Societal Molding at its Finest

Hilarious Doctor Yamawaki tells the class that so-and-so postulated that religious of this world are more susceptible to mental illness, and the more devout to their religion they were, the more susceptible they would be. “What do you think about that?” she says in her broken Engrish. Now, before I proceed, I have to point out that virtually the entire class is religious people. What follows is a 20-minute “here’s why” of students giving definitive reasons for the results of his studies. I have to give them credit, they were quite creative at debunking the reasons behind this finding. While the research originally postulated Neurosis as being the cause behind people believing religion, the students said things like “it’s less acceptable for someone in a religious society like ours to be mentally ill or depressed so it is more stressful to them, and the people with even the slightest hint of this seek help” and “When we don’t live according to our standards it’s harder to deal with because of our beliefs, and we find ourselves living higher standards than many of peers, which also makes it more difficult and stressful” and all sorts of other clever answers. Most of them, of course, were right, to a certain extent. The teacher even mentioned how Utah is the most educated state in the nation, so it’s likely that they will turn to psychologists for help rather than booze, like many do.

But after TWENTY MINUTES of explaining that the religiously minded really are more susceptible to mental illness due to cultural factors, the truth came out. This guy’s theory was debunked shortly after it was released, with many more correlative studies showing that the religious really don’t have any more mental illnesses, nor did they show up as more susceptible on any measure taken by religious and non-religious professors alike. The entire class was convinced at the simple one-liner mentioning of study that maybe religious people are crazier than “the rest of us.” Not one of them was willing to say “I don’t think that’s true.” How sad!

Though, even I was duped by this same phenomenon. I was a research subject for extra credit, they had me take a long survey about my thoughts about what was effective to being healthy. Then they weigh me, measure me, and have me read three research articles about what really is effective to lose weight. Afterwards, I take what is basically the exact same survey hidden under the guise of different wording. Little did I know that the research articles were fake, and sure enough, my answers about what keeps someone healthy were different from before and after reading the articles. Were my twenty one years of experience really trumped by a few measly fake articles?

I wish I knew where I was going, but I don’t. The moral of the story is this, I suppose. Don’t believe those online surveys you all love, it might ruin your life. The next time someone quotes a statistic, inform them that you have chosen to not be easily persuaded by such simple methods (stupid Jedi thinks his mind tricks work on me!) Most importantly, however, don’t ever believe anything that has a nicely re-capped moral to the, story ready for you to digest – they are probably trying to trick you into being molded in their own view of what society should be like.