If you have paid any attention to my posts over the last couple of years, you
might recall that a continuing concern of mine is how best to teach and
encourage a skeptical attitude with regard to students' beliefs about
psychological matters. As strange as it may sound at first, an article on
delusional disorders has given me some insight into how we might become better
at teaching skepticism (a two-part series in _The Harvard Mental Health
Letter_, Vol. _15_, Nos. 7 and 8, January and February, 1999). Let me explain.
As you may already know, delusional disorders involve prominent delusional
beliefs that are not bizarre (that is, they are not fantastic--e.g., the belief
that the FBI is spying on your sexual behavior: it has been done), and are not
coupled with a known organic problem or severe emotional disturbance. In fact,
many people with delusional disorder may be using normal reasoning processes to
understand strange experiences they have had:
Delusions arise from experiences...that are felt to be unusual,
significant, and urgently in need of explanation. A strange feeling,
perception, or persistent thought occurs, and the person affected
needs to make sense of it.... A delusional interpretation...provides
immediate relief, just as performing a compulsive ritual brings
relief from an obsessional thought. Unless the delusion is associated
with a general deterioration of brain functions, ... IT IS COMPATIBLE
WITH ADEQUATE AND EVEN SUPERIOR THINKING. ONCE THE DELUSION
IS WELL ESTABLISHED, APPARENTLY CONTRARY EVIDENCE CAN EASILY
BE IGNORED OR ACCOMODATED. (p. 2, No. 7; emphasis added)
In other words, very intelligent people can make incorrect inferences,
especially when they are trying to explain something unusual or very difficult
to understand. In people who are predisposed to it, these beliefs may reach a
delusional status. But such delusional beliefs, it seems to me, are only
quantitatively different from the irrational beliefs of the rest of us: we all
have firmly held beliefs for which there is little, no, or contradictory
evidence. Once the false belief (whether delusional or not) is firmly
established, it becomes very difficult to question it; and we all tend to
process contradictory evidence in such a way that the belief is retained
unscathed (or is even strengthened).
The beliefs we have about psychological matters seem to me to be particularly
prone to this problem: we all have had unusual mental experiences that not only
were difficult to understand, but that we usually have felt were very important
to explain. Furthermore, there are a host of culturally sanctioned explanations
that we have been taught from our earliest years--explanations that often have
little or no evidence in favor of them. These explanations tend to become
engrained because they are taught so early and so pervasively (e.g., beliefs
about memory, hypnosis, psychic abilities, etc.). These are culturally
acceptable "delusions" that guide how we process new information, which only
serves to strengthen them further.
How is this way of looking at our false beliefs helpful for teaching
skepticism? Since the sort of false beliefs we are trying to dispel in our
classes (and in ourselves) seem similar in a qualitative sense to those of
delusional people, perhaps we can gain some insight into how we might go about
promoting skepticism by looking at therapies for delusional thinking. The type
of treatment most effective for (nonorganic) delusional disorder is cognitive
therapy:
Cognitive therapists do not challenge the belief or immediately try
to change it. Instead they show sympathetic interest [in the client's
problems].... Meanwhile they are learning how long the delusion has
been present, how and when it comes and goes, and which experiences
are supporting a delusional system. The patient may be asked to keep
a daily log of these experiences. The therapist tries to understand
what the delusion means to the patient, what concerns it reflects, what
problems it solves, and how it interferes with the patient's life (p.
3, No. 8)
This suggests that we should adopt an empathic and sensitive approach to
teaching skepticism in our students. Instead of coming to class with our
intellectual guns drawn, firing away at our students' beliefs (a tendency that
I have to resist in myself), we should try to see what role these beliefs play
in our students' lives and gently help them to consider evidence for and
against them:
The main therapeutic activity is not giving advice or providing
interpretations but asking questions: What is the evidence for the
[false belief]...? Do others seem to agree with you, and if not, why
not? What other explanations are possible? The process begins with the
beliefs that are least firmly held. (p. 3, No. 8)
Less firmly held beliefs are easier to question; and, if these beliefs support
more firmly held beliefs, we eventually may get the student to a point at which
he/she can question the latter, too. In order to accomplish this, however, we
must build an alliance with our students--an alliance that is more like that of
co-investigators than the traditional professor/undergraduate relationship. To
go back to the language of cognitive therapy:
Preserving a therapeutic alliance with these patients can be difficult
because they are so suspicious and mistrustful [as are many of our
students]. They insist on their correctness and recall mainly what they
can use to confirm their beliefs.... The therapist builds trust slowly
by showing formal respect, courtesy, and honesty, avoiding both
aloofness and excessive warmth and never forgetting that the delusion
[or false belief] is a defense [or a central organizing assumption]
that may leave the patient feeling helpless when it has been abandoned.
(p. 3, No. 8)
The last sentence, with appropriate changes (which I placed in brackets) to
reflect the different situation we are in with our students, is of most
importance: we need to realize that, at times, we trod (unwittingly) upon some
very central beliefs of our students. If we succeed in getting them to
question these beliefs, more or less intense existential crises may ensue. We
need to show respect and courtesy, and to be more of an ally than an
intellectual inquisitor in their education if we are not to turn them off to
the whole enterprise. Perhaps of most importance is our own humility: we need
to admit ourselves and to our students that we are not founts of wisdom and
knowledge; and we also need to quickly admit when we are wrong. Perhaps this
modeling of a "humble skepticism" is the most important thing we can do in our
classes.
Oh well, I've gone on long enough about this. I don't know if this was of any
interest to you, but I offer it to you anyway. (At this point, I'm imagining
that most of you are busy setting your email programs to automatically delete
my posts in the future...)
Jeff Ricker
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale AZ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
