Pet Theories and Naïve Misconception

Leah Savion

Do heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones? Is the change of seasons a function of the distance of the earth from the sun? Does the process of evolution bring species gradually closer to perfection? Can historical phenomena be attributed to single events? Will a ball dropped from a moving object fall straight down? Affirmative answers to these questions illustrate the power of naïve theories that we all develop from a very early age about the physical world and other minds, about the right, the fair, the normal and the good, about the mental, the metaphysical, free will, possible worlds and the effectiveness of formal education.

Why do we construct pet theories?

A necessary element in our survival kit is the ability to control our environment and future events. To that end, our mind is tailored to accumulate information, and make sense of it in terms of causal connections, generalizations, and projections. Pet theories are the inevitable result of three major forces: human disposition, the world, and the cognitive machinery employed by our brains.

Human Disposition

• Master competencies without instruction
• Search relentlessly for patterns, order, coherence, meaning
• Infer causal connections between events to increase control
• Use imagination and personal experience for generalization

The World

• Presents itself in bits of information that are messy, unrepresentative, unorganized, incomplete and ambiguous.

Our Brain

• Displays amazing computational abilities, but is also limited by storage space, by involuntary selection and search mechanisms, and by inferential length and complexities.
• Uses heuristics (rather than algorithms) for cognitive operations, simplifies, fills up gaps, draws conclusions hastily and overgeneralizes.
• Aims at rapid accumulation of information, often at the expense of its accuracy.

The necessary results of these forces are called preconceptions, conventional or intuitive wisdom, popular beliefs, pseudo scientific hypotheses, prejudices, superstitions, stereotypes, erroneous beliefs, and folk wisdom. Naïve misconceptions are an expected result of the accuracy-speed tradeoff. In our relentless search for connections we impose theories on inherently random phenomena, build complicated schemas to explain events that do not follow known rules, and develop an illusion of control. Our pet theories are:

• Fragmented, often inconsistent, based on principles that emerge spontaneously from limited experience, often immune to evidence, and not voluntarily subjected to metacognitive scrutiny.
• Universal, inevitable, complex, intricate, serviceable, durable, commonsensical, and partly correct.
• Extremely resistant to change, create a barrier to understanding the scientifically and academically “sanctioned ” theories, and tend to emerge in spite of prolonged training and education.

Why are naïve theories so resistant to change?

People hold on to their unexamined theories not because they lack exposure to the relevant evidence, nor because they are not intelligent enough to alter them in face of inconsistencies, but essentially because these pet theories seem consistent with their personal experience, because they become intellectually attached to their elaborate views after years of usage, small modifications and adaptations, and because these theories seem to work in enough instances to warrant continuous use.

This phenomenon of “belief perseverance” is not as irrational as it seems to be. Cognitive economy dictates some resistance to changing conceptions that seem to do an adequate job, even when the uncertainty that has created them can be eliminated. Furthermore, precision, accuracy and complete knowledge are rarely required for daily survival and control. Knowledge does not have to be certain, verifiable, or even a correct logical consequent in order to be useful.

What happens when old meets new?

Pet theories exert such strong influence, that instruction is often ineffective altogether. We tend not to abandon the underlying concepts and principles of our naïve theories even when their incompatibility with the academically accepted theory is made explicit. School education does not seem to dissolve naïve misconceptions, which are likely to emerge unaltered after the final exam. The interference of pet theories with formal education is manifested in one or more of the following:

• The new information is discarded either wholly or partially.
• The new information is altered by an interpretation that fits the naïve conception.
• The new formal knowledge is perceived as confined to what is required in school, but as not applicable in daily life.

What can be done about pet theories?

Eradicating long lived, seemingly successful misconceptions, and replacing them with fundamentally different (and often not intuitive) academic theories, require the understanding of the origins and the cognitive value of our pet theories, and the careful development of subtle and powerful cooperative devices for the mending, correcting and adjusting of them to the acceptable body of knowledge. The following is a suggested four-step pedagogic path:

1. Understand the sources and the necessary functions of naïve theories; share that understanding with your students; explain the intuitive value and the rational aspect of developing simplified conceptions in the absence of scientific knowledge.
2. Identify and recognize the pet theories relevant to your area. Recruit your studentsŲ help in articulating their principles, methods of gathering information, inferential mechanisms, heuristics and applications.
3. For the target naïve misconception, generate discussion (and hopefully a consensus) that results in identifying
   • Circumstances in which it is valid
   • Domains of overgeneralizations or over-simplifications
   • The scope beyond which it becomes irrelevant
   • Areas of direct conflict with the academic theory
4. Provide clear indications of how to reconcile the academic with the pre-existing beliefs by showing how to map the new concepts and ideas onto the network of the naïve conceptions made explicit.

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Last updated: 6 November 2000

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