When we talk about communication with the dead, we are usually referring to “mediums” who talk to the dead on our behalf, or who allow the dead to speak to us through them.

What if, instead the dead could speak to us directly, without the middle person?

If You Survive Death?

Imagine for a moment that you are the dead person, that your body has died, but your mind / personality / soul lives on. You are surprised by this, and you want to tell people, especially your skeptical friends, all about it — you want to communicate with us.

What would you do?

You have no voice box therefore you cannot speak. You have no arms or legs or any means of moving objects. But you are — as they say — an “energy field.” Could you reach us by interference with devices that rely upon other energy fields, a radio or tape recorder, for example?

But if you were able to generate some sounds on a tape recorder, would any one even detect them, or pay attention if they did? It’s often hard to detect weak signals — and you are but a wraith, a spirit, and probably without a lot of energy.

However, there is hope for humans, as Ray Hyman points out, because humans are the best pattern detectors in existence. Pattern detection, in this example, would be the ability to discriminate signal from noise.

Voices of the Dead?

This is exactly what is happening, according to some people. If you listen carefully, they say, you can hear the voices of the dead in tape recordings.

What do the voices of the dead sound like? Here are two examples of actual recordings where people claim to hear spoken words, the words of the dead.

This from the webpage http://members.tripod.com/~GSOLTESZ/evp.htm#listen:

“In this EVP recording, you can hear a voice saying, almost in agony, ...“Save Me.”

You might have to play it a couple of times but you can’t miss it. This recording has only been enhanced by myself using a sound editing program. The reason was to cut down on the “noise” and “bring out” the actual voice.

• "Save Me” (WAV)

Here are two other examples from Dr. Michael Daniels, psychologist and parapsychologist. (www.mdani.demon.co.uk)

• Example 1 (WAV)
• Example 2 (WAV)

The website instructs:

“To hear the voices at their best you should play them at maximum volume through headphones. In both cases you should be able to hear a definite “English” male voice. You may need to replay the recordings several times in order to make out the words, which are quite indistinct. The first clip seems to be saying something like “do you like potatoes?”. The second clip sounds to me rather like “five thirty and four-eye”. Different words may suggest themselves to you.” [Dr. Daniels points out that there is divided opinion about the reality of EVP.]

Electronic Voice Phenomena

So — it’s not so easy to hear the voices, is it? These are examples of what are called electronic voice phenomena, or EVP.

We are informed by another website that:

“EVP is a process whereby unexplained snatches of  voice or voices are embedded onto magnetic recording tape by a process that is not yet fully understood. The embedded “ghost” voice can be heard when the magnetic audio tape is played back on a standard tape recorder/player.” [hauntedhike.com]

Again, the Web informs us that:

“Recordings typically last only for a few minutes. This is because intense concentration is required in order to hear the voices on the tape, which usually has to be replayed several times in order to decipher the speech. Use of headphones is recommended.” [www.mdani.demon.co.uk]

The best way to understand the development of EVP it is to go back a little in time.

With the rise of Spiritualism beginning with the “mysterious rappings” of the Fox sisters in the nineteenth century, there have been many attempts to “contact the dead,” while claiming to be engaged in scientific study.

Thomas Edison saw new technology, part of which he invented, as a means by which spirits might try to contact us. Apparently, he strove to make contact through some sort of phonograph device in the 1890s. Then, in the late 1920s, he tried to make contact with the souls of the dearly departed by means of some sort of special chemical equipment. It is claimed that spirit voices were first captured on phonograph records in 1938, seven years after his death.

However, it was with Friedrich Jürgenson (1903-1987) that the study of EVP really begins. Jürgenson was in some ways a Renaissance Man — an archeologist, a philosopher, a linguist, a painter who was commissioned by Pope Pius XII, a singer and recording artist, and a film documentary maker. . Jürgenson’s interest in Electronic Voice Phenomena apparently began when, after having recording bird songs with a tape recorder, he could hear human voices on the tapes, even though there had been no one in the vicinity.

This surprising event naturally piqued his interest, and he turned his attention to making recordings of nothing — that is, recordings made in a quite place with no one around. He continued to detect voices on these tapes, and his studies led to the 1964 publication of his book Rosterna fran Rymden (“Voices from space”).

He subsequently recognized some of the voices that his tape recorder picked up, including that of his mother, who called him by her pet nickname for him. However, as we say where I grew up, his mother was already “on the wrong side of the grass;” that is, she was deceased. It seemed natural to him to assume that she was communicating from beyond the grave. Thus, he came to the conclusion that all the voices that he had recorded were voices of the dead. In 1967, he published Sprechfunk mit Verstorbenen (“Radio-link with the dead”).

