Irrelevant insights make worldviews ring true

Abstract

Our basic beliefs about reality can be impossible to prove and yet we can feel a strong intuitive conviction about them, as exemplified by insights that imbue an idea with immediate certainty. Here we presented participants with worldview beliefs such as "people's core qualities are fixed" and simultaneously elicited an aha moment. In the first experiment (N = 3000, which included a direct replication), participants rated worldview beliefs as truer when they solved anagrams and also experienced aha moments. A second experiment (N = 1564) showed that the worldview statement and the aha moment must be perceived simultaneously for this 'insight misattribution' effect to occur. These results demonstrate that artificially induced aha moments can make worldview beliefs seem truer, possibly because humans partially rely on feelings of insight to appraise an idea's veracity. Feelings of insight are therefore not epiphenomenal and should be investigated for their effects on decisions, beliefs, and delusions.

Figure 1

Going from left to right, in each Anagram trial participants were presented with an incomplete claim, for example: “Free will is a powerful ____”. Below it was an anagram that completed the claim (e.g., “oinliusl”). When the answer to the anagram was submitted in the text entry box, or the visible 15-s timer ran out, participants were advanced to the next page. On that page, participants saw the completed claim: “Free will is a powerful illusion” and were asked to make a truth judgment about the claim. Participants then reported whether they experienced an aha moment while solving the anagram. The aha question was presented at the end of each trial so that they would not bias truth judgments, and so that the truth judgments were made as soon as possible following anagram solving while participants were still in the aha state.

Figure 2

Combined data of the confirmation and the replication, N = 2489. The plots (including means and standard deviations) illustrate truth ratings for the different conditions and key comparisons, with p-values and effect sizes. Each large black dot represents the mean and black lines represent + /− 1 standard deviation. Circles represent individual participants with a random horizontal jitter to aid visualization.

Figure 3

The plots in the top figure illustrate truth ratings for the four different between-subjects conditions, as well as the key analysis comparing anagrams without a delay (Anagram Normal condition) to anagrams with a delay (Anagram After Delay condition). In the bottom of the figure, the conditions are split between presence or absence of aha, illustrating an effect of aha on truth only when the anagram is presented at the same time as the worldview belief. Each large black dot represents the mean and black lines represent + /− 1 standard deviation. The circles represent individual participants with random horizontal jitter to aid visualization.