Belief perseverance (also called conceptual conservatism) is the tendency for people to hold on to their existing beliefs, even when those beliefs are discredited by new information or evidence. This phenomenon is particularly significant in the face of evidence that should logically challenge the belief, showcasing the strength and tenacity of pre-held notions. For example, a person may continue to believe in a discredited scientific theory even after new research disproves it.
The psychological foundations of belief perseverance are closely linked to cognitive dissonance and the backfire effect. Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds two contradictory beliefs, experiences, or values, and they naturally seek to resolve the contradiction to reduce discomfort.
The backfire effect is a specific instance where contradicting evidence makes an individual’s beliefs even stronger. These underlying cognitive processes indicate the resilience of the human mind in maintaining established beliefs, even when they may be counterproductive or factually incorrect.
There are three types of backfire effects: familiarity backfire (from making myths more familiar), overkill backfire (from providing too many arguments), and worldview backfire (from providing evidence that threatens someone’s worldview).
Belief Perseverance Examples
In politics: People often cling to their political beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence. For example, supporters of a particular political party may continue to support their party’s policies even when presented with evidence that proves those policies are ineffective.
Historical religious beliefs: Throughout history, people have maintained their religious beliefs despite exposure to alternative viewpoints. For example, during the European Reformation, individuals held fast to their traditional religious beliefs even as new ideas were being introduced.
Conspiracy theories: Many individuals persist in believing conspiracy theories despite evidence to the contrary. For instance, some people continue to believe in the moon landing hoax theory despite overwhelming evidence that supports the moon landing.
Medical misconceptions: Some individuals may continue to believe in outdated or debunked medical theories, such as the idea that vaccines cause autism, even when presented with scientific evidence that disproves these claims.
Investment insistence: In finance, belief perseverance can be seen when investors continue to hold onto a stock even when it is performing poorly, refusing to accept that their initial investment decision may have been incorrect.
Role of Evidence
Evidence serves as the backbone of any belief system, shaping and solidifying opinions and knowledge. Once a person adopts a belief, compelling evidence or supportive information acts to reinforce that belief, often making it resistant to change.
However, the introduction of new evidence that contradicts a held belief can lead to a cognitive bias where people still cling to their original belief, highlighting the power of conceptual conservatism.
When individuals encounter contradictory information, the typical response can vary significantly. Some might discard the information, while others may go through cognitive dissonance before ultimately reconciling their beliefs with the new evidence.
Contradictory information often prompts a reassessment of beliefs, but belief perseverance can result in the rejection of this evidence, especially if it strongly opposes deeply held convictions. Overcoming this requires a conscious effort to objectively evaluate the compelling evidence and integrate it into one’s belief system.
Belief Perseverance vs Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias and belief perseverance are related concepts, but they refer to different cognitive processes.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. In other words, individuals are more likely to notice and remember information that supports their existing beliefs while ignoring or downplaying information that contradicts those beliefs.
Belief perseverance, on the other hand, refers to the tendency to maintain one’s initial beliefs even after the information that led to the formation of those beliefs is discredited. This means that even when presented with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, individuals may still cling to false beliefs.
Social and Individual Factors
Social impressions and theories play a fundamental role in how individuals maintain their beliefs. The social context can pertain to a broad range of influences, from cultural norms to the feedback one receives from others.
For example, stereotyping is a social phenomenon where preexisting beliefs about groups of people persist despite new information. People often rely on social heuristics, which are intuitive mental shortcuts that are informed by the society they live in, leading them to hold onto certain judgments somatically without thorough analysis.
Decision-Making
When it comes to individual decision-making, preexisting beliefs heavily influence one’s logic and choices. Each person has a unique cognitive structure in which they interpret new data through the lens of their established beliefs, often leading to a denial or reinterpretation of evidence that contradicts these beliefs.
Research has shown that individuals who exhibit a strong belief in free will, for example, are more likely to show perseverance when working towards long-term goals. This suggests that one’s belief systems deeply impact their perseverance in various domains of life.
Media, Education, and Belief Persistence
Media outlets have a powerful effect on belief formation. Exposure to information, whether accurate or not, can lead to enduring beliefs about various topics.
For instance, the media’s portrayal of certain health issues can lead to persistent stereotypes, such as the early mislabeling of a particular syndrome as a “gay disease,” creating incorrect beliefs about its transmission. The pervasiveness of media means that once an idea takes hold, it can be very difficult to change, and critical thinking is essential in evaluating media content critically.
Education plays a pivotal role in belief perseverance. It offers a structured environment designed to foster critical thinking and evidence-based understanding. However, students’ beliefs can sometimes persist even in the face of contradictory evidence.
