Scientific Report on Bial Fellowship 36/08 Theoretical Background

Scientific Report on Bial Fellowship 36/08

Theoretical background and study overview In sympathetic magical belief, objects are deemed to possess an affinity of power through their resemblance or connection to individuals by the ‘Law of Similarity’ (Frazer, 1922). Early belief in these laws underpin folk herbal remedies, alchemy and voodoo witchcraft, but also trigger magical notions in modern scientifically literate adults (e.g. Rozin & Nemeroff, 1990).

One of the most dramatic examples of belief in sympathetic magic is the concern that damage to a representation can somehow harm the real-world person or object it is representing (Behrand, 2003). In our pilot studies, we have demonstrated that adults who do not think that they will be upset by cutting up a photograph of their childhood sentimental object will show significantly elevated arousal as measured by their galvanic skin response. Following the destruction they reported no awareness of increased arousal. This suggests that there may be latent emotional responses to perceived destruction that are suppressed. We predict that this reflects suppression of amygdala fear activation by inhibitory dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPC) networks.

The rationale for this frontal inhibitory effect is the recent demonstration that activation of the DLPC and anterior cingulate is associated with unwanted prejudicial responses to Black faces by White participants (Richeson et al, 2003; Cunningham et al, 2004). These studies on prejudice are consistent with the idea that it is possible to control spontaneously activated negative attitudes. The current body of work examined whether the same network might be implicated in sympathetic magical reasoning.

Sixty-seventy percent of Western children form a strong emotional attachment to a specific toy which they then treat as invaluable and irreplaceable (Lehman et al., 1995). Many adults retain their childhood attachment objects soothing (Hood, 2009). To examine sympathetic magical belief in scientifically rational adults we focused on measuring participant’s explicit and implicit responses when destroying a photo of their childhood attachment object or watching a video of their attachment object being destroyed.

Stage 1 Three experiments with 82 participants established that scientifically literate adults experience implicit arousal when cutting up photos of their childhood attachment objects relative to other objects they own or control objects. This was the case when they were and were not being observed by the experimenter and when the picture of their attachment object bore little resemblance to the object itself. These results are taken as evidence for a tacit acceptance of sympathetic magic even in those individuals who explicitly stated that they would not be upset. This suggests that sympathetic magical belief is an implicit reasoning bias that is suppressed. This work was accepted for publication in the Journal of Cognition and Culture (2010) and is attached in Appendix A.

Stage 2 Having established an implicit response to destruction of a picture of an attachment object, it was necessary to change the protocol to make it appropriate for conducting an fMRI scanning experiment. Participants in the scanner cannot move to cut up the pictures, as they did in Stage 1, so a series of videos were created in which the participant saw their attachment object or a range of control objects (their phone, a toy that looked similar to their attachment object, an empty box), being placed in a box and then the box being destroyed in 6 different ways (burning, exploding, chain-sawing, being driven over, squashed and skewered). These were contrasted with a video in which the box was not harmed (it was stroked) to ensure participants did not become habituated to the destruction scenarios. Piloting with 10 participants revealed significantly greater electrodermal response

1 when presented with a destruction video involving their attachment objects relative to all of the other controls. The degree of electrodermal response was comparable to that shown in Stage 1 where participants themselves cut up pictures of their attachment objects and controls.

Stage 3 A primary hypothesis was that the degree to which sympathetic magical beliefs are expressed would be modulated by individual differences in reasoning style, paranormal belief and attachment style. These were measured using the following instruments:

The Rational-Experiential Reasoning Scale (Pacini & Epstein, 1999) – a 41-item scale that establishes along two orthogonal scales whether individuals prefer to reason experientially (e.g. in line with their gut reactions) or rationally (e.g. though conscious analysis).

Revised Paranormal Beliefs Scale (Tobyack, 2004) – a 26-item questionnaire on which respondents score a range of common paranormal beliefs as true or false.

Global Attachment Style Questionnaire (Fraley, Waller & Brennan, 2000) – a 36-item questionnaire to establish whether respondents form anxious or avoidant social attachments.

