'Death Anxiety' Prompts People to Believe in Intelligent Design, Reject Evolution, Study Suggests
ScienceDaily (May 23, 2011) — Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Union College (Schenectady, N.Y.) have found that people's 'death anxiety' can influence them to support theories of intelligent design and reject evolutionary theory.
Existential anxiety also prompted people to report increased liking for Michael Behe, intelligent design's main proponent, and increased disliking for evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
The lead author is UBC Psychology Asst. Prof. Jessica Tracy with co-authors Joshua Hart, assistant professor of psychology at Union College, and UBC psychology PhD student Jason Martens.
Published in the March 30 issue of the journal PLoS ONE, their paper is the first to examine the implicit psychological motives that underpin one of the most heated debates in North America. Despite scientific consensus that intelligent design theory is inherently unscientific, 25 per cent of high school biology teachers in the U.S. devote at least some class time to the topic of intelligent design. And in Canada, for example, Alberta passed a law in 2009 that may allow parents to remove children from courses covering evolution.
British evolutionary biologist Prof. Dawkins, like the majority of scientists, argues that life's origins are best explained by Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. However, intelligent design advocates such as Prof. Behe, a U.S. author and biochemist, assert that complex biochemical and cellular structures are too complex to be explained by evolutionary mechanisms and should be attributed to a supernatural creator.
"Our results suggest that when confronted with existential concerns, people respond by searching for a sense of meaning and purpose in life," says Tracy. "For many, it appears that evolutionary theory doesn't offer enough of a compelling answer to deal with these big questions."
The researchers carried out five studies with 1,674 U.S. and Canadian participants of different ages and a broad range of educational, socioeconomic and religious backgrounds.
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Death and Science: The Existential Underpinnings of Belief in Intelligent Design and Discomfort with Evolution
Jessica L. Tracy1*, Joshua Hart2, Jason P. Martens1
1 Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 2 Department of Psychology, Union College, Schenectady, New York, United States of America
Abstract
The present research examined the psychological motives underlying widespread support for intelligent design theory (IDT), a purportedly scientific theory that lacks any scientific evidence; and antagonism toward evolutionary theory (ET), a theory supported by a large body of scientific evidence. We tested whether these attitudes are influenced by IDT's provision of an explanation of life's origins that better addresses existential concerns than ET. In four studies, existential threat (induced via reminders of participants' own mortality) increased acceptance of IDT and/or rejection of ET, regardless of participants' religion, religiosity, educational background, or preexisting attitude toward evolution. Effects were reversed by teaching participants that naturalism can be a source of existential meaning (Study 4), and among natural-science students for whom ET may already provide existential meaning (Study 5). These reversals suggest that the effect of heightened mortality awareness on attitudes toward ET and IDT is due to a desire to find greater meaning and purpose in science when existential threats are activated.
Citation: Tracy JL, Hart J, Martens JP (2011) Death and Science: The Existential Underpinnings of Belief in Intelligent Design and Discomfort with Evolution. PLoS ONE 6(3): e17349. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017349
Editor: Christos Ouzounis, The Centre for Research and Technology, Hellas, Greece
Received: October 7, 2010; Accepted: January 31, 2011; Published: March 30, 2011
Copyright: © 2011 Tracy et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This project was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Standard Research Grant #410-2009-2458, a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award [CI-SCH-01862(07-1)] to the first author, a Faculty Research Fund Grant from Union College, and a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Graduate Scholarship to the third author. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
* E-mail: jltracy@psych.ubc.ca
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NOTA CAUSTICANTE DESTE BLOGGER:
Uma pesquisa científica dessas nem errada é: a pergunta que deve ser feita em todas as universidades e escolas, e na Grande Mídia é: como fica a teoria da evolução de Darwin através da seleção natural e n mecanismos evolucionários (de A a Z) no contexto de justificação teórica?
Robusta ou epistemicamente falida??? Se epistemicamente falida, essa é a RAZÃO MAIOR para a elaboração da SÍNTESE EVOLUTIVA AMPLIADA? Por que esta nova teoria geral da evolução não pode e nem deve ser selecionista? Por que incorporar aspectos lamarckianos???
Gente, eu já vi desonestidade, mas a DESONESTIDADE ACADÊMICA é pior e mais suja do que pau de galinheiro. Fica todo mundo calado na Akademia e ninguém aborda nada do que é abordado neste blog. E ainda me pedem colegialidade? Por que colegialidade, cara-pálida, se há mais de uma década eu venho tentando colocar isso civilmente nas universidades???
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NOTA CAUSTICANTE DESTE BLOGGER:
Uma pesquisa científica dessas nem errada é: a pergunta que deve ser feita em todas as universidades e escolas, e na Grande Mídia é: como fica a teoria da evolução de Darwin através da seleção natural e n mecanismos evolucionários (de A a Z) no contexto de justificação teórica?
Robusta ou epistemicamente falida??? Se epistemicamente falida, essa é a RAZÃO MAIOR para a elaboração da SÍNTESE EVOLUTIVA AMPLIADA? Por que esta nova teoria geral da evolução não pode e nem deve ser selecionista? Por que incorporar aspectos lamarckianos???
Gente, eu já vi desonestidade, mas a DESONESTIDADE ACADÊMICA é pior e mais suja do que pau de galinheiro. Fica todo mundo calado na Akademia e ninguém aborda nada do que é abordado neste blog. E ainda me pedem colegialidade? Por que colegialidade, cara-pálida, se há mais de uma década eu venho tentando colocar isso civilmente nas universidades???