Dr Konstantin Raudive (1906-1974), a student of Carl Jung, was a Latvian psychologist who taught at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He was preoccupied with parapsychological interests all his life, and especially with the possibility of life after death, and he kept in close contact with leading British psychical researchers

In 1964, Raudive read Jürgenson’s book, Voices from space, and was so impressed by it that he arranged to meet Jürgenson in 1965. He then worked with Jürgenson to make some EVP recordings, but their first efforts bore little fruit, although they believed that they could hear very weak, muddled, voices.

However, one night, as he listened to one recording, he clearly heard a number of voices- and when he played the tape over and over, he came to understand all of them — some of which were in German, some in Latvian, some in French. The last voice on the tape — a woman’s voice — said “Va dormir, Margarete” ("Go to sleep, Margaret”).

Raudive later wrote (in his book Breakthrough): “These words made a deep impression on me, as Margarete Petrautzki had died recently, and her illness and death had greatly affected me.” Amazed by this, he then started researching such voices on his own, and spent much of the last ten years of his life exploring electronic voice phenomena. With the help of various electronics experts, he recorded over 100,000 audiotapes, most of which were made under what he described as “strict laboratory conditions.” He collaborated at times with Hans Bender, a well-known German parapsychologist. Over 400 people were involved in his research, and all apparently heard the voices. This culminated in the 1971 publication of his book Breakthrough, mentioned above. His impact was such that these phenomena are now often referred to simply as “Raudive voices.”

Raudive developed several different approaches to recording EVP, and he referred to:

1. Microphone voices: one simply leaves the tape recorder running, with no one talking; he indicated that one can even disconnect the microphone.
2. Radio voices: one records the white noise from a radio that is not tuned to any station.
3. Diode voices: one records from what is essentially a crystal set not tuned to a station.

Raudive delineated a number of characteristics of the voices, (as laid out in Breakthrough):

1. “The voice entities speak very rapidly, in a mixture of languages, sometimes as many as five or six in one sentence.”
2. “They speak in a definite rhythm, which seems forced on them.”
3. “The rhythmic mode imposes a shortened, telegram-style phrase or sentence.”
4. Probably because of this, “grammatical rules are frequently abandoned and neologisms abound.”

Of course, to the skeptic, these characteristics are what one might expect if indeed the “voices” are simply misinterpretations of random, “white” noise.

EVP Today

Serious parapsychologists today show virtually no interest in EVP, and modern reports in the parapsychological literature find no evidence of anything paranormal in such recordings. That does not deter the devoted, of course: it is claimed that there are more than 50,000 sites on the internet devoted to EVP! Again, an example from the Internet:

“Briefly, electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) is the process of capturing messages from the spirit world, including our loved ones in Heaven, by using an ordinary tape recorder. Yes, someone in your family or your special friend who has passed on, can record or imprint their voice onto your tape. It is not the scope of our [web] site to fully explain EVP, but please feel free to visit the learning links below for more information. Our site is designed to help you, the beginner, succeed with EVP” [www.paranormalnetwork.com]

And now it is claimed that one does not even need to be quiet while making the recordings — the voices often show up in the background while one is recording a conversation. Consider these examples (from www.paranormalnetwork.com).

Examples:

Voice of the dead?

Here, we are told to listen for a whispery woman’s voice saying “we all turn this way” or “we all turn that way” recorded by “Karen and Jill” at Edgar Allen Poe’s grave on his birthday. (The salient part of the recording is repeated five times so that you can catch it.) [Listen]

Voice of the dead?

In the middle of the recording, we are told that a voice whispers “Pat!” [Listen]

There is no end to the efforts people will make to find “voices.” For example, it is claimed that:

“Some voices of spirits or entities are very close to the background level of static; Others may be clearly heard. If the speech is difficult to understand, remember that the spirit talking may be talking in a language or dialog that is not in common usage today. The voice can also be in reverse, you would need a computer to reverse this to hear it.” [www.blueskies.org]

As yet another example of the unbridled enthusiasm and creativity associated with finding voices, consider the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena. Its website informs us that:

“The membership includes people who record paranormal voices, pictures and information from friends and loved ones on the other side through tape recorders, telephones, fax machines, television, computers and video recorders.”

“EVP has been featured in such technical publications as “Popular Mechanics” and “wireless world.” It was recently shown in a movie called “the sixth sense". Sarah Estep, one of the world’s foremost EVP recorders, has been featured on cable channels such as discovery and Sci-Fi with her numerous EVP recordings. Why EVP remains unknown by the general public continues to astound us. EVP can provide a huge sense of relief for the bereaved and documented proof for paranormal investigators.”

And if one surfs the web, sooner or later, one finds sites that offer to sell devices to help you obtain better recordings!

Possible Explanations

Well, if the voices aren’t spirits, what are they?

1. Cross-modulation. This is a common phenomenon; I first became aware of it in the 1960s when my “record player” clearly picked up a local radio station, which one could hear between cuts.

   But Raudive dismissed this possibility, saying that it cannot be radio since one never hears music or other obvious elements of radio transmission.

