This guilt trip theory has been used to explain why we so readily believe in an afterlife. The psychologist Jesse Bering thinks that the belief in ghosts and spirits may have evolved as a mechanism designed to make us behave ourselves when we think we are being watched.33 A guilty conscience works because it polices the way we behave, and if it can be easily triggered by the sense of others watching us, then we are more likely to act in a way that is for the benefit of the group. In the same way that students are less likely to cheat when told a ghost story, if we believe the ancestors are watching us, we are more likely to conform to society’s rules and regulations. Such a way of thinking, being advantageous to the group, would be likely to be passed on from one generation to the next. As we saw in chapter 5 on mind-reading, assuming the presence of others could be a good evolutionary strategy to always be on the lookout for potential enemies.34 And if we are hardwired to assume the presence of agents and spirits in the world, even the slightest example of a pattern that could be a face or a pair of eyes will readily be seen as such. Any bump in the night could be another person.
THE MAGIC OF MADNESS
Thinking that others are watching you and talking about you is a classic symptom of psychotic mental illness, most notably paranoid schizophrenia. Not surprisingly, supernatural beliefs are a major feature of the psychotic disorders of mania and schizophrenia. Mania is characterized by excessive energy and productivity as well as inappropriate social behaviour. Schizophrenia takes a variety of forms but is generally a state in which one holds irrational and paranoid delusions and experiences perceptual distortions of reality, especially auditory hallucinations.
One characteristic of all these psychotic disorders is the sense that there are significant patterns of events in the world that are somehow directly related to the patient. This way of sensing meaningful patterns is known as apophenia, which refers to an abnormal tendency to see connections in the world that are considered relevant by the patient.35 Apophenia helps to explain the basis of psychotic symptoms such as paranoid delusions of persecution. For example, psychotic patients in the midst of a paranoid episode typically report that there is a conspiracy centered on them. They are certain that they are being watched, that people are talking about them, that their phone lines are tapped, and that generally there is a coordinated hostile campaign against them. For the sufferer, these delusions are very real and beyond rational control.
We can all sense patterns, but psychotic patients are more prone to do so and to interpret patterns as significant events related to them personally. This is supported by research that demonstrates a relationship between sensing patterns and symptoms of psychiatric disorder.36 Even adults who do not exhibit full-blown psychotic mental breakdowns, the so-called ‘borderline’ cases, have been shown to hold a strong supersense. These beliefs are called ‘magical ideation’, and they can be measured by responses to statements such as:
‘Some people can make me aware of them just by thinking about me.’
‘I think I could learn to read others’ minds if I wanted to.’
‘Things sometimes seem to be in different places when I get home, even though no one has been there.’
‘I have noticed sounds on my records that are not there at other times.’
‘I have had the momentary feeling that someone’s place has been taken by a look-alike.’
‘I have sometimes sensed an evil presence around me, although I could not see it.’
‘I sometimes have a feeling of gaining or losing energy when certain people look at me or touch me.’
‘At times I perform certain little rituals to ward off negative influences.’
These statements are taken from a ‘magical ideation’ questionnaire used by researchers to study the relationship between mental illness and the supersense.37 If you score highly on this questionnaire of thirty items, you are predisposed to psychosis. It does not mean that you definitely are psychotic or will have a psychotic breakdown, but rather that you may be at risk. See how highly you score by completing the questionnaire in the Reader’s Notes.
Such aspects of human nature are generally spread out across a population – a bit like height, for example. Some of us are very tall, and some of us are very small, but most of us are in the middle. It’s the same with thought processes. Some of us are more intelligent than others. Some are more anxious. Others are more depressed. Magical thinking is just the same. Psychosis can be regarded as one extreme of the distributed range of beliefs. We can all experience episodes of depression, anxiety, delusion, obsession, compulsion, paranoia, and all manner of psychiatric conditions. However, when these episodes start to dominate and control an individual’s life, they are said to be pathological. They become an illness that disrupts the individual’s well-being.
The items from the ‘magical ideation’ questionnaire clearly reflect some of the pattern-detecting and intuitive beliefs that I have been describing throughout the book. Normally, we may briefly entertain such notions, but we can readily ignore or dismiss them as irrational. If we have an intrusive thought out of the blue, it does not faze us. We can inhibit the thoughts that form in our mind.
In contrast, psychiatric patients are unable to control these thought processes. They may even attribute such thoughts as coming from some other source. This is why schizophrenics often think their thoughts are being transmitted or invaded by outside signals. Everything is given significance. Consider this example taken from a schizophrenic nurse describing her first psychotic episode. The passage clearly reveals the supersense at work:
Every single thing ‘means’ something. This kind of symbolic thinking is exhaustive . . . I have a sense that everything is more vivid and important; the incoming stimuli are almost more than I can bear. There is a connection to everything that happens. No coincidences. I feel tremendously creative.38
The supersense is characterized by beliefs and experiences that lead us to infer hidden structures, patterns, energies, and dimensions to reality. We see ourselves as extended beyond our bodies and connected by an invisible oneness of the universe. Without adequate inhibitory control, we would be overwhelmed by our supersense. How do we stop these thoughts?
DOPAMINE: THE BRAIN’S SUPERNATURAL SIGNALLER?
In this book, I have been arguing that the supersense is a natural product of the human brain. However, we all vary in the extent to which we experience the supersense. If it is not culture that can explain these individual differences in the way we interpret the world, there must be something in our biology that can explain this variation. At this point, I apologize to brain scientists around the world for the overly simplistic picture I am about to paint.
The brain works as a collection of cells wired together in networks to process incoming information, interpret that information, and then store it as knowledge. These various tasks are much more complicated than a few sentences can ever describe, but they all depend on networks of connected cells that communicate with each other through minute electrochemical activity. This is achieved by the neurotransmitters that form the signalling system of the brain.