Superfluous Neuroscience Information Makes Explanations of Psychological Phenomena More Appealing Diego Fernandez-Duque 1 , Jessica Evans 1 , Colton Christian 2 , and Sara D. Hodges 2 Abstract ■ Does the presence of irrelevant neuroscience information make explanations of psychological phenomena more appealing? Do fMRI pictures further increase that allure? To help answer these questions, 385 college students in four experiments read brief descriptions of psychological phenomena, each one accom- panied by an explanation of varying quality (good vs. circular) and followed by superfluous information of various types. Ancillary measures assessed participants’ analytical thinking, beliefs on dualism and free will, and admiration for different sciences. In Experiment 1, superfluous neuroscience information increased the judged quality of the argument for both good and bad expla- nations, whereas accompanying fMRI pictures had no impact above and beyond the neuroscience text, suggesting a bias that is conceptual rather than pictorial. Superfluous neuroscience information was more alluring than social science information (Experiment 2) and more alluring than information from prestigious “hard sciences” (Experiments 3 and 4). Analytical thinking did not protect against the neuroscience bias, nor did a belief in dualism or free will. We conclude that the “allure of neuroscience” bias is conceptual, specific to neuroscience, and not easily accounted for by the prestige of the discipline. It may stem from the lay belief that the brain is the best explanans for mental phenomena. ■ In 1995, a group of graduate students had just completed the 8th Cognitive Neuroscience Summer Institute at University of California, Davis, and thus, it was time to get one of the commemorative t-shirts. They read “Image is Everything, ” a double entendre linking a hot new methodology to an older adage about the importance of strategic self-presentation. Nonetheless, we suspect that in a broader sense the attendants to that Summer Institute wore the motto in all earnestness, awed at possi- bilities of the nascent field of neuroimaging. Twenty years later, it seems uncontroversial that neuroimaging has led to a redescription of mental processes in ways that have often enriched our understanding of the psychology. When done well, cognitive neuroscience provides addi- tional explanatory power to the mechanisms that underlie psychological processes. Alas, cognitive neuroscience— like any science—is not always reported well. Sometimes, superfluous information is added that does not provide additional insight. In this study, we ask whether such super- fluous neuroscience information increases the perceived quality of psychological explanations and begin to explore the possible mechanisms underlying this effect. One possible reason why some neuroscience infor- mation may bias judgments is perceptual: The ease of pro- cessing of brain pictures might make the argument seem more compelling ( perceptual processing hypothesis). Consistent with this view, perceptual qualities of brain pic- tures, such as their three dimensionality, tend to increase the perceived scientific quality of the accompanying text (Keehner, Mayberry, & Fischer, 2011; Reber & Schwarz, 1999). Another possible reason for the neuroscience bias is the prestige of the “hard” sciences ( prestige of science hypothesis). People believe that biological explanations are more complex and more scientific than psychologi- cal explanations. This bias toward the natural sciences emerges as early as kindergarten, and vestiges of it can be observed in adulthood (Keil, Lockhart, & Schlegel, 2010). Thus, explanations that invoke neuroscience may be viewed as reflecting greater expertise. In a re- lated vein, the use of jargon in describing neuroscience in- formation might also cue expertise. For example, the mere presence of a nonsense math equation increases the per- ceived quality of a scientific abstract (Eriksson, 2012). Finally and most intriguingly, superfluous neuroscience informa- tion might increase the perceived scientific quality of expla- nations if people’s lay theories of the mind embrace the idea that the brain is the best explanans of mental phenom- ena (i.e., a brain-as-engine-of-mind hypothesis). If so, superfluous explanations should fool participants into seeing the explanations as informative, but giving the superfluous information a “neuro” flavor would be essential; this hypothesis predicts that other jargon or scientific cues would not work as effectively. 1 Villanova University, 2 University of Oregon © 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 27:5, pp. 926–944 doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00750