Narratives That Hold Us: Why the Mind Accepts False Explanations in Order to Suffer Less

We like to imagine that we believe things because they are true. But very often the mind first accepts whatever can organize the body, reduce anguish, and restore some sense of ground. From early life onward, human beings do not deal only with facts; they also deal with unpredictability, dependence, and the need for protection. That is why many false narratives survive not because they explain the world better, but because they function as provisional shelter in the face of chaos. Recent work on coregulation and development shows how deeply human growth depends on mutual adjustment, relational trust, and embodied stabilization. (PubMed)

This is especially clear in childhood. A child is not born with a ready-made critical sense or a refined detector of reliability. Children learn through coexistence, testimony, repetition, correction, and belonging. Recent research shows that testimonial learning is central to development, and that moving from early credulity toward more selective trust depends on learning to evaluate the quality of information, the trustworthiness of the speaker, and the structure of the situation. Studies with infants also suggest that babies are already sensitive to the informativeness of evidence and to prediction errors. In other words, the infant body does not merely receive narratives; it already begins to anticipate regularities and to differentiate, in an early way, what seems more or less informative. (Nature)

That is why narrative, culture, and belonging enter so early into the formation of consciousness. A narrative does not merely describe reality; it can make reality livable. When inner and outer worlds feel chaotic, a simple, shared, emotionally reassuring explanation can work as an affective and social regulator. In this sense, the problem of a false narrative is not only epistemic. It is also bodily. A poor explanation may remain alive because it helps contain fear, disorientation, and helplessness. Recent work on intolerance of uncertainty reinforces exactly this point by treating uncertainty as something felt in the body, as a sense of unsafety, not just as an abstract intellectual doubt. (ScienceDirect)

This is where the concept we are proposing enters: functional falsehood. This is not a formal clinical category, but a useful formulation for something very common. By functional falsehood, we mean a situation in which a belief does not explain the world well, yet still performs an important regulatory function: it reduces anguish, strengthens bonds, offers a frame for chaos, and preserves a minimal sense of identity. In such cases, the belief may be weak as an explanation and strong as protection. It survives not because it is good science, good logic, or good observation, but because it holds the person together. And for someone trying simply not to collapse, being held may weigh more than being correct. Research on misinformation, motivated reasoning, and identity-related resistance helps explain why fragile beliefs can persist even when confronted with facts or corrections. (Frontiers)

That is why we often prefer a lie that stabilizes us to a truth that throws us back into the abyss of uncertainty. This preference is not always conscious. In many cases, it already appears as an economy of body and attention: accepting the narrative of the group, the family, the tradition, the religion, or the ideology may cost less than reopening the void. The false belief then begins to function like an affective and social brace. It supports posture, organizes language, dampens fear, and postpones subjective collapse. The problem is that this embrace may demand a high price: the suspension of healthy doubt, reduced plasticity, and increasing difficulty revising beliefs when the facts change. (ScienceDirect)

Faced with facts and material realities, we do not produce only perception; we also produce comments, suspicions, accusations, and doubts. That is part of human consciousness. The problem begins when doubt stops refining reality and starts circulating without material grounding. At that point, it can corrode reputations in everyday life and, on a larger scale, be used to block public decisions, protect markets, and preserve large flows of profit even in the face of strong scientific arguments. David Michaels describes this broader pattern as the strategic manufacture of doubt, and recent work on climate disinformation and the opioid industry shows closely related dynamics: uncertainty is no longer used as method, but as delay, obstruction, and protection of vested interests. (Oxford University Press)

That is why we may need a simple stochastic rule to protect critical sense without falling into self-sabotage: do not speculate upon speculation. For every material reality there may be many possible narratives, but no narrative should take another narrative as a sufficient basis without returning to data, observable effects, and explicit degrees of uncertainty. When that return to the real fails, doubt stops being method and becomes shelter, weapon, or rumination. Then the mind may confuse prudence with fear, criticality with paralysis, and honest uncertainty with imprisonment. To sustain healthy doubt is not to spin endlessly around hypotheses; it is to keep interpretation tied to the world, without allowing the body to be captured by narratives that no longer investigate anything and merely protect anxieties or interests. (Frontiers)

