On Feb. 22, 2020, "Mad" Mike Hughes strapped a homemade rocket to a ramp in the Mojave Desert and attempted to launch himself skyward to prove the Earth was flat. The flight ended in a crash shortly after takeoff and Hughes died. His dramatic attempt highlights a deeper question: why do people sometimes adopt striking beliefs that lack strong empirical support?
In a new review published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, I argue that experience plays a central role in forming and sustaining what I call "extraordinary beliefs" — ideas such as a flat Earth, spirits, or vaccine microchips. Experience works alongside two widely discussed drivers — cognitive biases and social dynamics — and does so in three important ways: as a filter, a spark, and a reinforcer.
Why Cognitive Biases And Social Dynamics Aren't The Whole Story
Psychologists often emphasize cognitive biases: mental shortcuts that lead people to infer intention or agency behind random events, for example. Social scientists emphasize social dynamics: people adopt beliefs to fit in, signal identity, or gain membership in supportive communities. Both explanations are important, but they underplay how direct experience interacts with those factors to shape which beliefs take hold.
1. Experience As A Filter
Experience determines which extraordinary ideas are plausible from a human perspective and therefore which ones can spread. Consider flat-Earth thinking: the world looks flat from the ground, so visual perception favors that hypothesis over many other incorrect alternatives (a conical or toroidal Earth, for instance). Although scientific evidence establishes a spherical Earth, trusting everyday perception can allow a particular error to propagate widely.
2. Experience As A Spark
Puzzling sensory events often demand explanation. Sleep paralysis is a vivid example: in the liminal state between sleep and wakefulness, people may feel immobile and sense a threatening presence pressing on their chest. Neuroscience interprets this as neural misfiring, but without that framework — as in most of human history — the episode readily becomes evidence of supernatural agents. Similarly, auditory or other hallucinations can provoke belief in spirits or other unseen forces.
3. Experience As A Reinforcer
Immersive practices can generate compelling, personally convincing experiences that reinforce extraordinary beliefs. During ethnographic fieldwork in the highlands of Lesotho, for example, a traditional healer prescribed a hallucinogenic brew to a farmer troubled by repeated miscarriages. The ensuing visions and spirit communications provided an experiential explanation for the misfortune. Rituals, prayer, religious dance, and ceremonial psychoactive use create subjective evidence that consolidates belief.
Implications: Harm, Policy, And Compassion
Extraordinary beliefs are not inherently harmful: religious faith can supply meaning, security and community to billions. But when beliefs involve misinformation about science or politics, they can have serious, even dangerous consequences. Recognizing the role of experience helps researchers and policymakers design more effective interventions — for example, combining factual correction with experiences that address perceived evidence and community dynamics.
Importantly, this perspective supports a more compassionate approach. People who hold beliefs that seem bizarre to others are often responding to experiences that feel real to them. Dismissal and ridicule are unlikely to change minds; empathetic engagement that acknowledges experience may be more productive.
Author: Eli Elster, University of California, Davis. This article is adapted from a piece originally published by The Conversation.
