BELIEFS MADE REAL
Why do we commit to certain business ideas and not others? How do our beliefs become so rock solid that they are virtually impossible to dislodge? Most businesspeople think of commitment as an intangible force. They know it when they feel it, but don’t see any underlying mechanisms to explain how something so “soft” actually works. But research into how the brain works sheds considerable light on the fact that such mechanisms not only exist at a neurological level, they exert great power as well.
In a 2007 study, neurologist Sam Harris and two collaborators investigated the role of various brain regions and structures in mediating our beliefs. They measured how long it took people to judge written statements as “true,” “false,” or “undecidable,” and they scanned their subjects’ brains during the process using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They found that people assessed statements as believable more quickly than they judged statements to be false or undecidable, and that the different types of statements were processed in distinct regions of the brain. In short, new information that matches our existing perceptions gets an “express lane” treatment, whereas contradictory information takes a longer, more tortuous processing path. “Because the brain appears to process false or uncertain statements in regions linked to pain and disgust,” the researchers wrote, “this research supports [the seventeenth century philosopher] Spinoza’s conjecture that most people have a low tolerance for ambiguity and that belief comes quickly and naturally, whereas skepticism is slow and unnatural.”6
Researchers have also found that deep levels of passion create significant changes in the brain, changes that, in turn, reinforce the very beliefs that created them. Andrew Newberg, M. D., director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, has studied the brain’s role in spirituality and written extensively about the topic. He and his collaborators have scanned the brains of hundreds of religious practitioners (Franciscan nuns engaged in prayer, meditating Buddhists, Pentecostal followers speaking in tongues), documenting how beliefs become neurologically real in the minds of practitioners. He even scanned the brain of an avowed atheist, who was asked to attempt to pray to God, and concluded that when a person is asked to adopt beliefs contrary to his own, the brain often applies the brakes, so to speak. “If the pieces don’t fit well together, a neurological dissonance is created that sends an alarm to other processes in the brain.”7
With each passing day, Lynn Ivey found more reasons to believe. In November 2006, a month after her mother passed away from complications related to her dementia, she received an e-mail from a woman who had read about The Ivey in a local magazine. “You do not know how much I have prayed for someone like you,” the woman wrote, going on to share that her husband was declining due to a recent, massive stroke, and she was entering her own battle with breast cancer. “Please tell me that you will be open soon and that there is some availability. Could you send me some information? Lynn, you are a GOD SEND! I had always thought a higher-class daycare would be a great thing to do. If you need any help at all, I would love to help out, but first I need you to OPEN!”
