The Psychology of Belief
How your brain distorts the world to support your emotional attachments to certain ideas
Illustration: Hisham Akira Bharoocha
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Belief
is a powerful and necessary thing, governing our societies, our
day-to-day and inner lives, our thoughts, hopes, plans, and
relationships. You believe that the plane will leave the runway, that
working hard will lead to a promotion, that the candidate you support is
the best one for the job. Some things you believe because a pattern of
experience suggests you should: The sun has come up every morning so
far, so why should tomorrow be any different?
But
other things you believe even despite logic and evidence to the
contrary: The next lottery ticket you buy will be the big one, you can
feel it.
Belief
is like that; some things you believe because you just do. No one, no
matter how brilliant or how educated, is immune to irrational
convictions, says Paul Zak, a neuroscientist at Claremont Graduate
University. For example, “Linus Pauling was a two-time Nobel Prize
winner, one of the most respected scientists ever, and he believed
vitamin C was a cure-all for things and spent a lot of years pushing it
despite being totally unsupported by medical evidence,” Zak says. “He
was as smart as they come, but he deluded himself that this thing was
true when it wasn’t.”
That’s
because the relationship between belief and fact often goes one way:
“Our brains take the facts and fit them to reinforce our beliefs,” Zak
says, and those beliefs don’t need to make sense to be deeply held. It’s
a relationship that has both benefits and drawbacks — but knowing when
it’s helping and when it’s doing us a disservice requires an
understanding of how we form emotional attachments to those beliefs.
“To
become aware of our biases, we need to understand how our emotions play
a role in our decision-making and belief processes,” says Jonas Kaplan,
a professor of psychology at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute.
“Most of the time, it’s a good thing. It’s an old, wise, biological
system that’s there to help us, but it’s not always relevant to modern
life.”
Our
earliest beliefs begin to form long before we’re even really cognizant
of them. Our brains, Zak explains, are designed to look for patterns,
which “allow us to navigate through the world, survive, and reproduce.”
Eventually, our dependence on a pattern becomes a belief in its power.
Some
of those early beliefs form through observation. For instance, “by
about three months old, children understand gravity,” Zak says. “They
believe that if you drop a ball, it will hit the ground. So, if you let
go and the ball hovers in the air, those infants will look at it like,
‘What the hell?’ The hovering ball violates this tenet they’ve already
come to believe.”
Other
beliefs are passed along to us from our families and communities, who
transmit many of the foundational ideas that shape how we see the world.
Evolutionarily speaking, we are herd animals, and there’s an advantage
to going along with the crowd. Those group beliefs, in turn, work their
way into our most basic concept of who we are. “The systems in the brain
that light up when we access our beliefs are the same systems that help
us understand stories,” Kaplan says. “We see a lot of the same brain
systems involved when people think about who they are and about the
beliefs that are most important to them.”
Kaplan
describes a neural system known as the default mode network, a set of
interconnected areas of the brain associated with identity and
self-representation. “It’s the area that lights up in brain imaging when
you ask people to lie there and do nothing,” he says. “Of course,
they’re not doing nothing. They’re thinking — about themselves and their
future and their plans. It also lights up when people read stories with
values they consider deeply important to them and when people think
about their political beliefs.”
When your most deeply held beliefs are challenged, “many of the most biologically basic brain systems, those responsible for protecting us, kick into high gear.”
In a study published in 2016 in Scientific Reports,
Kaplan and his colleagues conducted brain imaging on participants as
they read arguments that contradicted their views on issues, both
political and nonpolitical, and documented their neurological response
to the opposing information. The results of the team’s persuasive
efforts were mixed. “We were able to change minds about things like
whether Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb and if multivitamins are
important,” he says, but other beliefs — those Kaplan calls the “sacred
values” — were all but immovable.
The
reason those so-called sacred values are so difficult to change, Kaplan
says, is that they’re surrounded by a complex network of mental
safeguards. When your most deeply held beliefs are challenged, “many of
the most biologically basic brain systems, those responsible for
protecting us, kick into high gear,” Kaplan says. “These are things like
the amygdala, which tells you when to be afraid, and the insula, the
part of your brain that processes visceral feelings from the gut and
tells you things like if you’re encountering food that’s bad for you. We
have a strong motivation to defend those sacred values.”
Of
course, not every belief is sacred. So, what determines the strength of
our convictions and sets the ones worth protecting apart from the rest?
Most of the time, it’s tied to our emotions.
“When
you establish your beliefs, if they include emotional tags, the brain
saves that information differently so it’s more accessible and
impactful,” Zak says. “The strongest beliefs are tied to things like
9/11 or the birth of a child; highly emotional events create beliefs
that are almost impossible to change.”
So
much of our identity is social, and so many of our social connections
are founded on shared beliefs. Ultimately, Kaplan says, most people find
it simpler to maintain both their established beliefs and their social
circle than to consider a drastic value shift, for reasons that are as
practical as they are mental.
“People
say, ‘I can’t change my mind. What would my friends think of me?’
People who radically change their political beliefs, for instance, lose a
lot: social relationships, jobs, romantic partners,” he says. “There’s a
lot at stake when you’re considering changing a belief.”
Our
tendency to cling to our beliefs may feel better than the alternative,
but that doesn’t mean it’s in our best interest. Our primary
self-defense tactic is to remove the threat and avoid anything that
might challenge our worldview, which is how so many of us end up living
in a feedback loop, surrounded by people who share the same opinions.
The effect is only exacerbated by our reliance on social media.
“The
world is an information minefield right now,” Kaplan says. We also need
to think carefully about which beliefs we allow into that protected
inner circle, he adds. “It makes sense to share beliefs and values with
people, and it makes sense to defend those beliefs. But to have beliefs
that are epistemological — that things are true or false about the
world — and be unwilling to hear otherwise could be very dangerous.”
As
for all the other little beliefs tucked away in your head, Zak says,
you don’t necessarily need to interrogate everything. “Praying the plane
lands safely probably doesn’t change anything, but what’s the harm?” he
says. “If holding on to the hope that winning the lottery is the
solution brings you comfort, why not?”
“If
you don’t have some beliefs, you just can’t get through the world,” Zak
says. “These rituals and beliefs are really reinforcing, they’re really
nice, and there’s something beautiful and distinctly human about them.”
written by
Kate Morgan
Kate
is a freelance journalist who’s been published by The Cut, The
Washington Post, USA Today, Slate, O Magazine, and others. Read more at
bykatemorgan.com.