2. Apophenia. This refers to a common perceptual phenomenon whereby we spontaneously perceive connections and find meaningfulness in unrelated things. In other words, it involves seeing or hearing patterns where in reality, none exist. A visual example is the Rorschach Inkblot test.

   We may be the best pattern detectors that exist, but not all the patterns we find have any objective meaning. However, once we think we have detected a pattern, it is hard to ignore it, and generally, we take it to be meaningful. A common example of apophenia occurs when people are in the shower, and mistakenly think that they hear their door bell or telephone ringing. The white noise produced by the shower contains a broad spectrum of sounds, including those that make up ringing bells. The ear picks out certain sounds from the spectrum, and we “detect” a pattern corresponding roughly to a bell.

   (Apophenia is virtually synonymous with what has been called Pareidolia, an illusion involving misperception of an external stimulus; an obscure stimulus is viewed as something clear and distinct. Examples include instances such as when thousands of people in New Mexico saw the face of Jesus on a Tortilla chip in 1978. This perception, or misperception, does not involve conscious effort or any particular mental set, and the illusion does not vanish even when one pays closer attention to the stimulus because it is so ambiguous that it has no objective meaning at all.

   (See http://thefolklorist.com/ for many examples)

While you might accept apophenia as an explanation for voices barely discernable from static, as in the earlier examples above, can it account for the “clear voices’ in the later examples (e.g. — recall the word “Pat” from the tape)? First of all, of course, the extraneous voices, if really there, could be the result of intended or unintended background interruptions by real people — the recordings were not made under any sort of controlled conditions. Secondly, as is discussed below, it is fascinating just how easy it is for our brains to come to interpret certain noise patterns as words, once we know what the words are supposed to be.

What is going on?

Perception is a very complex process, and when our brains try to find patterns, they are guided in part by what we expect to hear. If you are trying to hear your friend while conversing in a noisy room, your brain automatically takes snippets of sound and compares them against possible corresponding words, and guided by context, we can often “hear” more clearly than the sound patterns reaching our ears could account for. Indeed, it is relatively easy to demonstrate in a psychology laboratory that people can readily come to hear “clearly” even very muffled voices, so long as they have a printed version in front of them that tells them what words are being spoken. The brain puts together the visual cue and the auditory input, and we actually “hear” what we are informed is being said, even though without that information, we could discern nothing. Going one step further, and we can demonstrate that people can clearly “hear” voices and words not just in the context of muddled voices, but in a pattern of white noise, a pattern in which there are no voices or words at all.

Given that we can routinely demonstrate this effect, it is only parsimonious to suggest that what people hear with EVP is also the product of their own brains, and their expectations, rather than the voices of the dearly departed.

We can describe the process, leading from mental set to expectation to perception to amazement to belief in the following general way (see graphic): We are told that tape recordings made with no one around contain mysterious voices. This sets up a mental set that motivates us to try to discern voices. That is, we must presume that there may be something there, or we would not waste our time in listening. If others have told us what the voices seem to say, this expectancy influences our auditory perception, so that our brains match up bits of random noise to the words that we expect to hear. Of course, if we play the same piece of tape over and over, as is explicitly recommended by some of the web sites cited earlier, and if we do everything we can to focus our attention on the “noise” (perhaps by listening through headphones, again as recommended by the web sites), then we not only increase the likelihood of discerning voices if they really are there, but we maximize the opportunity for the perceptual apparatus in our brain to “construct” voices that do not exist, to detect patterns that match up with our expectations. Then, once we “hear” the voices, then it is easy, given the mental set that is usually involved, to attribute them to deceased individuals. This interpretation is likely to produce an impressive emotional reaction, and since we have now heard what we set out to hear (our expectancy is fulfilled) our belief in the reality of the voices of the dead grows, and this may be rewarding in various ways. Such an outcome is likely to heighten the expectation that we will hear more voices the next time we listen to such tapes.

How to disabuse the believer

How can someone who has heard the voices be persuaded to be more critical and to examine more mundane possibilities?

A rational, deliberative discussion is rarely helpful because clear evidence or logic is not involved. Believers are reporting an experience that was highly meaningful and perhaps highly emotional to them — not something that is easily challenged by logic. Moreover, there is a self-selection of people predisposed to believe — the voices are compatible with their belief system.

Remember — we process information in two different ways through two more or less separate parts of our brain and nervous system. On the one hand, part of our brain works on a very intuitive / emotional / automatic level, and on the other hand, another part of our brain works according to the logic and rationality that we develop over our lifetimes. These two systems often produce contrary results, and this is especially so where paranormal phenomena are involved. The “believer” removes the contradiction by bringing the intellect into line with the intuitive interpretation, that is, by coming to accept the paranormal — in this case, the voices — as reality, and thereby reshaping the intellectual understanding of the world so that belief in such phenomena appears to be rational. Over time, an impregnable belief system develops which is supported by a very substantial base of personal experience (interpreted in such a way as to support the paranormal belief), as well as anecdotal evidence provided by others.

