All I ever wanted was the world
A paper by Shtulman and Valcarcel argues that even though we know that the earth goes around the sun, we still have hidden away the idea that the sun goes around the earth. Their experiment takes a number of statements about astronomy, evolution, fractions, genetics, germs, matter, mechanics, physiology, thermodynamics, and waves, and asks if they are true. (For example, statements could be ‘the moon goes around the earth’, ‘the sun goes around the earth’.) The speed of answering and the accuracy were compared for statements that have the same validity both scientifically and naïvely, and statements were the validity is different. In all the subject categories the answers were slower and less accurate if there was dissonance between the scientific answer and the naïve one. I assume that neuroscience statements would give the same result, based on the ideas of teleological (design and purpose is found in all things) and animistic (all events are the product of animated intention) bias.
