The Explanatory Power of Valuable Beliefs

People hold beliefs that vary not only in their perceived truth, but also in their value to the believer— their meaning, relevance, and importance. We argue that a belief’s value is determined, at least in part, by its explanatory power. Highly valuable beliefs are those that can uniquely explain and organize a diverse set of observations. Less valuable beliefs, in contrast, are those that can be explained by other observations, or that explain and organize few observations. The results of three experiments are consistent with these hypotheses. These experiments demonstrate that applying either scientific or religious beliefs to explain other observations increases the perceived value of those beliefs, whereas generating explanations for the existence of beliefs decreases their perceived value. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for people’s resistance to explaining their own beliefs, for the perceived value of science and religion, and for culture wars between people holding opposing beliefs. Beliefs are propositions held to be true, and the average person holds more beliefs than anyone would care to count. But not all of these beliefs are equally valuable. Some—such as belief in God—are vigorously defended when called into question, whereas others—such as the belief that it will rain tomorrow— are not. And some—such as those of Democrats versus Republicans—create intense cultural conflicts between believers, whereas others—such as those of dog lovers versus cat lovers— do not. Valuable beliefs are those that are personally meaningful, relevant, and important to people in their daily lives, and the research we report here investigates one important mechanism by which beliefs become valuable. To be sure, beliefs are valued for a variety of reasons: for emotional comfort (Lerner, 1980), self-expression (Prentice, 1987), ego defense (Katz, 1960), and behavior regulation (Greenwald, 1989), among others (Eagly & Chaiken, 1998). Perhaps a belief’s most basic instrumental function, however, is to serve as an explanation for one’s observations. Belief in free will, for instance, explains one’s own and other people’s actions (Wegner, 2002). Belief in right-wing conspiracies explains presidential impeachments. And religious beliefs explain the origin of the universe and life after death. Many of the beliefs people possess are in some sense causal explanations that organize their observations and reduce complexity (e.g., life exists because of God), thereby providing expectations for the future (Berlyne, 1960; Gilbert, 1991; Heider, 1958) and reducing the anxiety associated with uncertainty (Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988). To the extent that beliefs serve as explanations for one’s observations, their value should be a function of their explanatory power. The idea that beliefs serve as explanations is certainly not new (e.g., Allport, 1935; Frazer, 1890/1923; Thagard, 1989). However, unlike previous functional accounts of belief, our account suggests that it is not simply the perceived truth of a belief that is influenced by its explanatory power, but its perceived value—its meaning, importance, and personal relevance—as well. As people apply a belief to explain more observations, the value of that belief should increase. Applying a belief to other observations positions it as a first cause in a sequence of events, and unites different effects together through a mutual cause. The belief in love as a critical ingredient in romantic relationships, for example, can explain a spouse’s steadfast monogamy, lifelong devotion, and tender laughter at one’s bad jokes. With each new application, belief in the importance, meaningfulness, and personal relevance of love should increase. We therefore predict that applying a belief to explain one’s observations should increase its perceived value. Address correspondence to Nicholas Epley, University of Chicago, 5807 S.WoodlawnAve., Chicago, IL 60637, e-mail: epley@chicagogsb. edu, or to Jesse Preston, e-mail: [email protected]. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 826 Volume 16—Number 10 Copyright r 2005 American Psychological Society Perhaps more important, the flip side of this argument is that explanatory power diminishes if the belief is itself explained by other beliefs. Love for one’s spouse, for instance, can be explained by physical attraction, perceived similarity, and the formal commitment that comes with marriage. Now all of the beliefs that could previously be explained by love can be explained by other, more basic, beliefs. Thus, explaining a belief also positions it in a causal sequence, but relegates the focal belief to a secondary or mediating status that may make the focal belief seem less important, meaningful, and relevant (Pennebaker, 1990, 1997; Wilson, Gilbert, & Centerbar, 2003; Wortman, Silver, & Kessler, 1993). We therefore predict that explaining a belief will cause it to lose some of its unique explanatory power, and therefore lose some of its meaning, importance, and relevance as well. Notice that this example about love refers to the perceived importance of love in a relationship, not to whether or not one is actually loved in one’s own relationship, thus demonstrating that the perceived value of a belief can be quite independent of its perceived truth. A person may hold two beliefs to be equally true, but can still value one belief over the other. In addition, both applications of a belief and explanations for a belief can provide evidence consistent with the validity of a belief. Indeed, previous research has found that both explanations and applications of a belief can increase the extent to which that belief is perceived to be a ‘‘good’’ explanation (Read &Marcus-Newhall, 1993). Our predictions about the perceived value of a belief, then, are not dependent on altering the perceived truth or validity of a belief. We tested our hypotheses in three experiments. In each, participants considered either a novel or an existing belief and were asked to focus on either applications of that belief (i.e., observations that the belief could explain) or explanations for that belief (i.e., observations or underlying causes that could explain the existence of the belief). We predicted that participants asked to apply beliefs would find them to be more valuable—that is, more meaningful, important, and personally relevant—than participants asked to explain beliefs. STUDY 1: CREATING BELIEFS Participants in Study 1 were presented with one of two novel scientific beliefs that are familiar to most psychologists but would be considerably less so to the participants: (a) that people prefer similarity in relationship partners or (b) that people with high selfesteem are more likely to be aggressive than people with low selfesteem. Participants in the applications condition were then asked to apply their provided belief to other observations (i.e., to think of observations that their belief could explain). Participants in the explanations condition, in contrast, were asked to think of observations that could explain the belief (i.e., why people prefer similarity, or why self-esteem might be linked to aggression). Participants in a control condition neither applied nor explained the provided belief. We expected that participants in the applications condition, compared with those in the control condition, would rate their assigned belief as more valuable—more important, meaningful, and relevant to society—whereas participants in the explanations condition would rate their belief as less valuable than would those in the control condition. Study 1 also tested our secondary prediction that the perceived value of a belief can vary somewhat independently of its perceived truth.We tested this prediction by asking participants to indicate the likelihood that the target belief was correct. Method Interested travelers in a Boston, MA, train station (N 5 171) received a questionnaire describing one of two beliefs. One group (n 5 73) read about the widely documented relationship between similarity and attraction (Berscheid & Reis, 1998): Psychologists have argued that, whether choosing friends or falling in love, we are most attracted to people whose traits are similar to our own. There seems to be wisdom in the old saying, ‘‘Birds of a feather flock together.’’ (Myers, 1994, p. 18) Another group (n 5 98) read about the documented relationship between self-esteem and aggression (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996): Although intuition suggests that people who are depressed or low in self-esteem are more likely to be violent or aggressive towards others, some research demonstrates exactly the opposite. In fact, people who are high in self-esteem are more likely to be aggressive toward other people. All participants were then randomly assigned to one of three conditions. Those in the applications condition were asked to list as many ‘‘implications or observations that this research finding would explain.’’ Those in the explanations conditionwere asked to list as many reasons ‘‘why this finding could come about.’’ Participants in the control condition received no writing instructions. All participants then reported the likelihood that the finding was correct, using a scale ranging from 0% to 100%. Participants then rated the perceived value of the finding. Specifically, they indicated how important, meaningful, and personally relevant the finding appeared to them, as well as how likely the finding was to have an impact on society. All value ratings were made on 11point scales ranging from0 (not at all) to 10 (a great deal). Finally, participants rated the difficulty of the task on an 11-point scale ranging from 0 (extremely easy) to 10 (extremely difficult). Results and Discussion The difficulty people experience when generating information is often used as a cue for its validity (e.g., Schwarz, 1998), but Volume 16—Number 10 827 Jesse Preston and Nicholas Epley