The Psychology of Holding On to Beliefs |
You don't have to go far to see how pervasive the conflicts surrounding elections, public health, climate, war, identity, and even basic facts have become. Look at the news apps, scroll through social media, or listen in on your family while they are having dinner. You will see the common thread throughout these topics and how they frequently spill over from governmental settings and boundary lines into personal relationships, workplaces, and homes. Increasingly, what drives these conflicts isn't just disagreement over information, but deeper clashes in belief. The way people interpret the same headline can feel like they're living in entirely different realities.
That's because beliefs don't usually feel like opinions we chose. They feel more like the background hum of daily life. They are constantly present in our lives, but we rarely reflect on how they shape our perception of the world around us. Many of us have incorporated these beliefs and values into our lives long before we can articulate why we have them or challenge them. Over time, they become entrenched in how we think about politics, health, relationships, values, and even ourselves.
This is why the question of whether beliefs can change feels so loaded right now. It isn't abstract or academic. It's personal. And it matters. The issue of whether beliefs can change is now very charged, with a lot of weight behind it for many people. We have lots of evidence through psychological and clinical research that beliefs can and will change. However, the way that people actually change their beliefs usually does not follow a linear or evidence-based method, as people would like it to. It is typically hard for people to change their beliefs because it requires them to undergo a change in identity.
People usually do not change their beliefs just because there is a stronger argument for the new belief. In fact, people generally do not change their beliefs based on just one argument. Change occurs through relationships, emotion, identity, and the stories they tell themselves based upon their experiences. Research on motivated reasoning shows that people tend to accept information that protects their sense of self and reject information that threatens it, even when the evidence is strong. In those moments, defending a belief is about........