Explicit measures In addition we also asked participants to rate how emotionally significant their attachment object was to them and, on a scale of 1-10, where 1 was the worst thing that could ever happen, how upset they thought they would be about watching a video of their attachment object being destroyed, knowing it was pretend.

Participants Thirty-two adult participants (6 male) aged between 20 and 55 years (mean age = 27 years). All of the participants obtained their attachment object before 5 years of age and the majority (88%) obtained it in their first year of life. All of the attachment objects had a face (though in some cases the face was no longer visible due to wear and tear.)

Results & Discussion Experiential reasoning correlated significantly with paranormal beliefs and anticipated distress seeing the destruction video. This suggests that individual differences in reasoning style predicts explicit sympathetic magical beliefs. Self-rated emotional significance of the attachment object also correlated significantly with how upset participants predicted that they would be which provides confirmation that the explicit measures are consistent. Attachment style did not correlate significantly with any of the other measures.

Stage 4 All of the participants who had completed Stage 3 (N = 32) were then placed into an MRI scanner. The primary objective of this experiment was to establish whether the amygdala, associated with low-level threat detection (e.g. Whalen, 1998), is differentially activated when a representation of the participant’s attachment object is destroyed as compared to objects that have personal financial but no sentimental value. The second objective of this experiment was to determine whether those participants who claim they will be least distressed by destruction of a representation of their attachment object show significantly greater activation of dorso-lateral pre-frontal lobe networks associated in previous literature with inhibition of pre-potent responses. Correlations were explored between strength of frontal lobe response and participants’ scores on the Experiential-Rational Reasoning Scale (Pacini & Epstein, 1999), the Revised Paranormal Beliefs Scale (Tobacyk, 2004) and anticipated perceived distress.

Acquisition All data were acquired on a GE 3 Tesla HDx system. BOLD FMRI data were obtained using a gradient echo EPI sequence with the following parameters: Repetition time (TR) = 3000ms; echo time (TE) = 35ms; field of view = (240mm)2; data matrix = 64x64; 44 slices with thickness 2.8mm and 1.0mm gap; parallel imaging (ASSET) factor = 2. Slices were acquired with an oblique-axial angulation, aligned to the participants’ anterior commissure- posterior commissure line. A T1-weighted 3D structural scan (FSPGR) was acquired during the same session for registration purposes, with the following parameters; TR/TE=7.9/3.0 ms, TI=450ms, Flip angle=20deg, 1 average, data matrix 256x256x176, field of view 256x256x176 mm3 .

Statistical Analysis Data preprocessing and analysis were performed using the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB) Software Library (www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/ fsl). Spatial smoothing was applied using a full-width half-maximum Gaussian kernel of 5 mm. Preprocessing and analysis was performed using FEAT (fMRI Expert Analysis Tool, version 5.63). To remove low- frequency artifacts, each functional run was temporally filtered using a high-pass cutoff of 100 s. FMRIB Brain Extraction Tool (Smith, 2002) was used to remove non- brain data, and motion correction was applied using 3-dimensional co-registration of each image to the middle image of the time series with MCFLIRT (Jenkinson, Bannister, Brady & Smith, 2002). Registration of the functional data followed a two-stage process using FLIRT, initially the EPI data were registered to the participant’s a high resolution T1-weighted FSPGR image (7 degrees of freedom), and then registered to the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) 152 standard template anatomical image (12 degrees of freedom).

Each trial type (attachment object, AO; control object, CO; familiar object, FO; empty box, EB) was modeled as a 15s block, with onset time at the beginning of the video. For the first level analysis, four event types were modeled – the ‘destruction’ videos for attachment object, control object, familiar object (mobile phone) and empty box. Six contrasts were set up to investigate differences in neural activity when viewing the destruction of the attachment object compared with neural activity when viewing the destruction of other object types, specifically AO-CO, CO-AO, AO-FO, FO-AO, AO-EB, EB-AO.

