The dopamine switch between atheist, believer and fanatic
aeon.co
aeon.co
> In healthy volunteers and right- but not left-onset patients, religious belief-scores significantly increased following the aesthetic prime consisting of the ocean view (a wonderful reward) but not the death prime. (The religious ritual prime increased religious belief only inconsistently, with little impact compared with that of the ocean view.) The results directly refuted the anxiety theory of religion while supporting the notion that religiosity was spurred by the quest for unexpected reward.
He's using a concept called "priming" to study the impact that different thoughts have on his subjects receptivity to religious sentiment. If Freud's theory is correct (religion being driven mainly by our fear of death) then we would expect the people who heard the ending about witnessing someone's death to express more religious sentiment, afterwards, because the story "primed" (reminded them of) human mortality.
But that's not what he observed... Subjects who heard the death ending were not more likely to express religious sentiment.
The religious ritual ending also didn't significantly increase religion sentiment. Only the ocean view ending, with it's imagery of breathtaking natural beauty, actually achieved an increase in religious sentiment.
So it suggests that Freud's theory is incorrect.
The classic example is talking about disgusting topics before serving someone a meal... If you tell someone a story about a sewage plant worker falling into an open vat of raw human feces, and then later contracting a bunch of diseases because the fecal matter infiltrated their mouth, nose, eyes, and ears... The people hearing that story will eat less on average, and be more likely to refuse food outright, than a control group who heard a neutral story that removes the sewage and contamination elements.
Another example: People who hear a story about a war hero saving their comrades lives by sacrificing their own are subsequently more likely to offer to help random strangers with tasks like changing a flat tire, or carrying a heavy package.
And the behavior changes are mostly transient... The effect doesn't generally last beyond a few hours or days, unless the priming process is repeated.
So researchers can use priming to explore human motivations, and reveal connections that the subjects aren't even consciously aware of. It still depends on careful experimental design, because you never really know exactly why people are responding to the priming stimulus. But if you pick your stimuli carefully, you can usually eliminate alternative possibilities pretty well.