magazine issue 10 2013 / Issue 18

Sense-making through science

• written by Bastiaan Rutjens, Frenk van Harreveld & Joop van der Pligt
• edited by Laysee Ong

Ample research indeed has shown that threats to personal control trigger attempts to restore personal control (e.g., Whitson & Galinsky, 2008) and affirm external control (Fritsche et al., 2008; Kay et al., 2008; 2009). Moreover, threats to external control similarly spark attempts to restore personal control (Kay et al., 2008) and bolster alternative sources of external control (Kay, Shepherd, Blatz, Chua, & Galinsky, 2010). Directly threatening order perceptions, finally, has similar effects on bolstering faith in external sources of control (Kay, Moscovitch, & Laurin, 2010).

Thus, research until now has primarily focused on two routes to sustain or meet a belief in an orderly world: maintaining personal control over life and future outcomes, and bolstering belief in –mostly religious and socio-political— external systems or agents that exert control over the world. Inspired by CCM’s contention that maintaining order perceptions is the primary motivation, however, we have been pursuing a research program that aims to extend the model by venturing beyond external agency (such as belief in a controlling God or government) and focusing on threat compensation without external control. More specifically, we focused on science.

 Scientific belief systems as threat compensation

 As described in the previous paragraph, research has primarily focused on how personal control and external control help create order in the world. Recently, however, we proposed (in line with CCM’s assumptions) that a) order affirmations that do not involve external control can also suffice, and that b) science may function as such a source of order (Rutjens et al., 2013; Rutjens et al., 2012). The research that we will describe in the remaining part of the article focuses on scientific theories that impose order on reality, and on more general beliefs about scientific progress. . 

Scientific worldviews and theories.

In one study we addressed the possibility of non-agentic compensation (Rutjens et al., 2010). We investigated whether order can be conferred from both religious and scientific views on the origin of life, and to what extent an external agent (in this case a deity) is a necessity in this process. We employed three perspectives on the origin of life. The first was intelligent design (describing a controlling agent providing order), the second was Darwin’s theory of evolution (no agent, theory allows for a certainl level of randomness and unpredictability), and the third was an orderly perspective on evolution, as put forward by Conway-Morris in 1995 (no agent, but theory emphasizes an orderly view on evolution). We manipulated personal control-threat and let participants choose between any set of two of these perspectives. When participants were asked to choose between intelligent design and Darwin’s classic theory of evolution, we found that control-threat led to a marginally significant preference shift in favour of intelligent design. We also found that for those whose control had been threatened, the orderly perspective on evolution became more attractive, but only when the alternative was Darwin’s theory of evolution (and not intelligent design). Finally, control-threat had no effect on participants that were asked to choose between the orderly perspective on evolution and intelligent design.

A second set of studies investigated the effects of threat on theory preference in science (Rutjens, van Harreveld, van der Pligt, Kreemers, & Noordewier, in 2013). We set out to investigate the hypothesis – as alluded to by Shermer (2008) in one of his Scientific American columns– that stage theories help to impose order on reality by explaining processes in terms of an orderly and predictable series of discontinuous steps. Kübler-Ross’s stage theory of grief (1969) is a well-known example (denial - anger - bargaining - depression - acceptance). Continuum theories generally describe processes or developments as more gradual and quantitative, lacking clear disruptions or steps. Three studies showed that a threat to personal control shifted participants’ preferences toward stage theories, when they were required to choose between stage theories and their continuum theory counterparts (the theories were about grief, dementia, and moral development). An additional study showed that stage theories about identity development and musical development are seen as more orderly and predictable (and, interestingly, as less credible) than continuum theories, and illusory pattern perception was found to underlie the effect of control-threat on theory preference. This indicates a motivated search for order.  In addition, one study found similar effects on theory preference as a result of a randomness prime (i.e., a threat to order). Two additional insights that these studies provided were a) that the motivation to perceive order seems to override valence (threat pushed people toward negative predictability over hopeful uncertainty) and b) the appeal particularly seems to lie in the information about the order of the stages that a certain process or phenomenon consists of (Rutjens et al., 2013).