The Guru Effect

Obscurity of expression is considered a flaw. Not so, however, in the speech or writing of intellectual gurus. All too often, what readers do is judge profound what they have failed to grasp. Here I try to explain this “guru effect” by looking at the psychology of trust and interpretation, at the role of authority and argumentation, and at the effects of these dispositions and processes when they operate at a population level where, I argue, a runaway phenomenon of overappreciation may take place. Obscurity of expression is considered a flaw. Not so, however, in the speech or writing of intellectual gurus. It is not just that insufficiently competent readers refrain, as they should, from passing judgment on what they don’t understand. All too often, what readers do is judge profound what they have failed to grasp. Obscurity inspires awe, a fact I have been only too aware of, living as I have been in the Paris of Sartre, Lacan, Derrida and other famously hard to interpret maîtres à penser. Here I try to explain this “guru effect.” 1 Believing and Trusting There are two ways of holding beliefs in one’s mind. Holding a belief may be experienced—to the extent that it is experienced at all—as plain awareness of a fact, without awareness of reasons to take it to be a fact. So are held most of our ordinary beliefs. They are delivered by our spontaneous cognitive processes, the reliability of which we take for granted without examination. I believe that it is sunny because I see that it is; I believe that it rained yesterday because I remember that it did; and I believe that you are in a good mood because this is how I spontaneously interpret the Rev.Phil.Psych. (2010) 1:583–592 DOI 10.1007/s13164-010-0025-0 I am using here the English word “guru,” not the Sanskrit word from which it is derived. D. Sperber (*) Institut Jean Nicod, EHESS-ENS-CNRS, 29, rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] expression on your face. Here, “because” introduces not reasons I might have weighted in forming these beliefs, but the causal processes through which I come to have them. Such beliefs are “intuitive” in the sense that they impose themselves on us without our being aware of the process through which they do so. Other beliefs I hold because I also believe there is a good reason to hold them. I believe that it will be sunny tomorrow because so said the weather report, and I find its next-day predictions reliable enough. I believe that you just made up with your friend on the phone because this is the best explanation I can find for your suddenly improved mood. In these cases, “because” introduces a reason for my belief. Such beliefs are “reflective” in the sense that we entertain them together with the reasons we have to accept them. Entertaining a reason is as much a cognitive process as is perceiving, remembering or mood-sensing. Conversely, the fact that perception, memory and mood-sensing are reliable cognitive processes would give us a reason, if we cared for one, to accept the beliefs they generate. The contrast I want to draw between “reflective” and “intuitive beliefs” is not between beliefs held because of a cause and beliefs held because of a reason, but between beliefs held with or without mentally represented reasons. Reasons to accept a belief may be “internal,” that is, have to do with the content of the belief: I believe some proposition because I accept an argument from which this proposition follows. Such an argument may be based on evidence: I believe that the cake in the oven is properly baked because the knife blade I inserted in it came out dry. The argument may be purely formal: I believe that there is no greatest prime number because, given any prime number however large, I know how a prime number greater than this one can be computed. Reasons to accept a belief may also be “external,” that is, have to do with the source of the belief: I believe that what I have been told or what I read because I judge the source to be reliable. I believe my friend Mary will come to diner tonight because she said she would and I trust her. I believe that there are tensions between the President and the Prime Minister because so says Le Monde, a newspaper I find reliable on such issues. Catholics believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one because they trust the priests who tell them so. The belief that a friend, the newspaper or the priest is trustworthy may itself be held intuitively or reflectively. I intuitively trust my friend Mary, without having ever reflected on her trustworthiness. When, on the other hand, a belief in a source’s trustworthiness is held in a reflective manner, it may, just as other reflective beliefs, be based on internal reasons having to do with the content of the belief or on external reasons having to do with the source of the belief. Christian children may believe the priest is trustworthy because their parents (whom they trust intuitively) told them he is—an external reason. I believe that Le Monde is, on the whole, trustworthy because I have had much direct evidence of this trustworthiness—an internal reason. We may initially accept a person’s authority on the basis of her reputation—an external reason—, and then update our degree of trust on the basis of her record—an internal reason. I first went to doctor Z because she was warmly recommended to 2 For the distinction between intuitive and reflective beliefs, see Sperber 1997. 584 D. Sperber