This ambassador, this is the role that the brain plays all of the time. Now, it plays a role in a very functional way, in a very useful way most of the time, but there are times when the ability of the brain, in some ways, to mediate between our internal needs, our hopes, our fears, our angers, our desires and the external world can produce delusions that, in fact, are the delusions that we talk about all of the time.

SREENIVASAN: So, what about when you are anxious, when you feel a loss of control, what happens to the brain? Are there ways that it’s going to start to see patterns or recognize things that might not really be there?

VEDANTAM: Yes. That’s an excellent question and I think that’s sort of the next level (INAUDIBLE) sort of how the delusions are playing are brain, just thinking about sort of our emotional. So, when anxiety happened, is a wonderful example, and ask yourself what would happen if we truly took in everything about the world that makes us anxious? You know, we really process every single thing about the world, the potential to make us anxious. The (INAUDIBLE) might be that we end up feeling overwhelm. We were so scared that we actually cannot function properly. And so, our brains in some ways are designed to pay attention to things that are threats, not to ignore them because that would not be functional, but also in some ways to take in those threats in a way that actually is manageable. All of us have done this in the course of the last 12 months, during the pandemic, we have found ways to manage our anxieties, we have come up with rituals, we have come up with beliefs. I know not speaking just for myself, at every state of the pandemic, I have imagined that liberation was one month away. The fact that I’ve imagined that liberation was one month away is what has allowed me to survive for a year of the pandemic. And all of us have come up with sort of hacks in this way. And you could argue in some ways that these are delusional beliefs, that in some ways we are fragile mortal creatures, prone to illness, prone to near death or really scary things can happen to us, but this is not often functional and it isn’t helpful to sort of imagine yourself as being vulnerable or fragile, it gets in the way of, you know, being part of happy hour and Zoom meetings that we don’t have to be part of. And so, our brains, in some ways, filter what it I that we’re able to tolerate so that, in some ways, we are dealing with anxieties at the level at which we can tolerate them. Now, people who, in some ways, have mental illnesses find it difficult to do this. So, the anxieties become so overwhelming that they actually end up taking over our live. But the paradox is, some of the people who had anxiety disorders, who have depression, for examples, might actually be seeing the world more accurately, they might be seeing the world as the world actually is, in its full reality. People who are mentally healthy on the other hand might be delusionally able to see the world in slightly more optimistically ways, but might not be accurate but, in some way, might be much more functional.

SREENIVASAN: Can you convince yourself of a delusion by saying it out loud and I’m thinking about it in the context of politicians in the last few months?

VEDANTAM: When it comes to politicians, there’s actually been work that actually has looked at this int the context of psychological studies that find that when we speak to people, not just true politicians, but especially true for politicians, all of us modulate what we say so that part of what we say appeals to the people whom we are speaking to. So, as I am speaking to you, Hari, I have some sense of what your interests are, what your background is, what kind of a show that you are hosting, and I’m trying to present myself to be suitable to you and your audience. Now, the interesting thing that happens is that as all of us do this, part of what happens in our own minds is that we start to believe what it is that we have just said. In other words, the act of speaking itself, in some ways, creates its own belief structure. This is called audience tuning in the psychology literature. The idea that as the politician speaks to the audience, the audience is actually shaping what the politician is saying. And as the politician speaks, her words actually shape what she herself believes.

SREENIVASAN: I kind of am honing in, for example, the — what happened to this country on January 6th. When, say, a large-scale delusion which has some sort of a marker in time and acts are supposed to happen based on this theory and that doesn’t happen. The prophecy doesn’t come true. Why do adherence of those beliefs seem to double down?

VEDANTAM: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: I mean, obviously, some say, OK, I was deluded. I got this wrong. I can’t believe I wasted so much time.

VEDANTAM: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: But there’s a lot of people who thought January 6th would go one direction, then they saw March 4th is going to be another important day, they cling on to this.

VEDANTAM: Yes. And so, this is an old question in psychology of what happens when our beliefs are disconfirmed. And, you know, in the — almost in half a century ago, the psychologist, Leon Festinger, infiltrated a group of people who believed the earth was going to come to an end on a certain day. And he infiltrated the group partly because he wanted to understand what would happen when this prophecy failed to come true. And he fully expected that when the prophecy failed to come true people would, in some ways, come to their senses and recognize that they were wrong and that they have made a mistake and that they would revise their opinions. But, of course, when the day of judgement came and the world did not end, the people who are part of this group did not change their minds, they doubled down and they came up now with new explanations for why it is world had not ended. So, they said, for example, the things that we did, our little group did, as we prepared for judgment day, the things that we did, in fact, headed off judgment day. So, in other words, they came up with ways to rationalize their beliefs. Leon Festinger eventually came up with a theory that’s known as the theory of cognitive dissonance, which is what happened again when the outside world or the inside world, in some ways, are in conflict or you have different things inside you that are in conflict with one another. So, reality is telling you that judgment day did not come and my view was incorrect, but all your internal sense, you know, your loyalties, your convictions, your affiliations are telling you this is a belief that I had. And to come around and say, I was wrong is very painful. And so, what people do is that they find a way to reconcile these two conflicting beliefs by eliminating either the facts or seeing the facts in some kind of a new light. When you think about what happened on January 6th, I think you see the same thing on steroids, which is that you have a belief that was deeply held by large numbers of people and now, you have a choice. You have a choice of either saying, I was wrong, my belief was wrong, or you have another option which basically says, I’m going to reject the information coming in, I’m going to reject reality and I’m going to see reality delusionally because it actually fits what my internal needs are. I just want to say one last thing about the events that took place on January 6th. It is absolutely the case that there are deep psychological roots to what happened on January 6th. However, if people are showing up at your door with rifles and guns, that is not a good time to be advancing a psychological theory. If somebody is showing up at your house with a delusion, with a gun that you are an evil person, you don’t sort of say, let’s sit down and have a conversation about your psychological biases, what you do is you call 911, you call out the national guard, you call out the police. But calling out the national guard is not an option when you 50 million people share the delusion. When 50 million people have the delusion, now, you have ask, what are the conditions that allow this delusion to spread, how can we address these underlying psychological factors, because you cannot call out the national guard to diffuse 50 million people of what they believe.