It is very difficult to change such deeply held beliefs, especially if they include a significant emotional component. Consider this example: In my work as a clinical psychologist, a father wanted me to “cure” his gay son. I asked the father how easy would it be for me to turn him (the father) into a gay person? “No way !!!,” he said. I told him that it would likely be as difficult to turn his son into a straight person as it would be to make him, the father, turn gay. Fortunately, he saw the point and came to accept his son as he was. My point is this: When we ask how to turn believers into skeptics, let us ask instead: “How easy would it be for me to persuade you that voices on a tape really are spirits of the dead?” Well, that is probably just how easy it would be to persuade devoted believers that their beliefs about the voices are wrong.

What the Raudive voices teach us is that intelligent people — for Raudive was no doubt an intelligent man - can come to believe fervently in phenomena which in all likelihood do not exist. There is a lesson in this for all of us, for we just as surely may be mistaken in some of our own deeply held convictions. This is why we must rely on science as the avenue to truth rather than personal experience or other people’s anecdotal reports. Science, with its reliance on data and its insistence on looking for sources of error and for alternative explanations, provides the best method that humans have produced for protecting against error and self-delusion. Electronic Voice Phenomena are the products of hope and expectation; the claims wither away under the light of scientific scrutiny.

The following remarks about Ray Hyman were delivered by York University psychology professor and CSICOP Executive Council member James Alcock in presenting Hyman the In Praise of Reason Award, CSICOP’s highest honor, at the Saturday night awards banquet at the CSICOP Albuquerque conference "Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias” Oct. 23-26, 2003.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario-admittedly an unlikely one:

• A new super-psychic has burst onto the world stage. He has amazing powers that go far beyond mere “cutlery distortion” and telling people things about themselves that they already know.
• This is a psychic whose powers apparently have already been tested in scientific experiments that produced highly statistically significant results.
• This is a psychic who has already personally entertained many of the world’s leaders, and impressed them with his powers.

Well, so far, this is not that different from what we have seen before perhaps, but now, suppose the following:

• This psychic has offered to use his powers to negotiate a lasting peace amongst warring factions in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in Kashmir. He has told members of the United Nations Security Council, who gave him a private audience, that by being able to read the minds of the leaders of the protagonists in the various conflicts, he will bring about better communication and better understanding of issues. He might even resort to altering the mindsets of recalcitrant leaders by means of psychokinesis, turning them into peace-seekers and compromisers. The members of the Security Council have become so convinced of his powers that they are about to name him Ambassador-At-Large and Chief Negotiator for World Peace.

The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal is not amused by this news.

CSICOP and its supporters protest loudly, and finally we are informed by the Security Council that we may send an emissary-one person only-who will be allowed to evaluate the supporting research and to test the psychic directly, and then present his or her findings and conclusions directly to that world body.

Well, this is pretty important stuff-much more important than the usual CSICOP work. After all, if, as we suspect, this man is a phony, there is the likelihood of tremendous harm being done to the cause of world peace if he is allowed to mess about in these seemingly intractable conflicts.

Let’s not quibble about the likelihood of such a scenario, but let’s focus instead on what qualities we would want our emissary to possess in such a case. I've made a list:

1. Since scientific evidence has been adduced to support claims of the psychic’s powers, our emissary should be a scientist, preferably a social scientist, someone who knows how to conduct and evaluate research involving human subjects; someone who knows how to detect flaws and biases in such experiments.
2. We need an expert in statistics, since statistical analysis was part of the scientific support offered for the psychic’s powers.
3. We need an expert in the psychology of belief and deception, someone who knows all about how people can both deceive and be deceived.
4. We need someone with sound academic credentials, for credibility is going to be a very important if our emissary is to have an influence on the Security Council.
5. We need someone with expert knowledge of magic and mentalism, for if the psychic is using the magician/mentalist’s craft, only someone experienced and knowledgeable in this craft will be able to detect this. As the saying goes, it takes a thief to catch a thief.
6. We need someone who is experienced in evaluating supposed psychics and the research adduced in their support. Without such experience, even a very good social scientist may overlook important sources of error and bias.
7. We need someone who has a track record for fairness, someone who has gained the respect of skeptics and believers alike, so that our emissary will not be seen as some sort of hit man for CSICOP and skepticism.
8. We need a good communicator. It is not enough just to be able to show that the psychic is not really psychic at all. We need someone who can cogently present the skeptical case in such a way as to have an impact on the members of the Security Council.
9. We need someone who does not antagonize others, someone whose personality and charm will ease the sting of whatever critical commentary he or she has to offer to the Security Council.

Well, that’s quite a list, and one that is almost impossible to fill, one might think.

