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The evolution of misbelief

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McKay, Ryan T., Dennett, Daniel C.·2009·Behavioral and Brain Sciences
DOI 10.1017/s0140525x09990975
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Abstract

From an evolutionary standpoint, a default presumption is that true beliefs are adaptive and misbeliefs maladaptive. But if humans are biologically engineered to appraise the world accurately and to form true beliefs, how are we to explain the routine exceptions to this rule? How can we account for mistaken beliefs, bizarre delusions, and instances of self-deception? We explore this question in some detail. We begin by articulating a distinction between two general types of misbelief: those resulting from a breakdown in the normal functioning of the belief formation system (e.g., delusions) and those arising in the normal course of that system's operations (e.g., beliefs based on incomplete or inaccurate information). The former are instances of biological dysfunction or pathology, reflecting “culpable” limitations of evolutionary design. Although the latter category includes undesirable (but tolerable) by-products of “forgivably” limited design, our quarry is a contentious subclass of this category: misbeliefs best conceived as design features. Such misbeliefs, unlike occasional lucky falsehoods, would have been systematically adaptive in the evolutionary past. Such misbeliefs, furthermore, would not be reducible to judicious – but doxastically 1 noncommittal – action policies. Finally, such misbeliefs would have been adaptive in themselves, constituting more than mere by-products of adaptively biased misbelief-producing systems. We explore a range of potential candidates for evolved misbelief, and conclude that, of those surveyed, only positive illusions meet our criteria.

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Authors
McKay, R. T., & Dennett, D. C.
Affiliations
  • University of Zurich (CH)
  • Tufts University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2009-12
Volume
32
Issue
6
Pages
493-510
ISSN
  • 0140-525X (ISSN-L)
  • 1469-1825
DOI
10.1017/s0140525x09990975
OpenAlex
W2116598522
Cited by
474
References
522
Citations by year
2026: 27 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 65 · 2021: 28 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 29 · 2016: 25 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 32 · 2013: 29 · 2012: 35
FWCI
28.31
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Behavioral and Brain Sciences (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
  • reroDoc Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
Funders
  • University of Oxford
  • European Commission
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
Keywords
misconceptions, belief evolution, delusions, self-deception, positive illusions, belief formation, evolutionary design, epistemic error
MeSH terms
Adaptation, Psychological, Culture, Delusions, Biological Evolution, Humans, Deception, Psychological Theory, Religion and Psychology

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

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