The core hypothesis was that amygdala activation would be greater in all participants when viewing a video of their attachment object compared with other object types. A region of interest (ROI) analysis was performed, comprising the left and right amygdala, defined by the Harvard-Oxford Subcortial Atlas. The mean percentage BOLD signal change over the amygdala ROI (left+right) averaged over all participants was calculated for the contrasts AO-CO, AO-FO, AO-EB, i.e. the conditions where the activity associated with the attachment object video was greater than for the other videos.

Secondly, a whole-brain analysis was conducted to investigate the following: (i) Whether other brain regions demonstrated greater neural activity when viewing attachment object destruction videos (ii) Whether the participants who reported less subjective distress when viewing trials involving the destruction of attachment objects would show less activity in frontal brain regions than those who reported higher levels of distress. (iii) Whether the neural activity associated with viewing destruction sequences of the participants’ attachment objects was correlated with their score in the rational and experiential components for the Rational-Experiential Inventory.

To test this, a second-level analysis was performed comparing the activity for conditions AO-CO, AO-FO, AO-EB including the following effects; (i) mean activation across the whole group (ii) mean activation of high distress group > mean activation of low distress group (and low distress > high distress), and (iii) score in the REI. The

3 resulting Z statistic images were thresholded using clusters determined by Z>3.0 and a (corrected) cluster significance threshold of p<0.05.

Amygdala Activation when viewing Attachment Objects Performing ROI analysis on the amygdala showed no significant increase in activity in this region while when participants were viewing attachment object destruction trials, compared with the other objects. Figure 1 shows the mean percentage signal change in the amygdala (left + right) when participants were viewing the Attachment Object (AO) compared with Familiar (FO), Control (CO) objects and an empty box (EB). None of these signal changes attained significance.

Whole Brain Analysis Figure 2 shows the results of the mean group activation from the whole brain analysis, and the corresponding details of the clusters of significant activation (p<0.05, corrected) are listed in Table 1. For the contrast AO-CO (activation associated with viewing attachment object significantly greater than for the control object) there are four clusters of activity; in the anterior cingulate, left insula, supplementary motor area (SMA) and left frontal pole. There is a (non-significant) trend for activation in the right insula. For AO-FO, the pattern of activity is similar – again there is activity in the anterior cingulate and SMA (this time merged into one larger cluster), left insula and left frontal pole. In this contrast, the activity for the right insula is significant. There is a marked difference for the final contrast, involving the empty box, as none of the previous clusters are evident in the analysis, but there are two clusters in the occipital pole (left and right).

In the comparison between the mean activation for the participants who reported less subjective distress and those who reported more distress, there was no significant difference between these two groups. Similarly, there was no correlation in brain activity with the participants’ scores in the rational and experiential components in the Rational-Experiential Inventory.

Figure 1: Percentage signal change in the amygdala for the contrasts AO-FO, AO-CO and AO-EB. None of the changes in activity associated with viewing the attachment object stimuli were significant.

Figure 2: Results of whole-brain analysis showing the group activation for the three conditions. (a) AO-CO; (b) AO-FO; (c) AO-EB.

MNI coordinates of peak Number of Maximum x Contrast Region Voxels Z statistic (mm) y (mm) z (mm) AO - CO Anterior Cingulate 377 5.4 -6 28 28 Insula (L) 276 4.4 -44 12 10 Supplementary Motor Area 178 4.5 14 14 66 Frontal Pole (L) 160 4.8 -26 48 28

Anterior Cingulate & AO - FO Supplementary Motor Area 1477 5.3 -6 26 30 Insula (L) 777 5.2 -42 14 -4 Insula (R) 480 5.3 30 22 0 Frontal Pole (R) 105 4.4 -22 44 24

AO - EB Occipital Cortex (L) 491 5.0 -28 -96 -8 Occipital Cortex (R) 310 5.3 32 -94 -4

Table 1: Summary of the significant clusters of activity (p<0.05, corrected) for the three contrasts involving the attachment object stimuli.

