An interdisciplinary approach to belief formation and resistance to change

Abstract

One of the most remarked on, and perplexing, aspects of beliefs is their resistance to change as discussed by researchers such as Frijda, Mesquita, Manstead and Bern, amongst others. This is especially the case for false beliefs. The thesis examines the many influences on belief formation in general, but with a special interest in false beliefs. While the basic definition of belief used is partly derived from philosophical literature, including Clifford, Russell, Goldman, Garfield, and Morton, it is shaped by an interdisciplinary approach to understanding belief formation and resistance to change, predominantly involving cognitive psychology, neuroscience and social psychology. An extensive review of literature on heuristics and biases-particularly the work of Tversky and Kahneman, and Gilovich and Griffin- reveals effects on perceptions that affect beliefs, and leads to a similar review of the interactions of emotions and feelings with beliefs. The 'feelings-as-evidence' hypothesis proposed by Clore and Gasper emerges as having significant explanatory power with respect to feelings contributing to establishing and maintaining beliefs. To further understand possible mechanisms at play, Antonio Damasio's definitions of emotion and feeling, and his somatic marker hypothesis, are proffered as a solid foundation for examining how emotion and feelings interact with the numerous influences on beliefs and how they contribute to feelings being such a dominant source of 'evidence' used by people in a lay context to establish that, for them, a belief is true. On the basis of this foundation and literature on levels of consciousness (e.g. Damasio, 201 0; Gallagher, 2000; Northoff et al., 2006; Panksepp, 2005, 2012; Panksepp and Northoff, 2009), the thesis develops the proposal that emotions and feelings act through a lens of self-enhancement and self-protection processes to support beliefs that protect a person's neural construct of their 'self' with feelings being the key perceptual indicator of whether a belief serves the self-construct or not. If a belief, whether true or false, is experienced as serving the interests of the 'self', then it is likely to be highly resistant to change.