We are driven by the numerous beliefs that influence our everyday thoughts and behaviors. This is apparent within all domains of human life and its subsequent ripple effects on individual and collective behavior. Be it religion, politics, culture, education, and even science, humans act according to their unique belief systems. Now, the question remains, what exactly are beliefs, and why are they so crucial to the human condition?
What is belief?
Belief can be defined as the acceptance of a concept or idea as the truth (Schwitzgebel, 2010).
Most humans share two categories of beliefs, the one that is expressed consciously, and the other that is expressed unconsciously, with the latter being outside our immediate awareness and reach. Most of our beliefs are mundane, meaning that they come from our everyday senses that reveal casual truths, such as how our surroundings are real because we can touch them or how shadows are formed due to the obstruction of light. However, we also possess more complex beliefs manifested in religious doctrines or political ideologies, such as how a country should be run, for example. Ultimately, our beliefs create a mental lens through which we perceive reality, which significantly impacts how we navigate the world around us (Halligan, 2007).
Hence, it is crucial that we gain an understanding of our underlying beliefs and how we can leverage them to optimize our outcomes. This is precisely what we will explore in the following essay. First, we will define and deconstruct the process of belief by explaining its psychological and neurological underpinnings. Second, we will discuss how beliefs are formed within the mind and how age mediates this process. Lastly, we will discuss how beliefs can be used to our advantage and delve deeper into the placebo effect.
The components of belief
In itself, belief is a highly abstract process that can be broken down into various components. From a psychological perspective, belief can be characterized as thoughts and convictions driven by a self-ascribed understanding of a process or fact (Schwitzgebel, 2011). Due to its intangibility, many have attempted to provide a coherent psychological definition of belief and describe how it manifests within the mind. James (1989) demonstrated how belief contrasts with imagination. He states that there is a stark difference between imagining a thing and believing its existence. On one hand, an imagined thing is easily disregarded. On the other hand, something supported by belief persists in the mind due to its position as perceived reality.
Through this framework, we begin to understand how beliefs can significantly influence our mental processes, and they have been shown to affect memory, information processing, and attention (Winkiolman & Schwarz, 2001; Chaxel, 2016). To highlight this relationship, we must simply turn our heads to the phenomenon of delusion, which is essentially a pathological belief (Bell et al., 2006). As its name suggests, a deluded person is someone who holds firmly to an irrational belief despite having seen extensive evidence to the contrary. From this delusion, they may develop dysfunctional thought and behavior patterns, ultimately leading to more serious psychological symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and obsessions (Opoka et al., 2018). It is however, strongly questionable and open to debate what would constitute as irrational in a world where each and every human sees reality via their own lens of beliefs. Under that light, everyone who holds a firm belief theoretically could be called delusional.
Research has also investigated the neurological underpinnings that underlie or hold up beliefs in the brain. These studies have concluded that beliefs hold an evolutionarily adaptive function for humans, which is displayed through the activation of specific brain regions in the frontal lobes (Rao et al., 2009). Essentially, the frontal lobes are responsible for managing what information has access to immediate conscious awareness, and much of that information is gridlocked by our belief systems (Stuss, 2000). This strongly correlates with the evolutionary function of humans needing to make sense of the world around them, where those who have a robust representation of reality, a belief system, will have considerable competitive advantage than those who do not.
Effectively, research has shown that those who do not possess a coherent belief about the world and reality experience significant emotional disempowerment and dejection (Kapogiannis et al., 2009). This means that what we believe is less important than the fact that we have a concept of the world we can accept as truth.
How are beliefs formed?
Beliefs have been shown to develop around a number of external and internal factors. Some of these include sensory inputs, past knowledge, and even personality traits (Rao et al., 2009). A broad range of elements contribute to the formation of beliefs, and it is helpful to understand the overarching framework that allows this to happen.
To reiterate, individuals use beliefs to procure a model of reality that makes sense to them because it gives them a significant competitive advantage to survive and thrive in life. Hence, it is in our best interest to form a coherent belief system about the world around us.
Research has shown that beliefs are formed due to the drive to find answers, and they can be informed through many mediating factors such as environment, events, knowledge, visualization, or past experiences (Rao et al., 2009). Moreover, once a particular belief has been formed, the brain will subsequently reinforce it by pouring in subjective logic, rationality, and emotions, thereby confirming it (Connors & Halligan, 2015). Once this process has been achieved and further validated by future experiences, the belief will grow roots into the person’s cognitive processes and begin to show its effects on their behavior and personality.
This is why developing children are so sensitive to belief formation, as they enter the world as a blank slate and receive vast amounts of information that can influence their belief systems. A child’s brain is highly plastic, meaning that its neural circuitry works extremely rapidly to process and integrate new information (Hochberg et al., 2011). Many researchers have compared the plastic brain to a sponge that rapidly absorbs anything it comes across, processing both negatively and positively weighted information during this period of development.