SREENIVASAN: I wonder, when you think of things like the pandemic in the immediate term, you think of climate change, you think of the political divisions, these are all things that we don’t really feel like we have control over, and I wonder if that actually increases the likelihood that we have this cognitive dissonance and we start to see patterns where there aren’t and we take comfort in the facts that confirm the narratives that help us to move on to tomorrow.

VEDANTAM: Yes, in fact, there had been a number of psychological studies, Hari, that show exactly what you’re describing, which is that, in some ways, all of us have an innate version to feeling like we are out of control or feeling like the world is unpredictable or the world is scary. In psychological experiments, when you induce a feeling of a lack of control among volunteers. The volunteers become more likely to be seeing patterns in noise. So, for example you will show them a television set that has static on it, for example, people who are experiencing a lack of control are more likely to see imagines in the static, they’re more likely to see patterns in noise. And again, taking it at a much larger scale, that the same kinds of things — in fact, you’re are experiencing sort of existential anxiety or anxiety about your — you know, where your group is or how well you are doing in life, you are much more likely now to buy the story of the demagogue who comes along the tells you a simple story. A simple story that says, you know, you had a glorious past, your present is filled with all kinds of misery and suffering. Follow me and I will take you to a land of future greatness. Many demagogues have the same script. You know, past, greatness. Present, suffering. Future, greatness if you trust in what I’m saying. And I think many of us look at these things and basically say, the problem is with the demagogue, and, of course, the problem is with the demagogue but the deeper problem really is in the environment in which we find ourselves in. You know, Hitler arose in Nazi Germany at a specific point in German history where Hitler’s message resonated with many Germans because, in fact, they looked back and sort of saw a period of glory and looked at their present and felt themselves deprived or felt that they had fallen out of favor. And Hitler basically said, follow me and I can take you to future greatness. When we think about how to address the delusions that affect all of us, that affect all of us around the world, part of the answer really is much more fundamental questions about how you spread opportunity more equitably, how you give access to health care and education opportunities more equitably. If you remove, in some ways, that soil in which the delusions can spring, that, in some ways, might be the most effective way to combat dangerous delusions.

SREENIVASAN: From having listened to you and knowing you over the years, I know you’re a rationalist, and I wonder how researching and writing this book has affected you? I mean, you have a story in there about going to speak with the parents who lost a child and who — when she was buried, he found solace in the fact that there was an eagle flying above and it made him think of a biblical quote. And, you know, I wonder about the (INAUDIBLE) that I know who is — you know, who can look at the facts and – – but in that living room, to empathize with that parent, you are going to be OK with that delusion because it helps that man deal with incalculable loss.

VEDANTAM: Yes. In my 20s and 30s, Hari, I was a rationalist and logical to the point that I believe that anyone who didn’t hold rational or logical beliefs was somehow lesser than or somehow there’s something wrong with them. I have moderated my views significantly, and I think partly it maybe just a result of age but it’s also the result of, I think, going through experiences myself that are deeply traumatic or deeply scary. You know, a few months ago, I suffered a retinal detachment which several hours away from my home in Washington, and I went through a period of hours where I literally felt like I was losing sight in one eye. You know, and I finally found the doctor and he opened his practice for me at 9:00 at night and, you know, he told me that I had to be rushed into surgery within a matter of minutes. And, you know, I didn’t have time to look up doctor reviews, I trusted him because at that point my fear was so great that he was the only lifeline I had. Now, if he had been a charlatan or a conman, I could easily have trusted him as well because, in some ways, my faith in him was not because of him, my faith in him was prompted by my own vulnerabilities, my own insecurities. But I will tell you that even though if you were to ask me, do you believe in God, I would say, I probably don’t believe in God. As I was being wheeled in surgery, I prayed. I prayed that my eye would be restored. And in some ways, that is not a surprising thing that that would happen. You know, there’s the old saying, there are no atheists in the foxhole. But I think the idea of that is basically, you know, when we think about people who have delusions, we often look at them from outside what they are experiencing. In some ways, the ability not to engage in delusions can be seen as a form of privilege. If your life is going great, if your job is going great, if your family going great, if you have very few insecurities, you have no need to turn to beliefs and delusions because your real life is fantastic. But in a moment, when that is taken away from you, when you feel vulnerable, when you feel scared, it turns out that in all of our minds very quickly gravitate to beliefs because those, in some ways, can soothe us from great fears and anxieties.

SREENIVASAN: Shankar Vedantam, host of the podcast and radio program “Hidden Brain” and author of the new book, “Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain,” I give you a sincere non-delusional thank you for joining us.

VEDANTAM: Thank you so much, Hari. I really appreciate it.