Mind: Death Anxiety Shapes Views on Evolution

It may be the foundation of modern biology, but fewer than 40% of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution. While frustrated scientists sometimes blame religion for this knowledge gap, newly published research suggests the key factor isn't faith per se but rather a benefit it provides that Darwin does not: A sense that our all-too-short lives have meaning.

Reminders of death tend to evoke enthusiastic adherence to our religious and political belief systems, since they are the mechanisms that promise us either literal or symbolic immortality.

As Tracy and her colleagues note, evolutionary theory, which views human life as the product of a lengthy chain of natural events, seems existentially bleak to many people. In contrast, the relatively new notion of intelligent design theory implies there is a purpose to the human enterprise.

Although there is little evidence to back it up, intelligent design has a strong emotional pull: It may calm existential concerns through the implication of its assertion that human life was intentionally created, rather than resulting from seemingly random and meaningless forces of nature, they write.

In five experiments, the researchers presented participants with a passage arguing for evolutionary theory and/or a passage arguing for intelligent design theory, then assessed their views of the concepts and the author of each statement. For each study, half of the participants were asked at the outset to imagine their own death, while the others were asked to imagine dental pain (a control condition chosen to elicit negative feelings but not life-threatening ones).

Those who had been contemplating their own mortality expressed relatively more positive reactions to intelligent design theory and its proponent, Michael Behe, and significantly greater negativity toward evolutionary theory and its proponent, Richard Dawkins.

In one of their experiments, featuring 269 psychology students, half of the participants read a passage by cosmologist and science writer Carl Sagan.

In it, he argued that humans can attain meaning and purpose by seeking to understand the natural origins of life. Even if we are merely matter, he wrote, we can still find purpose, but it must be one that we work out for ourselves.

Reading that passage produced the opposite result of the earlier studies. Among those who were exposed to Sagan's notions, thoughts of mortality produced a negative reaction to intelligent design theory and a positive one toward evolution.

It seems the study participants were still looking for meaning in response to an existential threat. But after being told by a trusted source that scientific study can satisfy this longing, they found Darwin's concepts surprisingly appealing.

For more, see Death Anxiety Shapes Views on Evolution by Tom Jacobs, March 30, 2011 at Miller-McCune.