From birth, children are progressively integrating new information to make sense of the world, and by the time they reach the age of 7, they have enough information to form core beliefs (Arntz et al., 2018). More specifically, core beliefs refer to the subconscious knowledge that someone has internalized as “truth” or “reality”. These beliefs are significantly ingrained within the person’s mind, and it is extremely difficult to shift or change them through novel information.
After these core beliefs have been formed, they act as a foundation for future beliefs to be built upon. During their lifespan, people use these core beliefs as a guiding compass and typically form new beliefs that are compatible with their fundamental core beliefs (Daois & Rnic, 2015). Predominantly, these beliefs will form a similar trend, where the newly formed beliefs will have some association with the underlying core beliefs.
Changing beliefs
Studies have shown that there are various events, or catalysts, that have the potential to completely change the trajectory of one’s belief systems (Leo et al., 2021). Trauma is one such event, as it significantly impacts our brain functions and leaves a neural trace that can override the traces of core beliefs. This is why we see many reversals of religious beliefs following traumatic events due to the direct contrast between the event and their prior beliefs (Leo et al., 2021). Researchers have referred to this process as “shattering one’s assumptions,” and it is when a significant life event changes how individuals view themselves and the world.
People adopt a series of varying beliefs over their lifetime, even without a traumatic event, by simply extracting patterns from their environment, although, most of these are associated with their underlying core beliefs. However, apart from potential events and catalysts, structured self-development programs also have the possibility of challenging these core beliefs, forcing people to reevaluate their belief systems to face novel challenges.
The Importance of beliefs
As we have established, beliefs are fundamental to navigate life as they allow us to make sense of the world. Without beliefs, we would live in a senseless reality with no foundation upon which to place our feet. However, these are only some of the functions that beliefs serve in relation to human functioning. Over the years, research into the science of beliefs has uncovered fascinating results that demonstrate how beliefs can be leveraged in order to achieve different outcomes, such as increased performance and goal attainment (Crum & Langer, 2007).
Before delving into the technical aspects of this process, we must think of everyday life events where beliefs are responsible for significantly influencing performance for the better or worse. Between peers, family members, and even within ourselves, we often hear the phrases: “I believe in you” or “I believe that I will be able to do this.” In contrast, we may equally hear others inform us of their disbelief in our ideas or goals. Consequently, depending on the emotional weight of these statements, our minds will provide drastically different reactions to them. More importantly, they have the ability to dictate how we feel and behave toward a given goal. This is one small aspect of how beliefs influence our lives, and research into this domain has revealed astounding results.
One of the most measurable processes that demonstrates the power of beliefs in our lives is called the placebo effect. In psychology, the placebo effect is defined as the improvement of outcomes despite being given a non-active treatment. For example, a placebo effect occurs when a person is told they will be given a treatment that will improve their condition, when they are simply given a neutral care that is proven not to have any effect. This phenomenon is still barely understood within research. However, the findings from placebo studies all point to one underlying process that makes individuals improve despite having zero evidence for doing so: belief. More specifically, placebo studies show that despite being given a neutral intervention, the simple fact that the individual believes that the intervention will help them improve does precisely that.
In a prominent 2007 experiment, researchers Crum and Langer investigated whether they could leverage the placebo effect to produce tangible results in participants (Crum & Langer, 2007). They divided a participant group of 84 female hotel cleaners into two groups and informed one group of 42 cleaners that their work (room cleaning) was a great form of exercise and fulfilled crucial physical needs. For the other group, they said nothing. After four weeks, the group that was informed of their work’s health benefits displayed decreases in weight, blood pressure, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index. Conversely, the uninformed group displayed no changes over this time interval. Essentially, the experiment demonstrated that the mere belief that something is true provides significant advantages in achieving the believed outcomes.
Crum found that the simple act of believing that your outcomes will improve is associated with the activation of specific brain areas that decrease stress, increase reward, and stimulate the nervous and immune systems positively (Crum & Phillips, 2015). This phenomenon has been officially termed belief effects in research and has received extensive supporting evidence demonstrating its validity.
Moving beyond this, the findings from this study prompted the main researcher, Ali Crum, to investigate the degree to which one’s self-ascribed beliefs could influence their subjective reality for the better (Crum & Phillips, 2015). Here, Crum specifically focused on how underlying beliefs can transform one’s perception of reality to make achieving certain goals a lot easier. This is crucial, as it is clear that one’s perception of reality significantly influences their mode of functioning through life. While these results demonstrate intriguing potential, they primarily reflect changes in those beliefs that are consciously accessible or easily expressed. As noted earlier, most beliefs are deeply rooted and operate latently beneath conscious awareness. In mainstream media, entire industries have emerged around “mindset tricks” and approaches to “changing your mindset.” However, the majority of these methods rarely extend beyond the most readily accessible and least impactful beliefs. More concerningly, there is a growing trend of using “mindset” as a means of assigning blame and shifting responsibility for ineffective advice or services onto the client by labeling it a “mindset issue.”
