The Science of Suggestion: Who Can You Trust?

The Michael Shermer Show # 493

A conversation with cognitive psychologist Amir Raz

Suggestions can make cheap wine taste like Château Margaux, warp our perception of time, and alter our memories—and in an age where disinformation has impacted our personal lives and our politics, the power of suggestion is worth even more attention.

Dr. Raz merges his experience as a magician and hypnotist with decades’ worth of his own neuropsychological research to map the twilight zone where magic and science coalesce, and show how easily suggestible and manipulable we all are.

Amir Raz is a world-renowned expert on the science of suggestion with recent positions as Canada Research Chair, Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology and Neurosurgery, and Psychology at McGill University. Formerly at Columbia University and Cornell Medical Center, he has written over 200 peer-reviewed articles. His new book is The Suggestible Brain: The Science and Magic of How We Make Up Our Minds.

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[ctpaul]

Magic and mentalism has been my lifelong hobby (although I am not a working magician/mentalist), and I appreciate the myriad ways that peoples' cognitive shortcomings can easily be exploited. Magic/mentalism makes use of:

Misdirection
False assumptions
Verbal ambiguity
Memory manipulation (mostly by reframing the spectator's experience after the fact)
Clever sleight of hand techniques
Multiple "outs"
Blatant lying

All of these methods, either individually or in combination, serve to setup a spectator's expectations and then deliver something ostensibly impossible (the "magical" moment). It's a wonderful and entertaining art form. But it's also a serious exploration of human psychology. Anyway, great interview. Thanks Michael! 🙂

[Clem]

Temperature and season. I know people who feel cold simply because the calendar says winter and wear heavy jackets yet outside it's like a nice cool Summer day.

[baconsarny-geddon]

I've always thought of hypnosis as the closest thing we have to something verifiably "paranormal" or "anomalous".

It's a real phenomenon, that you can replicate in a lab. You can (with the right patient) do proper, serious internal surgery, slice open someone's abdominal cavity and chop up their innards, using ONLY hypnosis as anaesthetic, and it works fine...

...Yet we have no idea what the actual mechanism is. Some people deny that hypnosis even exists at all; They say it's just ALL people "playing along" (but "playing along" with painless surgery takes a pretty impressive actor...)

My understanding is that certain drugs, used for heroin addicts, which block the opiate receptors in your brain, also stop hypnosis from preventing pain. So I guess that's a PARTIAL explanation for a mechanism... But there's still giant enough gaps in our knowledge, to make it a genuinely bizarre, mysterious phenomena.

[stevenmyers]

This is one of my favorite episodes! I need to get this book. How will I ever find the time to read the latest Skeptic issue, though? Seriously though, a very very good conversation!

[nickf.]

Thanks Shermer for the great discussion. Just picked up the book on Kindle after finishing the free preview! Super interesting. I can't wait to get further into it!

[frankiecal]

Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are my favorite conspiracy theoriest.

[quantumkath]

I downloaded the ebook by Dr. Amir Raz
The Suggestible Brain: The Science and Magic of How We Make Up Our Minds. Hopefully, I will learn how to identify which patterns of suggestions I am susceptible to, why, which ones are detrimental and should change, and how to change them.

[hueyiroquois]

1:01:22 Is there a name for that phenomenon, and is there a way to prevent it? I often can't find something, because the thing I'm looking for looks like unidentifiable background stuff.

[susie]

A Dr once said, my sickest patients are intellectuals.
This was an excellent discussion! The trains of thought we develope and trying to actively change it is not for the weak 😅

[elizabethnees]

I think suggestibility is a component of creativity.

[drrightlife]

This is a matter of What Is Reality, and difference between actual reality (Noumena) and perceived relity (Phenomena). There is a diff between thinking of a theory and what you accept as real to be trusted and acted upon by instructions. Remember that Value System determines reality. When you know people are liars & lying, you do not trust them or the info they are presenting. What is the Source from which you get info? Or what do place value in and accept as reliable? If I can control your source & flow of info, I control your thinking (garbage in garbage out) and your perceptions and instructions of choosing to act.

[twolaneasphalt]

Bravo for "The Great Drone Panic of 2024 ... and 1914, " that just dropped in my inbox!

[-second-HACKS]

53:30 Why is it difficult to understand? Millions of people are cheeering on genocide right now.

[ferko]

Wow, how can you have an entire show on suggestibility, mass psychosis, controlling people and not even mention COVID and how the government handled it.
Btw yes the holocaust could happen again. When Biden was calling it the "pandemic of the unvaccinated" and saying "we're losing our patients" I was half expecting it to kick off.

[quantumkath]

After reading this book, one recurring theme was the placebo effect. Although it was never mentioned, this is my conclusion, looking at the big picture. God is a placebo.

[chrisgale]

Homage to the late, great James Randi.

[benmohat]

What you’re talking about around minute 53 is a condition called cognitive dissonance

[jamesruscheinski]

God free will sovereignty for divine central authority unity