If an authoritative person speaks pseudo-profound phrases, people tend to perceive his words with respect.
The existence of such a psychological phenomenon — the «Einstein effect» — was discovered by an international group of researchers. Article in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
The study involved more than ten thousand people from 24 countries. The participants were presented with various pseudo-profound phrases, which in fact are complete nonsense. These phrases were generated using a specially designed algorithm that combines trendy «smart» terms and supposedly intelligent words and phrases.
The researchers were interested in how the degree of trust of participants in these statements will change depending on the source — people were told that the authors of the expressions were either a certain religious leader or a scientist.
As a result, it turned out that, regardless of the cultural background of people, nonsense causes them more confidence if they consider it to be the author of a scientist. 76% of participants gave pseudoscientific statements high enough points on the «trust scale» when they thought that these phrases came from the lips of a scientist. As for the religious guru, this happened only in 55% of cases.
The authors of the study explained this behavior by the work of natural selection. From an evolutionary perspective, respect for the opinions of authorities is an adaptive strategy that favors survival. Therefore, if the source of any information is perceived as a trustworthy expert, people are willing to believe it, even without understanding its meaning.
1. Suzanne Hoogeveen, Julia M. Haaf et al. «The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity». Nature Human Behaviour, 2022.