Discussion The primary objective of this experiment was to establish whether the amygdala is differentially activated when a representation of the participant’s attachment object is destroyed as compared to objects that have no sentimental value. The results revealed no significant difference in amygdala activation between the conditions. However, watching the destruction of an attachment object elicited significantly greater insular activation across the group relative to watching the destruction of either their mobile phone (FO) or of a perceptually similar but different toy (CO). The insular in humans has an important role in processing pain and loss and in experiencing basic emotions including anger, fear, disgust and sadness (e.g. Wright, Shapira, Goodman & Liu, 2004; Phan, Wager, Taylor, Liberzon, 2002; Knutson, Wimmer, Rick, Hollon, Prelec & Loewenstein, 2008). The results provide preliminary evidence that the insular, rather than the amygdala, may be implicated in sympathetic magical biases when observing the destruction of a beloved object. The difference in activation between the AO and CO conditions shows that this pattern cannot be explained simply by watching the destruction of any soft toy. The difference between the AO and FO conditions shows that the pattern cannot be explained simply by watching the destruction of owned objects. Rather, we interpret this result as showing that the emotional value of the attachment object leads participants to reason implicitly about the destruction scenario in a sympathetically magical manner, as if it were real, despite the fact that they explicitly know that the video is faked and that their attachment object is fine. We propose that it is this implicit insular activation that is driving the higher arousal to cutting up photos of an attachment object relative to controls (as measured by electrodermal skin conductance) in Stage 1. The fact that no amygdala activation was found suggests that the network for processing negative thoughts in this context may differ importantly from that used to process negative thoughts in the context of racist beliefs (Richeson et al, 2003).

The second objective of this experiment was to determine whether those participants who claim they will be least distressed by destruction of a representation of their attachment object show significantly greater activation of dorsolateral pre-frontal lobe networks associated in previous literature with inhibition of pre- potent responses. A group analysis revealed significantly greater co-activation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the left frontal pole in the AO condition relative to both the FO and CO conditions. Both of these areas are associated with suppression and regulation of emotional processing (e.g. Koechlin, 2011; Cohen, Botvinick, & Carter, 2000). We interpret this finding as evidence supporting the hypothesis that the neural correlates of sympathetic magical belief include insular activation to perceived threat and concurrent co-activation of networks in the dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex that are called on to suppress this irrational bias in adults who are explicitly aware that it is inappropriate in this context.

However, none of the individual differences measures correlated significantly with the degree of frontal lobe activation while watching the destruction sequences. This may be because the measures were not sensitive enough to differentiate between the members of the group. All of the questionnaires relied on participant self- report which is notoriously susceptible to higher-level biases such as worrying what the experimenter will think and being in a scientific context. To circumvent this problem, participants were assured that all of their responses were anonymous but it is possible that this was not sufficient to outweigh their concerns. As such, participants’ responses may not truthfully reflect their real beliefs and reasoning biases. In future work it may be advisable to find a more implicit measure of individual differences. An alternative possibility is that the population selected for this study was too homogenous on these measures to reveal significant differences. We countered this problem by advertising in the popular media to attract members of the public of a range of ages and backgrounds as well as students from the science faculty at Bristol and Cardiff Universities. Analysis of the questionnaires and explicit measures also revealed that responses fell across a wide range of the scales so we do not believe that the finding can be explained simply by the population selected.

The activation of the occipital cortex on in the AO condition relative to the EB condition remains unexplained. One possibility is that, when the box is being destroyed, participants look for parts of their attachment object in the remains but do not do so in the EB condition because they know that there is nothing inside. Further analysis will be required to examine how the control conditions differ relative to each-other but this bears no reflection on the current objectives.

Overall, the work carried out over the period of the grant has revealed that 1. Scientifically educated adults implicitly endorse sympathetic magical beliefs (Stage 1). 2. This bias is evident regardless of whether adults inflict the damage themselves or watch it being done (Stage 2). 3. There are individual differences in the degree to which individuals are explicitly emotionally attached to childhood objects and this can be predicted by their reasoning style (Stage 3). 4. That implicit sympathetic magical belief may activate neural areas implicated in processing emotions such as fear and pain which must then be suppressed by frontal lobe networks (Stage 4). This is in line with our primary hypothesis.