Final conclusions and considerations
Belief is an intrinsically human concept that has characterized our evolution and maturation over the centuries. It is important to note that animals may have some beliefs, but they cannot compare to the complexity of human beliefs. To reiterate, beliefs are a form of conviction that an aspect of reality is true to us. We know something is real because our beliefs have confirmed it as a fact. Research has shown that our thoughts and behaviors are strongly associated with our underlying belief systems.
This means that much of our thoughts and actions are guided by our beliefs, as they act as our map of the world and reality. When someone is presented with evidence that is contrary to their beliefs, they experience an internal conflict called cognitive dissonance (e.g., Chapanis & Chapanis, 1964), and it elicits uncomfortable emotions that most of us tend to avoid. Here, we begin to understand why we behave and think in line with our underlying belief systems, as they act as our area of comfort zone beyond which negative emotions disturb us, pushing us back to our original belief. This also sheds some light on why achieving meaningful change in our belief system is a particularly draining process, that itself requires some level mental resilience to manage the discomfort that arises.
Beliefs are a fundamental cornerstone of everyday life, but their functions go beyond that. Research has effectively shown that beliefs can be a deciding factor in whether we succeed or not in a given endeavor. More specifically, researchers such as Ali Crum (2007; 2015) have demonstrated that the mere act of believing something to be true can act as a deciding factor in whether an outcome or goal will be fulfilled, particularly in less complex and less intense endeavors.
References
Arntz, A., Hayes, S. C., & Hofmann, S. G. (2018). Modifying core beliefs. Process-based CBT: The science and core clinical competencies of cognitive behavioral therapy, 339-361.
Bell, V., Halligan, P. W., & Ellis, H. D. (2006). Explaining delusions: a cognitive perspective. Trends in cognitive sciences, 10(5), 219-226.
Chapanis, N. P., & Chapanis, A. (1964). Cognitive dissonance. Psychological bulletin, 61(1), 1.
Chaxel, A. S. (2016). Why, when, and how personal control impacts information processing: a framework. Journal of Consumer Research, 43(1), 179-197.
Connors, M. H., & Halligan, P. W. (2015). A cognitive account of belief: a tentative road map. Frontiers in psychology, 5, 1588.
Crum, A., & Phillips, D. J. (2015). Self-fulfilling prophesies, placebo effects, and the social-psychological creation of reality. Emerging trends in the social and behavioral sciences, 1-14.
Crum, A. J., & Langer, E. J. (2007). Mind-set matters: Exercise and the placebo effect. Psychological science, 18(2), 165-171.
Dozois, D. J., & Rnic, K. (2015). Core beliefs and self-schematic structure in depression. Current Opinion in Psychology, 4, 98-103.
Dweck, C. (2015). Carol Dweck revisits the growth mindset. Education week, 35(5), 20-24.
Halligan, P. (2007). Belief and illness. PSYCHOLOGIST-LEICESTER-, 20(6), 358.
Hochberg, Z. E., Feil, R., Constancia, M., Fraga, M., Junien, C., Carel, J. C., … & Albertsson-Wikland, K. (2011). Child health, developmental plasticity, and epigenetic programming. Endocrine reviews, 32(2), 159-224.
James, W. (1889). The psychology of belief. Mind, 14(55), 321-352.
Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A. K., Su, M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2009). Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(12), 4876-4881.
Leo, D., Izadikhah, Z., Fein, E. C., & Forooshani, S. A. (2021). The effect of trauma on religious beliefs: A structured literature review and meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 22(1), 161-175.
Opoka, S. M., Ludwig, L., & Lincoln, T. M. (2018). A systematic review of trials targeting depression and anxiety in patients with delusions: An emotion-focused perspective. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 226(3), 142.
Rao, T. S., Asha, M. R., Rao, K. J., & Vasudevaraju, P. (2009). The biochemistry of belief. Indian journal of psychiatry, 51(4), 239.
Schwitzgebel, E. (2010). Acting contrary to our professed beliefs or the gulf between occurrent judgment and dispositional belief. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 91(4), 531-553.
Schwitzgebel, E. (2011). Belief. In The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (pp. 40-50). Routledge.
Stuss, D. T., & Alexander, M. P. (2000). Executive functions and the frontal lobes: a conceptual view. Psychological research, 63(3), 289-298.
Vries, M. F. (2014). Are you a victim of the victim syndrome?. In Mindful Leadership Coaching (pp. 68-86). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Winkielman, P., & Schwarz, N. (2001). How pleasant was your childhood? Beliefs about memory shape inferences from experienced difficulty of recall. Psychological Science, 176-179.