Hey all! It seems to be a common theme whenever I write now, but I seem to be really bad at consistency... I guess that's just a given now, yah?
Anyways! Tuesday night was the Veritas Forum, which is essentially a discussion that takes place between a Christian and (typically) an Atheistic professor over some issue of interest. This time, it was a professor/doctor from Duke named Ray Barfield (Tim Lin would be so proud...) and a doctor from Cedar-Sinai Medical Center here at UCLA named Michael Lill. The topic of the night was about seeking meaning through suffering and death, and it was somewhat interesting. Unfortunately, a lot of it was a bit long-winded (pot calling the kettle black, I know), so I'm still trying to mentally sort it out.
One of the things that really struck me, though, was that Doctor Lill started talking about the idea of a Creator or God being something that was an important development evolutionarily. For support, he mentioned an experiment by Piazza, Bering, and Ingram (2011) that studied children's cheating behaviors and "Princess Alice" (Abstract: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002209651100035X).
Essentially, the experimenters wanted to see if children would cheat on a test given the chance to do so. The researchers manipulated whether an adult was supervising, no adult was present, or that children were told an invisible princess named Alice was watching over them. The results found that children were more likely to cheat when there was no adult present to supervise them, and they cheated significantly less when an adult was present, both of which seem obvious. Yet, the interesting part is that children who believed Princess Alice actually was present cheated as little (statistically significant, wise) as those that had an adult directly supervising them. Those that didn't (labelled skeptical children) but were in the "Princess Alice" condition cheated at higher rates, but only cheated after first empirically "disproving" that Princess Alice wasn't actually there.
The researchers concluded that belief in an invisible person can deter the rates of cheating among children. This is all the experiment showed, of course, but the implications of such an experiment could be huge. For one, it reminds me a lot of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, which was essentially the idea of having a jail where the warden could watch every single prisoner at once, thus lowering criminally deviant behavior. Yet, in this case, Princess Alice herself was invisible, and thus the children simply believed she existed in order for Alice's effects to be present.
Of course, Dr. Lill was talking about how this belief in an invisible being would be important for early societies to develop, but he was also referencing how that might be God today. If there are those that believe an invisible, omnipotent being is constantly watching over them, how much behavior is inhibited/influenced due to them believing in His presence? How many Christians actually hold to their beliefs not because they solely believe it's the truth, but fear of punishment or repercussions from their actions? Even if like to think it might not be the case, one of the main things that I've learned from Social Psych is that we don't know ourselves as well as we would like to think. Thus, even if we would like to think it's not the sole factor of why we do what we do, it still may be a significant part of it...
I don't know, I'm not even sure if it should be a problem believing that God is always watching, but it can give the possibility of being a Christian for the wrong reasons... Then again, it could possibly be a good influence on behavior. This might be one of the issues where it boils down to intent, which means it's impossible to tell except for the person who has the intentions. Yet, if this is the case, sometimes our intentions are even unaware to us (as previously mentioned), making it even more difficult to answer. Anyways, I think that's a good stopping point for the night... Oh well! Hopefully y'all enjoyed it, and I shall be (hopefully) posting again soon enough!
One of the things that really struck me, though, was that Doctor Lill started talking about the idea of a Creator or God being something that was an important development evolutionarily. For support, he mentioned an experiment by Piazza, Bering, and Ingram (2011) that studied children's cheating behaviors and "Princess Alice" (Abstract: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002209651100035X).
Essentially, the experimenters wanted to see if children would cheat on a test given the chance to do so. The researchers manipulated whether an adult was supervising, no adult was present, or that children were told an invisible princess named Alice was watching over them. The results found that children were more likely to cheat when there was no adult present to supervise them, and they cheated significantly less when an adult was present, both of which seem obvious. Yet, the interesting part is that children who believed Princess Alice actually was present cheated as little (statistically significant, wise) as those that had an adult directly supervising them. Those that didn't (labelled skeptical children) but were in the "Princess Alice" condition cheated at higher rates, but only cheated after first empirically "disproving" that Princess Alice wasn't actually there.
The researchers concluded that belief in an invisible person can deter the rates of cheating among children. This is all the experiment showed, of course, but the implications of such an experiment could be huge. For one, it reminds me a lot of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, which was essentially the idea of having a jail where the warden could watch every single prisoner at once, thus lowering criminally deviant behavior. Yet, in this case, Princess Alice herself was invisible, and thus the children simply believed she existed in order for Alice's effects to be present.
Of course, Dr. Lill was talking about how this belief in an invisible being would be important for early societies to develop, but he was also referencing how that might be God today. If there are those that believe an invisible, omnipotent being is constantly watching over them, how much behavior is inhibited/influenced due to them believing in His presence? How many Christians actually hold to their beliefs not because they solely believe it's the truth, but fear of punishment or repercussions from their actions? Even if like to think it might not be the case, one of the main things that I've learned from Social Psych is that we don't know ourselves as well as we would like to think. Thus, even if we would like to think it's not the sole factor of why we do what we do, it still may be a significant part of it...
I don't know, I'm not even sure if it should be a problem believing that God is always watching, but it can give the possibility of being a Christian for the wrong reasons... Then again, it could possibly be a good influence on behavior. This might be one of the issues where it boils down to intent, which means it's impossible to tell except for the person who has the intentions. Yet, if this is the case, sometimes our intentions are even unaware to us (as previously mentioned), making it even more difficult to answer. Anyways, I think that's a good stopping point for the night... Oh well! Hopefully y'all enjoyed it, and I shall be (hopefully) posting again soon enough!