Research suggests that learners often cling to preconceived notions, which can persist even after direct educational interventions. To combat this, educational strategies are being developed to help mitigate the belief perseverance bias, like combining awareness training and counter-speech, showing some promise in helping individuals realign their beliefs with factual information.
Studies on Belief Perseverance
Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter conducted the first study on belief perseverance. The psychologists spent time with members of a doomsday cult that predicted the end of the world would be on December 21, 1954. Despite the forecast’s failure, most believers remained committed to their faith.
Festinger argued that humans strive for internal psychological consistency in order to operate cognitively in the real world. A person who suffers internal contradiction feels psychologically uncomfortable and is driven to decrease cognitive dissonance.
They tend to make changes to justify stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing psychological dissonance (rationalization) or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information that are likely to amplify the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias).
In a 1983 study of belief perseverance, Lee Ross and Craig A. Anderson misled some participants into believing that there was a positive relationship between a firefighter’s reported desire for taking risks and occupational performance. Other respondents were informed that the association was negative.
The subjects were then thoroughly debriefed and informed that there was no correlation between risk-taking and performance. These authors discovered that post-debriefing interviews indicated considerable levels of belief perseverance.
In a 1992 study, participants spent around four hours following directions from a hands-on instructional booklet. At one point, the handbook incorporated a formula that led them to believe spheres were 50% larger than they actually are.
Subjects were then given an actual sphere and instructed to calculate its volume using the method, followed by filling the sphere with water, transferring it to a box, and directly measuring the volume of the water in the box.
In the final experiment in this series, all 19 subjects had a Ph.D. in a natural discipline, worked as researchers or professors at two prominent universities, and compared the two volume measurements again using a larger sphere. Despite their empirical findings, all but one of these scientists maintained their belief in the bogus formula.
Role of Explanations
Thomas Shultz Jacques Katz, and Mark Lepper constructed a constraint-satisfaction neural network model to simulate key belief perseverance phenomena and to test the hypothesis that explanation plays a central role in preserving evidentially challenged beliefs.
The constraint-satisfaction neural network model used in their December 2000 paper is based on the idea that explanations play a key role in sustaining beliefs even when they are contradicted by new evidence. The model simulates belief perseverance phenomena by gradually increasing consistency and constraint satisfaction over time.
Debriefing experiments demonstrated that effective debriefing can lessen belief endurance by weakening both incorrect beliefs and their justifications.According to the concept, while contradicting information may weaken a belief, it is unlikely to change every cognition based on that belief, such as reasons for its existence.
Strategies for Overcoming Belief Perseverance
Open-mindedness is essential in overcoming belief perseverance. One becomes receptive to new information and alternative viewpoints. To cultivate open-mindedness:
- Expand sources of information: Regularly seek out diverse perspectives that challenge existing beliefs.
- Practice empathy: Consider the reasoning behind other people’s beliefs to understand varying viewpoints.
Critical thinking is a cornerstone of rational decision-making. It involves actively analyzing and evaluating information and arguments. Evidence evaluation, specifically, plays a critical role in this process:
- Assess credibility: Scrutinize the source and context of the information received.
- Challenge assumptions: Regularly question and test the underlying assumptions that form one’s beliefs.
- Adopt a scientific approach: Utilize methodologies such as hypothesis testing to objectively assess new information.
References:
- Anderson, C. A. (1983). Abstract and Concrete Data in the Conservatism of Social Theories: When Weak Data Lead to Unshakeable Beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 19 (2): 93–108. doi: 10.1016/0022-1031(83)90031-8
- Anderson, Craig A. (2007). Belief Perseverance. In Baumeister, Roy; Vohs, Kathleen (eds.). Encyclopedia of Social Psychology ISBN 9781412916707
- Dawson, Lorne L. (October 1999). When Prophecy Fails and Faith Persists: A Theoretical Overview. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. Berkeley: University of California Press. 3 (1): 60–82. doi: 10.1525/nr.1999.3.1.60
- Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. California: Stanford University Press
- Nissani, M. and Hoefler-Nissani, D. M. (1992). Experimental Studies of Belief-Dependence of Observations and of Resistance to Conceptual Change. Cognition and Instruction. 9 (2): 97–111. doi: 10.1207/s1532690xci0902_1
- Nissani, M. (1994). Conceptual conservatism: An understated variable in human affairs? The Social Science Journal. 31 (3): 307–318
- Shultz, Thomas, Katz, J. A, & Lepper, M. R. (2001). Clinging to Beliefs: A Constraint-satisfaction Model. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 23.
- Swire-Thompson, Briony; DeGutis, Joseph; Lazer, David (September 2020). Searching for the backfire effect: Measurement and design considerations. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. 9 (3): 286–299. doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.06.006
Last Updated on March 7, 2024