I know of only one person in the entire world-and believe me, I am not exaggerating here; I really mean it-who measures up to all these criteria. And he is in our midst tonight.

Let me tell you about Ray Hyman:

• Ray earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University, where he then taught statistics, amongst other subjects. He is now Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon, where he taught for many years.
• He is an expert in cognitive psychology.
• He is an expert in statistical analysis.
• He is an expert in research design as applied to the study of human subjects.
• He is an expert in the study of deception and self-deception and has dedicated most of his professional career to the study of why people come to believe strange things, how they can be fooled, and how some people set out to fool them.
• He has published books, book chapters, and over 200 articles that critically evaluate studies of the paranormal and related domains. His article on cold reading, so Paul Kurtz informs me, has generated more requests for reprints than any other article in the history of the Skeptical Inquirer.
• He is an expert in magic and mentalism. Few people outside of magic circles are aware of just how accomplished he is as a magician/mentalist. Indeed, he started out by earning his living as a mentalist. He is also an accomplished inventor of magical effects and routines. He is highly respected by other magicians, and has had the rare honor of twice appearing on the cover of the Linking Ring, the monthly magazine of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
• He has a long and unparalleled history of investigating psychics. Some of this work has been for official agencies such as the United States Defense Department and the United States National Research Council. He knows personally all of the leading, and many of the not-so-leading, parapsychologists in the world, and is respected by virtually all of them.
• He is, of course, a champion among skeptics, and one of the founders of CSICOP.
• He is known above all for being fair-minded-so much so that on more than one occasion I have been approached by people at CSICOP conferences who have complained that he had gone soft on parapsychology. They believed that he had “gone soft” because, rather than taking a debunking stance as they had wanted, he had approached the topic of paranormal claims from the point of view of scientific objectivity.
• In terms of personality, Ray is able to be highly critical of parapsychologists and psychics without antagonizing them. Indeed, no doubt every one of us who has talked with Ray knows of his warmth and charm, and knows as well that no matter how stupid or ill-informed our questions might be-and I've asked my share-he never makes us feel foolish for having asked. He is always patient in his explanations and never condescending.

Ray Hyman clearly meets all the criteria in my list. I can think of no other individual in the entire world who could do the same. The In Praise of Reason Award is CSICOP’s highest honor, and is given to those rare individuals who have made truly outstanding contributions to the promotion of science and the defense of reason. Previous recipients include such stellar scientists and communicators as Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann, and our own outstanding editor, Ken Frazier.

Tonight, I take great personal pride in being able to present, on behalf of CSICOP, the In Praise of Reason Award to my friend and colleague Ray Hyman, from whom I-and I am sure all of us-continue to learn so much.

Congratulations, Ray.

Our brains and nervous systems constitute a belief-generating machine, a system that evolved to assure not truth, logic, and reason, but survival. The belief engine has seven major components.

The following beliefs are strongly held by large numbers of people. Each of them has been hotly disputed by others:

• Through hypnosis, one can access past lives.
• Horoscopes provide useful information about the future.
• Spiritual healing sometimes succeeds where conventional medicine fails.
• A widespread, transgenerational Satanic conspiracy is afoot in society.
• Certain gifted people have been able to use their psychic powers to help police solve crimes.
• We can sometimes communicate with others via mental telepathy.
• Some people have been abducted by UFOs and then returned to earth.
• Elvis lives.
• Vitamin C can ward off or cure the common cold.
• Immigrants are stealing our jobs.
• Certain racial groups are intellectually inferior.
• Certain racial groups are athletically superior, at least in some specific sports.
• Crime and violence are linked to the breakdown of the traditional family.
• North Korea’s developing nuclear capability poses a threat to world peace.

Despite high confidence on the part of both believers and disbelievers, in most instances, neither side has much — if any — objective evidence to back its position. Some of these beliefs, such as telepathy and astrology, stand in contradiction to the current scientific worldview and are therefore considered by many scientists to be “irrational.” Others are not at all inconsistent with science, and whether or not they are based in fact, no one would consider them to be irrational.

Nineteenth-century rationalists predicted that superstition and irrationality would be defeated by universal education. However, this has not happened. High literacy rates and universal education have done little to decrease such belief, and poll after poll indicates that a large majority of the public believe in the reality of “occult” or “paranormal” or “supernatural” phenomena. Why should this be so? Why is it that in this highly scientific and technological age superstition and irrationality abound?

It is because our brains and nervous systems constitute a belief-generating machine, an engine that produces beliefs without any particular respect for what is real or true and what is not. This belief engine selects information from the environment, shapes it, combines it with information from memory, and produces beliefs that are generally consistent with beliefs already held. This system is as capable of generating fallacious beliefs as it is of generating beliefs that are in line with truth. These beliefs guide future actions and, whether correct or erroneous, they may prove functional for the individual who holds them. Whether or not there is really a Heaven for worthy souls does nothing to detract from the usefulness of such a belief for people who are searching for meaning in life.

