alright, mothers and fuckers. here is your social psychology crash course into beliefs and why beliefs stick like peanut butter and Cheetos in a three-year-old’s hair
i might make a more detailed post with some studies about this later on, but i just finished this class and I have way more research to start diving into starting tomorrow. so i don’t have the bandwidth to cite anything atm but i want to throw these concepts out into the wilderness of tumblr and see what happens
Belief perseverance is the concept that once a belief is formed, that belief sticks even in the face of information that is contrary to it.
For example: if you tell a biblical literalist xtian that, no, there is not historical evidence that xyz actually happened, their belief that it did happen will probably continue to persevere
However. There have been studies that have demonstrated that beliefs do not always persevere, and beliefs are more likely to change with careful and thorough explanations of the evidence that contradicts someone’s beliefs
Confirmation bias is when someone looks for things that specifically confirm their beliefs or argument, while ignoring glaring information that completely refutes their beliefs.
An example of this would be xtians picking out phrases from studies about the benefits of religion, while completely ignoring the mechanisms of any religion, not just Christianity, that makes it beneficial to some people.
A lot like confirmation bias, selective exposure occurs when someone seeks media that supports their beliefs and avoid media that does not. Selective exposure is something I think most people do to some degree, because it can be used to protect against cognitive dissonance (I’ll get to that in a bit).
An example of selective exposure is that right-wing relative who watches nothing but Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, and all those other right-wing extremists. In the meanwhile, this right-wing relative shouts that other sources are fake news just because they don’t follow with their worldview.
Attitude polarization is the principle that the more time someone spends reflecting about their feelings and thoughts about something, the more strongly they will feel about it and the more extreme their attitudes become.
For example, someone you follow on Facebook recently watched a fear-mongering anti-vaxx video and they totally bought into it. They begin posting more and more and more about why vaccines are evil and destroying America or whatever. Their feelings and thoughts about vaccines become extreme, and they may join several groups that also share the same levels of these feelings. This is kinda where the the polarization comes into play, because they have started to oppose those who agree that vaccines are efficacious in reducing the spread of disease.
Attitude polarization drives people to action, or at least give them the intention of doing so. I think attitude polarization may be exacerbated by doom-scrolling.
(now i feel embarrassed that i didn’t grasp that part of attitude polarization entirely until making this post after midnight. AFTER my assignment on this very topic. ugh)
Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort felt when beliefs are inconsistent with actions or other beliefs and knowledge.
An example of cognitive dissonance would be agreeing with Jesus telling the rich man to sell all his belongings and give the money to the poor while also attending a mega church where the preacher makes millions.
Anyway, I think the takeaway here is that beliefs aren’t easy to dispel because people just do whatever they can to keep believing in those things, at least up until they understand why their beliefs aren’t necessarily true and when the cognitive dissonance is too much to handle.
