GEORGE C BAYWONG III PSYCH 180

09-62076
Exploring Belief Perseverance

Consistency is an important factor in the issue of beliefs. Obviously, everyone wants their
beliefs about the world to be consistent with the world. Beliefs generally help people understand
the world. Beliefs once formed, are resistant to change. People tend to cling to one’s initial
beliefs even after receiving new data or information that either disconfirms or contradicts the
basis of the belief – BELIEF PERSEVERANCE. This resistance in the changing of belief may
be characterized as logical and defensive as subject to experience.
Anderson states the different types of belief perseverance extensively studied in
Psychology: one that involves self-impressions or self-perceptions (focusing towards beliefs
toward oneself), another involves social impressions or social perceptions (your beliefs about
other people), and one involving naïve theories (how the world works). These naïve theories
focuses on social theories as to how people behave, think, feel and interact (e.g. stereotypes).

ON SELF-PERCEPTION
We have our own beliefs towards our own personal competence and physiological
functioning. Often times, people hold irrational beliefs about themselves or about the way the
activities suits into the context of the social environment (Curtis, 1989). Anderson in his
experiment found out that irrational beliefs are positively correlated with negative affect and
depression. A person who believes that “In order to be happy, I must prove my adequate in
achieving things I attempt” is less likely to become happy and as such, produce self-defeating
behaviors. In short, erroneous belief towards oneself may lead to self-defeating behaviors that
may result to injure others or even oneself.
What we know may not be necessarily be true. Thus, it comes down to the belief that
what we know is true. Our ways of knowing and perceiving what we believe to be true is rooted
towards many factors such as: authority, our use of reason, experience, and science. (Goodwin,
2010)
Often times, we accept the validity of information from a source that we fervently judge
to be expert or influential- thus, we rely on authority as a source of knowledge. However, we
cannot deny that the mere reliance on authority in establishing beliefs sort of overlooks the fact
that authorities can be sometimes wrong. Parents sometimes pass on harmful prejudices on
children as teachers are sometimes wrong or that their knowledge is biased. On the other hand,
we arrive at conclusions through the use of logic and reason. That is, the value of logically drawn
conclusions, more or less, depends on the truth of the premises. Charles Pierce explains the role
of logic and reason through what he calls the a priori method for obtaining knowledge. Our
resilient beliefs are deduced from about what is thought to be true according to the rules of logic.
A belief is rooted and developed as a result of logical arguments, even before an individual has
direct experience with the phenomenon at hand. Lastly, the most direct way of coming to know
or believe things is through first-hand experience or what is called as empiricism- the process of
learning things through direct observation or experience and even reflections on those
experiences. As the saying goes “experience is the best teacher”. However, it is dangerous to
always rely on experience when attempting to arrive at the truth of a matter as our experiences
are limited. We must keep in mind that although our experiences are indispensible and an
important guide to our life’s difficulties, they are subject to our own means of interpretation that
may be wrong as our inquiry is limited (Krull & Anderson, 1997). Our social cognition biases
like the availability heuristic and confirmation bias can distort the beliefs developed in our
experiences of the world. Lastly, we turn to Science as a means of knowing and believing which
is perceived by Charles Peirce as the most reliable way to develop a belief. It’s method of
knowing permits us to know entities and things, whose existence are entirely independent of our
own opinion about them. As Pierce said, to be objective is to “avoid completely any human bias
or preconception”

ON SOCIAL PERCEPTIONS
Firstly, we must consider how do people think about the personalities of other people?
Psychologists present three theoretical accounts: the Associationistic view, the Dimensional
view, and the Typological view (Sedikides & Anderson, 1992). In the associanistic view, persons
think about others in terms of trait covariation. If someone is seen as honest, more or less, he will
be perceived as someone trustworthy – as those mentioned traits are believed to “covary”. On the
dimensional view, people perceive or think of others as in terms of global dimensions (e.g.
dynamism). Finally in the typological view, individuals think of others as in terms of person
types. Person types compose of many personality traits. In researches of the long lasting effects
of first impressions like the classic experiment by Kelley(1980) – students’ response to a new
teacher- points out that initial impressions of another person may be based on limited exposure to
that person or can be based on the person’s social or racial class (Curtis, 1989).
Our beliefs about others may also affect our drive or motivation to imitate a sort positive
behavior (Baumeister & Bushman, 2011). According to the psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman ,
everyone has beliefs that brings focus our social world which he termed as assumptive worlds
(Janoff-Bulman, 1992). These beliefs include three main types of assumptions that enable people
to live healthy and happily.
 The world is benevolent- this belief promulgates that people are basically nice, life is safe.
One can count on good things to happen most of the time. The opposite belief is that the
world is dangerous and full of untrustworthy people.
 The world is fair and just- the world is fair, so people generally get what they deserve. That
is, if you follow the rules and treat others with respect, you are to be treated the same.
 I am a good person – I am someone of value and is therefore deserving of good things to
happening to me.