Nothing is fundamentally different about what we might think of as “irrational” beliefs — they are generated in the same manner as are other beliefs. We may not have an evidential basis for belief in irrational concepts, but neither do we have such a basis for most of our beliefs. For example, you probably believe that brushing your teeth is good for you, but it is unlikely that you have any evidence to back up this belief, unless you are a dentist. You have been taught this, it makes some sense, and you have never been led to question it.

If we were to conceptualize the brain and nervous system as a belief engine, it would need to comprise several components, each reflecting some basic aspect of belief generation. Among the components, the following units figure importantly:

1. The learning unit
2. The critical thinking unit
3. The yearning unit
4. The input unit
5. The emotional response unit
6. The memory unit
7. The environmental feedback unit.

The Learning Unit

The learning unit is the key to understanding the belief engine. It is tied to the physical architecture of the brain and nervous system; and by its very nature, we are condemned to a virtually automatic process of magical thinking. “Magical thinking” is the interpreting of two closely occurring events as though one caused the other, without any concern for the causal link. For example, if you believe that crossing your fingers brought you good fortune, you have associated the act of finger-crossing with the subsequent welcome event and imputed a causal link between the two.

Our brain and nervous system have evolved over millions of years. It is important to recognize that natural selection does not select directly on the basis of reason or truth; it selects for reproductive success. Nothing in our cerebral apparatus gives any particular status to truth. Consider a rabbit in the tall grass, and grant for a moment a modicum of conscious and logical intellect to it. It detects a rustling in the tall grass, and having in the past learned that this occasionally signals the presence of a hungry fox, the rabbit wonders if there really is a fox this time or if a gust of wind caused the grass to rustle. It awaits more conclusive evidence. Although motivated by a search for truth, that rabbit does not live long. Compare the late rabbit to the rabbit that responds to the rustle with a strong autonomic nervous-system reaction and runs away as fast as it can. It is more likely to live and reproduce. So, seeking truth does not always promote survival, and fleeing on the basis of erroneous belief is not always such a bad thing to do. However, while this avoidance strategy may succeed in the forest, it may be quite dangerous to pursue in the nuclear age.

The learning unit is set up in such a way as to learn very quickly from the association of two significant events — such as touching a hot stove and feeling pain. It is set up so that significant pairings produce a lasting effect, while nonpairings of the same two events are not nearly so influential. If a child were to touch a stove once and be burned, then if the child were to touch it again without being burned, the association between pain and stove would not automatically be unlearned. This basic asymmetry — pairing of two stimuli has an important effect, while presenting the stimuli unpaired (that is, individually) has a much lesser effect — is important for survival.

This asymmetry in learning also underlies much of the error that colors our thinking about events that occur together from time to time. Humans are very poor at accurately judging the relationship between events that only sometimes co-occur. For example, if we think of Uncle Harry, and then he telephones us a few minutes later, this might seem to demand some explanation in terms of telepathy or precognition. However, we can only properly evaluate the co-occurrence of these two events if we also consider the number of times that we thought of Harry and he did not call, or we did not think of him but he called anyway. These latter circumstances — these nonpairings — have little impact on our learning system. Because we are overly influenced by pairings of significant events, we can come to infer an association, and even a causal one, between two events even if there is none. Thus, dreams may correspond with subsequent events only every so often by chance, and yet this pairing may have a dramatic effect on belief. Or we feel a cold coming on, take vitamin C, and then when the cold does not get to be too bad we infer a causal link. The world around us abounds with coincidental occurrences, some of which are meaningful but the vast majority of which are not. This provides a fertile ground for the growth of fallacious beliefs. We readily learn that associations exist between events, even when they do not. We are often led by co-occurring events to infer that the one that occurred first somehow caused the one that succeeded it.

We are all even more prone to error when rare or emotionally laden events are involved. We are always looking for causal explanations, and we tend to infer causality even when none exists. You might be puzzled or even distressed if you heard a loud noise in your living room but could find no source for it.

The Critical-Thinking Unit

The critical-thinking unit is the second component of the belief engine, and it is acquired — acquired through experience and explicit education. Because of the nervous-system architecture that I have described, we are born to magical thinking. The infant who smiles just before a breeze causes a mobile above her head to move will smile again and again, as though the smile had magically caused the desired motion of the mobile. We have to labor to overcome such magical predisposition, and we never do so entirely. It is through experience and direct teaching that we come to understand the limits of our immediate magical intuitive interpretations. We are taught common logic by parents and teachers, and since it often serves us well, we use it where it seems appropriate. Indeed, the cultural parallel of this developmental process is the development of the formal method of logic and scientific inquiry. We come to realize that we cannot trust our automatic inferences about co-occurrence and causality.

