Asking for More Evidence Looks Trustworthy in Science and Less Committed in Religion

Tania Lombrozo, a Princeton psychology professor who works at the boundary of philosophy and psychology, told interviewer Thomas Smith about an experiment on what people infer from questioning. Participants read short vignettes in which a character heard a new claim for the first time and either accepted it or asked for more evidence and explanation.

Lombrozo said participants judged the questioner as, in her words, "more concerned with the truth," and more trustworthy.

To compare settings, she said her team used the Shroud of Turin because the same cloth could carry a religious claim tied to Jesus or a scientific claim about its origins. That let the researchers hold the act of asking constant while changing whether the surrounding story was religious or scientific.

When the claim was scientific, participants reading the stories saw the request for more as a good sign. Lombrozo said they took the questioner to be more concerned with the truth and more trustworthy.

When the claim was religious in the study, she said, the same request led participants to judge the questioner as less committed to religion, as if the person would not take on faith something that should be taken on faith.

Lombrozo argues that seeking explanations is not always about learning. She said it is also shaped by social goals, like not annoying the people around us, and by practical goals, because we cannot learn about everything, so people often decide that what they know is enough for now.

Smith said he feels that tension when someone offers an offbeat remedy, like a tree root for back pain, and asking why it would work feels socially off limits.