In some instance that a person has been a victim of theft, that individual may feel that he
cannot maintain these three beliefs. But, with effective coping, he can figure out how to explain
the crime yet still allowing himself to continue believing that, at large, the world is still
benevolent and fair and that he is still a good person and deserves nothing but good things.
Coping is a tool that enables a person to persevere a belief about the world. The broad theory of
cognitive coping was developed by Shelley Taylor (1983). A belief may persevere in ways of
coping such as downward comparison by which a person considers that whatever happened
could have been worse or that at least the person may be “somewhat” lucky. Another ways of
coping includes the belief that all things have a higher purpose.

ON SOCIAL THEORIES
The belief perseverance phenomenon has been presented in the domain of social theories.
Social Theories are generally our beliefs about the relations between variables in the social
environment. Basically, they are causal belief systems. Thus, they are beliefs as to why the
variables are related. People’s beliefs about themselves, on other people, relationships on events
in the world are amazingly resilient (Anderson C. , 1982). However, past research has shown that
when causal reasoning is reduced, so does the perseverance in belief and vice versa. On one
hand, numerous studies conducted shows that prior beliefs can also bias people’s beliefs in new
data. An experiment was conducted by Anderson that suggests that a positive or a negative
relationship exists between a firefighter trainee’s preference for risky versus conservative
choices and his subsequent success as a firefighter. Results show that the subjects in the
experiment were surprisingly willing to make conclusions about the general relation between risk
preferences and firefighter ability on the account of the minimal basis provided. (Anderson,
Lepper, & Ross, 1980). What is the experiment implying? The experiment is trying to imply that
many judgements are created on the basis of social theories. Many beliefs and attitudes towards
persons such as firefighters may arise from a variety of sources such as general cultural beliefs,
books, films or even given “testimony” from peers.

THE PERSEVERANCE OF BELIEFS AND WAYS OF CORRECTING

Beliefs are conceptualized mainly by formal and informal socialization. Ironically, formal
and informal socialization is also a source of incorrect belief, so is personal experience and
observation (Curtis, 1989). What we may have heard, seen, felt and experienced is still subject
to interpretation. Our means of interpretation vary across cultures and people and is even limited.
Thus, more or less, our beliefs may be false. In cases like these, there are but simple steps to
correct our or other’s belief:
 Presenting New Evidence - one method to change maladaptive belief is to present new
evidence to oppose the belief. Research by Anderson and Sechler confirms that exposure
to new evidence does not necessarily result to the elimination of previous belief.
Presenting new evidence has some effect on the erroneous beliefs in some situations, but,
logically compelling evidence often fails to induce appropriate levels of belief change.

 Urging Open-Minded Observation – In any process of convincing a person otherwise, he

or she must encouraged to have an open minded perspective. The problem with many
maladaptive beliefs is not that they are based on faulty assessments of what is and can be
seen, but in the causal interpretations. People typically do not see themselves that they are
 taking a biased view. Thus, the reproach to be “open-minded” sometimes fails to address
the issue.
 Urging Open-Minded Interaction- the final strategy to displace people with their
maladaptive belief is to expose them and encourage them to interact with the
environment as a resort to gain experiences that refutes the belief.

THUS,
Research shows that inducing individuals to produce causal explanations congruent with
a desired belief change is expected to be effective in reducing forms of perseverance related
biases. It is apparent that much more research needs to be done to deepen our understanding of
the perseverance process. However, in the process of the deepening understanding of how
perseverance process works, we are to expect developments in the techniques as to how we deal
with maladaptive and erroneous beliefs.

Bibliography
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Baumeister, R. F., & Bushman, B. J. (2011). Social Psychology and Human Nature. California: Wadsworth
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