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Psycho-social junk science: "Simple little tricks" + Neurochemistry probes religion

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A Worrying Trend for Psychology’s “Simple Little Tricks"
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...ts/499109/

EXCERPT: Over the past decade, social psychologists have dazzled us with studies showing that huge social problems can seemingly be rectified through simple tricks. A small grammatical tweak in a survey delivered to people the day before an election greatly increases voter turnout. A 15-minute writing exercise narrows the achievement gap between black and white students—and the benefits last for years.

“Each statement may sound outlandish—more science fiction than science,” wrote Gregory Walton from Stanford University in 2014. But they reflect the science of what he calls “wise interventions”— strategies that work because they’re savvy to subtle psychology behind our everyday lives. In many ways, such strategies represent the ultimate test for psychology—a chance to show that all the academic theorizing and small-scale lab experiments can actually be used to influence people’s minds in the messy, real, complicated world.

They seem to work, if the stream of papers in high-profile scientific journals is to be believed. But as with many branches of psychology, wise interventions are taking a battering. A new wave of studies that attempted to replicate the promising experiments have found discouraging results. At worst, they suggest that the original successes were mirages. At best, they reveal that pulling off these tricks at a large scale will be more challenging than commonly believed....



Religions & spiritual journeys emerged from dreams & visions: Neurochemistry tells us how
https://aeon.co/essays/why-are-dreams-su...pernatural

EXCERPT: [...] It is no wonder then that most people from across most cultures and all of history have treated dreams as direct evidence of a spirit realm. And that raises an obvious question: what is it about dreams that make them such potent vehicles for the supernatural?

[...] It only makes sense that these REM-related brain changes are also associated with schizophrenia and the high of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD. [...] The neurochemistry of dreams produces an emotionally intense state of mind in the absence of an ability to critically reflect on the images produced by that state. When the hallucinatory REM dream or an acid trip ends, individuals can then reflect on and attempt to interpret the intense experiences they’ve just undergone.

[...] The more intense the hallucinatory episode, the harder it is to interpret. The greater the interpretive difficulty, the more significance we impute to the experience – up to a point. That might explain why schizophrenics with positive hallucinations – including visual hallucinations, hearing voices, and delusions – report such high levels of religiosity, attempting to interpret their aberrant experiences through religious symbols, language and tropes.

Research confirms these reports. [...] In short, under the right conditions, hallucinogens such as psilocybin can produce intense spiritual and mystical experiences. They do so, in part, by producing the same neurochemical milieu [...] as found during REM sleep.

[...] If dreams and visions originate in the same neurobiology that produces psychedelic experiences, of course they can fuel religious experiences and ideas. REM sleep generates the combustible materials that fuel the fire of the religious imagination. Everyone dreams but not everyone has visions or becomes religious. What an individual does with the raw experience of the dream determines who will see visions and burn with enthusiasm for the supernatural, and who will not....
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