What do you believe, and why?

If you ask a few people to explain what it means to believe, chances are, you will get as many different answers as the number of people asked.

On the surface, this may not seem so bad.  We all have different perspectives, right?

Our different perspectives are actually differences in what we believe.  These differences are normal because of our many different backgrounds and experiences, like gender identity, race, income, and social status are part of how we see ourselves.  Beliefs form how we see and judge others, how we think about life, and how we define what is right, wrong, good, or bad.

Based on these unique experiences, how we decide what to believe is far from an exact process.  There are four major roadblocks built into our thinking that make us tend to focus on what feels good and natural, rather than critically evaluate information before deciding what to believe.

 We almost never change our minds.

Dr. Kevin Fleming, a noted clinical psychologist, said that to understand beliefs we must “first, understand that our brains are wired to feel right, not necessarily be right.” There are many things that we have irrevocably decided are true that will remain as such until we are challenged with new information, experiences, and discussions with people who hold the opposite viewpoint.

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything” ~ George Bernard Shaw

In the book All In, by Gostick and Elton, the authors ask us to consider any subject that is a big public discussion – healthcare, global warming, or any subject that draws immediate responses – and then ask ourselves, “how often have I seen someone presented with strong evidence, stop to consider the argument, and then change their mind?  Most likely, your answer is “never.”

 We don’t critically evaluate information before we believe it is true.

“Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.” ~Steve Albini

Our brains latch on to thoughts and ideas that we believe are true, regardless of how the belief was established, and form strong emotional attachments.  Most beliefs are merely ideas, but we are so confident in our beliefs that we don’t even validate them.

Sometimes we have no idea where we got a belief, and explain how we know as a “feeling that I am right.” This is our minds creating a mental model from existing ideas that are then pieced together by our reasoning processes.

We focus on information that supports what we already believe and tend to ignore what doesn’t.

People have a strong tendency to be subject to what psychologists describe as confirmation bias.  This is the tendency to favor information that one already believes and to also willfully ignore information that doesn’t.

According to a group comprised of psychology researchers from several University systems, we tend to engage in what they call “motivated reasoning.”  This is our tendency to search for information that proves what we already believe, rather than search for information that presents both sides of the issue.

“We only see what we want to see; we only hear what we want to hear. Our belief system is just like a mirror that only shows us what we believe.” ~ Don Miguel Ruiz

Whether we are open to discussion or not, technology is forcing a certain amount of intellectual isolation on us.  Eli Praser claims in his book “The Filter Bubble” that as we interact with those whose goals are to present information (and market things to us), we are presented with information fashioned to our individual tastes.  This tends to put us in a bubble that is only filled with views we already like or believe, and filters out information that does not.

This is what makes our reaction to a “Like” of our Facebook post so powerful.  This knowledge is then used to build an algorithm of your preferences so your news feed will push what you already believe (and are likely to buy).

We tend to follow the crowd.

“The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.” ~ Albert Einstein

The beliefs of the people around us, and the culture in which we live deeply influence our beliefs. Indeed, many of our core beliefs are acquired from the people we are closest to, so we are very likely to view the world through many of the same lenses as parents, teachers, preachers, and friends.

This is merely a glimpse into the complex process of how we form beliefs. By critically evaluating beliefs, we will see that some should make other more valid, and some less, and some would even conflict with each other.  It would not be possible to check them all, but we should evaluate a small set of beliefs that are critical to see if they are aligned with what we think, say, and do.