We learn to use simple tests of reason to evaluate events around us, but we also learn that certain classes of events are not to be subjected to reason but should be accepted on faith. Every society teaches about transcendental things — ghosts, gods, bogeymen, and so on; and here we are often explicitly taught to ignore logic and accept such things on faith or on the basis of other people’s experiences. By the time we are adults, we can respond to an event in either a logical, critical mode or in an experiential, intuitive mode. The events themselves often determine which way we will respond. If I were to tell you that I went home last night and found a cow in my living room, you would be more likely to laugh than to believe me, even though there is certainly nothing impossible about such an event. If, on the other hand, I were to tell you that I went into my living room and was startled by an eerie glow over my late grandfather’s armchair, and that the room went cold, you may be less likely to disbelieve and more likely to perk up your ears and listen to the details, possibly suspending the critical acumen that you would bring to the cow story. Sometimes strong emotion interferes with the application of critical thought. Other times we are cleverly gulled.

Rationality is often at a disadvantage to intuitive thought. The late psychologist Graham Reed spoke of the example of the gambler’s fallacy: Suppose you are observing a roulette wheel. It has come up black ten times in a row, and a powerful intuitive feeling is growing in you that it must soon come up red. It cannot keep coming up black forever. Yet your rational mind tells you that the wheel has no memory, that each outcome is independent of those that preceded. In such a case, the struggle between intuition and rationality is not always won by rationality.

Note that we can switch this critical thinking unit on or off. As I noted earlier, we may switch it off entirely if dealing with religious or other transcendental matters. Sometimes, we deliberately switch it on: “Hold it a minute, let me think this out,” we might say to ourselves when someone tries to extract money from us for an apparently worthy cause.

The Yearning Unit

Learning does not occur in a vacuum. We are not passive receivers of information. We actively seek out information to satisfy our many needs. We may yearn to find meaning in life. We may yearn for a sense of identity. We may yearn for recovery from disease. We may yearn to be in touch with deceased loved ones.

In general we yearn to reduce anxiety. Beliefs, be they correct or false, can assuage these yearnings. Often beliefs that might be categorized as irrational by scientists are the most efficient at reducing these yearnings. Rationality and scientific truth have little to offer for most people as remedies for existential anxiety. However, belief in reincarnation, supernatural intervention, and everlasting life can overcome such anxiety to some extent.

When we are yearning most, when we are in the greatest need, we are even more vulnerable to fallacious beliefs that can serve to satisfy those yearnings.

The Input Unit

Information enters the belief engine sometimes in the form of raw sensory experience and other times in the form of organized, codified information presented through word of mouth, books, or films. We are wonderful pattern detectors, but not all the patterns we detect are meaningful ones. Our perceptual processes work in such a way as to make sense of the environment around us, but they do make sense — perception is not a passive gathering of information but, rather, an active construction of a representation of what is going on in our sensory world. Our perceptual apparatus selects and organizes information from the environment, and this process is subject to many well-known biases that can lead to distorted beliefs. Indeed, we are less likely to be influenced by incoming information if it does not already correspond to deeply held beliefs. Thus, the very spiritual Christian may be quite prepared to see the Virgin Mary; information or perceptual experience that suggests that she has appeared may be more easily accepted without critical scrutiny than it would be by someone who is an atheist. It is similar with regard to experiences that might be considered paranormal in nature.

The Emotional Response Unit

Experiences accompanied by strong emotion may leave an unshakable belief in whatever explanation appealed to the individual at the time. If one is overwhelmed by an apparent case of telepathy, or an ostensible UFO, then later thinking may well be dominated by the awareness that the emotional reaction was intense, leading to the conclusion that something unusual really did happen. And emotion in turn may directly influence both perception and learning. Something may be interpreted as bizarre or unusual because of the emotional responses triggered.

Evidence is accumulating that our emotional responses may be triggered by information from the outside world even before we are consciously aware that something has happened. Take this example, provided by LeDoux (1994) in his recent article in Scientific American (1994, 270, pp. 50-57):

An individual is walking through the woods when she picks up information — either auditory, such as rustling leaves, or visual, such as the sight of a slender curved object on the ground — which triggers a fear response. This information, even before it reaches the cortex, is processed in the amygdala, which arouses the body to an alarm footing. Somewhat later, when the cortex has had enough time to decide whether or not the object really is a snake, this cognitive information processing will either augment the fear response and corresponding evasive behaviour, or will serve to bring that response to a halt.

This is relevant to our understanding of paranormal experience, for very often an emotional experience accompanies the putatively paranormal. A strong coincidence may produce an emotional “zing” that points us toward a paranormal explanation, because normal events would not be expected to produce such emotion.

