Replicating the ‘seductive allure of neuroscience explanations’ effect in a classroom experiment and an online study

Abstract

The ‘seductive allure of neuroscience explanations’ effect refers to the observation that superfluous neuroscience information (SNI) added to an explanation can bias judgements of information quality. We report the results of a classroom experiment to sensitize undergraduate students to that issue. In contrast to previous studies, students rated good explanations without SNI the highest. Inspired by these observations, we set out to conceptually replicate the original study using an online experiment that allowed us to directly assess the statistical interactions between explanation quality, the presence of SNI and expertise levels. In this preregistered study, participants ( n = 430) with varying levels of expertise rated the quality of good and bad explanations, with or without SNI. Irrespective of the presence of SNI, participants across all expertise levels rated good explanations more favourably than bad ones. Still, the differences were surprisingly small, and the variation in rating was high. We also found a statistically significant interaction between the impact of SNI and expertise, with SNI boosting ratings mostly in participants with less expertise ( p < 0.001), corroborating previous findings. Developing a curriculum that trains students to distinguish between actual explanations and ‘crap’ would ultimately also sensitize teachers and experts that produce and review scientific information.