Deena Weisberg and her colleagues demonstrated that if you give one group of laypeople a straightforward explanation of some behavior and another group the same explanation but with vague references to the brain thrown in (“brain scans indicate” or “the frontal-lobe brain circuitry known to be involved”), people assume the latter is more scientific—and therefore more real. Many intelligent people, including psychotherapists, fall prey to the seductive appeal of this language, but laypeople aren’t called upon in court to try to explain what it means.