In our language, this is fertile ground for what we call Zone 3 simulating Zone 2. The person appears calm, but that calm does not come from critical openness or genuine fruition. It comes from rigid stabilization. The narrative welcomes, but it also narrows. It protects against uncertainty, but in exchange it demands the suspension of revision, curiosity, stochastic thinking, and often a more open bodily experience of reality itself. The subject seems stable, but is actually just well-contained within the narrative that protects them. Research on self-uncertainty, group identification, and identity threat supports this broad picture: under threat, groups and beliefs can strongly reduce uncertainty while also increasing closure and resistance to correction. (Riviste Online SApienza)

In childhood, this may appear as attachment to stories that organize fear. In adolescence and adulthood, it may appear as adherence to simplistic explanations, gurus, dogmas, sects, conspiracy theories, or hyper-closed identities. The underlying mechanism, however, may be similar: in the face of too much uncertainty, the mind adopts a frame that can contain it. The problem is not seeking a frame. The problem is when the frame becomes so rigid that it blocks revision, criticism, and living contact with reality. The challenge, then, is not to destroy all narratives, but to mature enough to distinguish between narratives that help us think better and narratives that merely sedate us. (Riviste Online SApienza)

BrainLatam2026 Comment: DREX Cidadão, Belonging, and Decolonial Neuroscience

This theme speaks directly to DREX Cidadão. A society that produces chronic material insecurity, humiliation, and abandonment creates fertile ground for functionally comforting falsehoods. When metabolic security, social bond, and concrete horizons of belonging are missing, simplified promises gain force. In this reading, belonging is not a psychological luxury; it is part of the infrastructure of critical thought. A less cornered social body needs fewer rigid narratives in order to remain standing. That is why a decolonial neuroscience perspective should not merely judge those who adhere to fragile beliefs. It should also ask: what kind of world are we producing that makes so many people need functional falsehoods in order not to collapse? (PubMed)

Closing

Narratives hold us. Some hold us and free us. Others hold us and imprison us. The difference may be this: a good narrative helps us cross uncertainty without amputating critical sense; a bad narrative comforts us at the cost of our inner freedom.

Perhaps maturing does not mean abandoning all stories, but learning to distinguish them. Which stories help us breathe better and think better? And which merely sedate us so that we can endure, without noticing, the loss of our own criticality?

In the end, the challenge is not to live without narratives.
It is not to turn into sacred truth something that entered our life only as an analgesic for chaos.

Final References

Bornstein MH, Esposito G. Coregulation: A Multilevel Approach via Biology and Behavior. Children. 2023. (PubMed)

Begus K, Bonawitz E, et al. Infants Evaluate Informativeness of Evidence and Predict Causal Events as Revealed in Theta Oscillations and Predictive Looking. Communications Psychology. 2024. (Nature)

Freeston MH, Komes J. Revisiting Uncertainty as a Felt Sense of Unsafety: The Somatic Error Theory of Intolerance of Uncertainty. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. 2023. (ScienceDirect)

Abendroth J, Nauroth P, Gollwitzer M. Non-strategic Detection of Identity-threatening Information. PLOS ONE. 2022. (PLOS)

Hogg MA. Uncertainty, Group Identification and Intergroup Behavior. Psychology Hub. 2024. (Riviste Online SApienza)

Zhou Y, Shen L. Processing of Misinformation as Motivational and Cognitive Biases in Information Processing. Frontiers in Psychology. 2024. (Frontiers)

Gertrudix M, Carbonell-Alcocer A, Arcos R. Disinformation as an Obstructionist Strategy in Climate Change Mitigation. Open Research Europe. 2024. (PubMed)

Gupta R, et al. The Opioid Industry’s Use of Scientific Evidence to Advance Claims About Prescription Opioid Safety and Effectiveness. Health Affairs Scholar. 2024. (PubMed)

Michaels D. The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception. Oxford University Press. 2020. (Oxford University Press)