Our brains are also capable of generating wonderful and fantastic perceptual experiences for which we are rarely prepared. Out-of-body experiences (OBEs), hallucinations, near-death experiences (NDEs), peak experiences — these are all likely to be based, not in some external transcendental reality, but rather in the brain itself. We are not always able to distinguish material originating in the brain from material from the outside world, and thus we can falsely attribute to the external world perceptions and experiences that are created within the brain. We have little training with regard to such experience. As children, we do learn to distrust, for the most part, dreams and nightmares. Our parents and our culture tell us that they are products of our own brains. We are not prepared for more arcane experiences, such as OBEs or hallucinations or NDEs or peak experiences, and may be so unprepared that we are overwhelmed by the emotion and come to see such experience as deeply significant and “real” whether or not it is.

Ray Hyman has always cautioned skeptics not to be surprised should they one day have a very strong emotional experience that seems to cry out for paranormal explanation. Given the ways our brains work, we would expect such experiences from time to time. Unprepared for them, they could become conversion experiences that lead to strong belief. When I was a graduate student, another graduate student who shared my office, and who was equally as skeptical as I was about the paranormal, came to school one day overwhelmed by the realism and clarity of a dream he had had the night before. In it, his uncle in Connecticut had died. It had been a very emotional dream, and was so striking that Jack told me that if his uncle died anytime soon, he would no longer be able to maintain his skepticism about precognition — the dream experience was that powerful. Ten years later, his uncle was still alive, and Jack’s skepticism had survived intact.

The Memory Unit

Through our own experience, we come to believe in the reliability of our memories and in our ability to judge whether a given memory is reliable or not. However, memory is a constructive process rather than a literal rendering of past experience, and memories are subject to serious biases and distortions.

Not only does memory involve itself in the processing of incoming information and the shaping of beliefs; it is itself influenced strongly by current perceptions and beliefs. Yet it is very difficult for an individual to reject the products of his or her own memory process, for memory can seem to be so “real.”

The Environmental Feedback Unit

Beliefs help us to function. They guide our actions and increase or reduce our anxieties. If we operate on the basis of a belief, and if it “works” for us, even though faulty, why would we be inclined to change it? Feedback from the external world reinforces or weakens our beliefs, but since the beliefs themselves influence how that feedback is perceived, beliefs can become very resistant to contrary information and experience. If you really believe that alien abductions occur, then any evidence against that belief can be rationalized away — in terms of conspiracy theories, other people’s ignorance, or whatever.

As mentioned earlier, fallacious beliefs can often be even more functional than those based in truth. For example, Shelley Taylor, in her book Positive Illusions, reports research showing that mildly depressed people are often more realistic about the world than are happy people. Emotionally healthy people live to some extent by erecting false beliefs — illusions — that reduce anxiety and aid well-being, whereas depressed individuals to some degree see the world more accurately. Happy people may underestimate the likelihood of getting cancer or being killed, and may avoid thinking about the ultimate reality of death, while depressed people may be much more accurate with regard to such concerns.

An important way in which to run reality checks on our perceptions and beliefs is to compare them with those of others. If I am the only one who interpreted a strange glow as an apparition, I am more likely to reconsider this interpretation than if several others share the same view. We often seek out people who agree with us, or selectively choose literature supporting our belief. If the majority doubts us, then even if only part of a minority we can collectively work to dispel doubt and find certainty. We can invoke conspiracies and coverups to explain an absence of confirmatory evidence. We may work to inculcate our beliefs in others, especially children. Shared beliefs can promote social solidarity and even a sense of importance for the individual and group.

In Conclusion

Beliefs are generated by the belief engine without any automatic concern for truth. Concern for truth is a higher order acquired cognitive orientation that reflects an underlying philosophy which presupposes an objective reality that is not always perceived by our senses.

The belief engine chugs away, strengthening old beliefs, spewing out new ones, rarely discarding any. We can sometimes see the error or foolishness in other people’s beliefs. It is very difficult to see the same in our own. We believe in all sorts of things, abstract and concrete — in the existence of the solar system, atoms, pizza, and five-star restaurants in Paris. Such beliefs are no different in principle from beliefs in fairies at the end of the garden, in ghosts in some deserted abbey, in werewolves, in satanic conspiracies, in miraculous cures, and so on. Such beliefs are all similar in form, all products of the same process, even though they vary widely in content. They may, however, involve greater or lesser involvement of the critical-thinking and emotional-response units.

Critical thinking, logic, reason, science — these are all terms that apply in one way or another to the deliberate attempt to ferret out truth from the tangle of intuition, distorted perception, and fallible memory. The true critical thinker accepts what few people ever accept — that one cannot routinely trust perceptions and memories. Figments of our imagination and reflections of our emotional needs can often interfere with or supplant the perception of truth and reality. Through teaching and encouraging critical thought our society will move away from irrationality, but we will never succeed in completely abandoning irrational tendencies, again because of the basic nature of the belief engine.

Experience is often a poor guide to reality. Skepticism helps us to question our experience and to avoid being too readily led to believe what is not so. We should try to remember the words of the late P. J. Bailey (in Festus: A Country Town): “Where doubt, there truth is — ‘tis her shadow.”