Future directions 1. The results from Stages 3 and 4 are currently being prepared for publication in a high-profile, peer reviewed journal. 2. An undergraduate student is continuing data collection as part of her final dissertation that examines how this model might be applied to pictures of loved people and strangers. 3. A large body of continuing research in our lab examines the extent of implicit magical beliefs in scientifically literate adults and their developmental origins.

Dissemination activities

Academic audiences Lindemann, M., Reikki, T. & Hood, B.M. (2011). Is weaker inhibition associated with supernatural beliefs? Journal of Culture and Cognition, 11, 231-239. (Appendix A) Gjersoe, N.L. Totems, temples & teddies; The cognitive science of why we revere special objects. Invited paper delivered to the Goldsmiths University Anomolistic Psychology External Lecture Series, January 2011. Hood, B.M. (2009). SuperSense: why we believe the unbelievable. San Francisco, Harper Collins. Also published in The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Poland, Spain, Croatia, Colombia, UK, Portugal, and Japan. Hood, B.M., Donnelly, K., Leonards, U., & Bloom, P. (2010). Implicit voodoo: electrodermal activity reveals a susceptibility to sympathetic magic. Journal of Culture and Cognition, 3(4), 391-399 (Appendix A) Gjersoe, N.L. One in a million: Attentional and affective biases for unique individuals. Invited paper delivered to the Kyoto University External Seminar Series, November, 2010. Donneley, K. Implicit sympathetic magical beliefs in adults as revealed by destruction of photographs of childhood attachment objects. (March 2009). Poster presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting. Denver, USA. Gjersoe, N.L.(2009) Language and Kinds in Dynamic Object Individuation. Paper delivered to the Society for Research into Child Development Biennial Conference - Denver Hyatt, April 2009 Gjersoe, N.L. When we learn not to believe everything we see. Invited paper delivered to the Developmental Group External Seminar Series. Oxford-Brooks University, 2009. Gjersoe, N.L. Neural correlates of sympathetic magic. Invited paper delivered to the CUBRIC CSF Group Meeting, November 2009

Public audiences Rubin Museum of Art, New York, NY, US April 6th 2009 Night of Philosophy Public Lecture Felix Meritis, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Apr 17th. 2009. “Start the Week” with Andrew Marr May 25th 9.00 am BBC Radio 4. Cheltenham Science Festival Jun 4th 2009. Skeptics in the Pub Penderal London, Jun 22nd 2009 Sci Foo Google Plex Palo Alto, California US July 10th 2009 Dartington Literature Festival, Dartington. Jul 17th 2009. British Science Festival, University of Guildford, Sept. 8th 2009 BBC1 “The One Show” with Germaine Greer, Sept 8th 2009. Richard Dawkins and Bruce Hood in conversation, Festival of Ideas, Bristol Nov 3rd 2009. Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution – Bath, UK, Feb 2nd 2010 Binghamtom Evoutionary Series New York State–invited seminar US, Mar 15th 2010 New York Academy of Sciences – sponsored by the Nour Foundation NY, US. Mar 17th 2010. The Amazing Meeting – Las Vegas, US, July 8th-12th 2010 Frome Festival, Frome, UK, July 15th 2010 Sci Foo Google Plex Palo Alto, California, US July 30th 2010 BBC1 “The One Show” Aug 13th 2010. QED (Question Explore Discover) meeting Manchester, UK, 5-6th Feb 2011. German-American Institute, Cultural Center, Heidelberg, Germany. 13th Feb 2011. The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival, Oxford, 6th Apr 2011. Aberdeen Word Festival, Aberdeen, 13th May 2011 Llamasoft Conference Keynote speaker with Buzz Aldrin, Ann Arbor, US, June 29th 2011. BBC Radio 4 Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox & Robin Ince. Broadcast July 4th 2011. Frome Festival Frome, Keynote speaker UK, July 14th 2011

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