Lazy Brains

Results showed that brain regions consistent with decision-making were active in participants when making choices on their own; however, there occurred an offloading of the decision-making process in the presence of expert advice," says Jan B. Engelmann, PhD, Emory research fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and first author of the study.

"The expert provided very conservative advice, which in our experiment did not lead to the highest earnings. But the brain activation results suggested that the offloading of decision making was driven by trust in the expert," explains C. Monica Capra, PhD, an economist in the Department of Economics at Emory and coauthor of the study.

"This study indicates that the brain relinquishes responsibility when a trusted authority provides expertise, says Berns. "The problem with this tendency is that it can work to a person's detriment if the trusted source turns out to be incompetent or corrupt."

What do these facts of psychology mean for us, as Catholics? Does this pattern of thought, for example, explain why the priests in the Legionnaires of Christ allowed Fr. Maciel's actions to continue? Is there a danger of following a particular priest (or other religious leader) so closely that you view all of his utterances as virtually infallible? Were the people who supported Obama so fervently during the 2008 election actually acting without thought? At what points do we, ourselves, allow our brains to "turn off" and just accept the advice of the "experts" on the blogosphere?

Troubling.

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