Why do we belive what we belive?

[Nique]

You probably have heard (of) you are not so smart (youarenotsosmart.com).

In case you haven't, 'You Are Not So Smart' is a journalist's blog which offers up a bleak, but fascinating, perspective on human psychology. Reading any of the some dozens of articles is bound to, perhaps ironically, cause a little bit of cognitive dissonance. This is probably best explained by the site's own 'About' section;

The Misconception: You are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is.

The Truth: You are as deluded as the rest of us, but that’s OK, it keeps you sane.

You Are Not So Smart is a blog devoted to self delusion and irrational thinking.

So; Why do you believe what you believe? According to this site, even the most open-minded & contemplative of us have likely succumb to a number of mental tricks that 'put the cart before the horse', so to speak.

Consider The Backfire Effect (http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/) - The idea that, when your convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your attention is drawn towards ways you can argue or undermine the opposing viewpoint regardless of it's validity, and your beliefs get stronger as a result.

Have you ever noticed the peculiar tendency you have to let praise pass through you, but feel crushed by criticism? A thousand positive remarks can slip by unnoticed, but one “you suck” can linger in your head for days. One hypothesis as to why this and the backfire effect happens is that you spend much more time considering information you disagree with than you do information you accept. Information which lines up with what you already believe passes through the mind like a vapor, but when you come across something which threatens your beliefs, something which conflicts with your preconceived notions of how the world works, you seize up and take notice.

The Illusion Of Asymmetric Insight (http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymmetric-insight/) suggests that we may more readily form opinions based more on our group identity and shared behavior, rather than facts and recognition of different perspectives.

The Misconception: You celebrate diversity and respect others’ points of view.

The Truth: You are driven to create and form groups and then believe others are wrong just because they are others.

...You too can become preoccupied with defining the essence of your enemies. You too need the other side to be inferior, so you define them as such. You start to believe your persona is actually your identity, and the identity of your enemy is actually their persona. You see yourself in a game of self-deluded poker and assume you are impossible to read while everyone else has obvious tells.

These are just two of the articles that describe what might be happening in the background of our mind when we attach ourselves to particular beliefs and ideologies, among other things. I don't know if I completely believe that my worldview has been shaped strictly by such mechanical responses or if that is even the message of these articles (though perhaps I am further deluding myself in order to maintain my sanity), but these are certainly thought-provoking. It's easy to think 'well, I don't do this but other people do' when you talk about stuff like cognitive dissonance but it isn't really that simple and there seem to be a lot of subtle ways that we may 'trick' ourselves into believing something, justifying it only after the fact.

Can you identify a belief or opinion you may have adopted due to such biases or delusions? I probably couldn't even count the number of times I have fallen for more subtle variations of Fine Wine (http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/24/fine-wine/) (though thankfully I have avoided the gold-plated HDMI cable variant). What about Learned Helplessness (http://youarenotsosmart.com/2009/11/11/learned-helplessness/)? Subjective Validation (http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/29/subjective-validation/)?

Even though, as we are capable of recognizing such delusions, we must have some ability to form objective opinions on important subjects, I think that it's important to take a step back and consider why we like something, why we vote a certain way, hold certain viewpoints on social issues, or why we think something sucks. It's easy to see delusion in others - What about ourselves?

[Token]

Less Wrong (http://lesswrong.com/) is also a pretty good read in that regard. (Yes, the Methods of Rationality (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2269863/Less_Wrong) Less Wrong, if you weren't aware.) How To Actually Change Your Mind (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/How_To_Actually_Change_Your_Mind) is fantastic.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

The best thing are these studies is how much of your memory is pretty much completely made up. A: Massive fuckloads of it.

[Nique]

The best thing are these studies is how much of your memory is pretty much completely made up. A: Massive fuckloads of it.

Which is funny because it seems like everyone remembers things more or less the same (or at least similar), but that is probably only becuase everyone is riding the same process.

[Grimpond]

Because we fear the dark

[Fifthfiend]

What about Learned Helplessness (http://youarenotsosmart.com/2009/11/11/learned-helplessness/)?

This was kind of a stupid, point-missing article.

Like learned helplessness is an interesting phenomenon, it's just that the author is caught up trying to shoehorn it into his YOU ARE DUMB schtick and misses that the phenomenon is actually an intelligent, reasonable reaction to terrible shit. If you tie a dog down with a fucking harness and repeatedly shock it with electricity, "terrible shit is gonna happen to you and you can do literally nothing about it" is a completely reasonable lesson to learn.

It's an interesting phenomenon but shoehorning it into a PEOPLE R DUM framework really doesn't work, lots of psychological phenomena are actually entirely reasonable reactions to a given set of circumstances.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Which is funny because it seems like everyone remembers things more or less the same (or at least similar), but that is probably only becuase everyone is riding the same process.

Or when one person mentions their account of the event your brain then remembers it that way.
There is classic studies where they show volunteers the same film clip of a car crash but then by asking the right questions or by listening to other peoples account of the crash they can completely change its severity, who caused it, the colour of the cars involved, prett ymuch anything.

[Nique]

This was kind of a stupid, point-missing article.

Yeah on closer inspection this was a weird one and I kind of wish I had made a bigger deal of the fact that this guy is a journalist and not a psychologist. Like this -

Do you vote? If not, is it because you think it doesn’t matter because things never change, or politicians are evil on both sides, or one vote in several million doesn’t count? Yeah, that’s learned helplessness.

is a pretty weird thing to say becuase I don't think reaching the conclusion that voting might not really be worth your time for perfectly sound reasons has anything to do with giving up on controlling your life. Anyway the whole thing was a bit disjointed and difficult to follow after the Misconception/Truth bit.

...And at the end was it just me or was he saying the way to fix this issue was to distract yourself with meaningless activities?

EDIT: Also, the later articles seem to be more purely analytical and just... kind of better, where earlier ones are a lot shorter with more blatant/obnoxious morals at the end.

Or when one person mentions their account of the event your brain then remembers it that way.

I also liked the Subjective Validation one - Kind of similar process. There was a neat video about 'Cold Reading' at the end of that one, which ended up tying into another delusion wherein psychics start to believe in their own "abilities".

[phil_]

I am a journalist who loves psychology,How?

[Nique]

Maybe he wasn't very good at journalism?

[phil_]

You misunderstand my ambiguous, one-word question. My question is, "How can he, or anyone, love psychology?" The majority of what makes up pop-psych are experiments from at least fifty years ago, investigating the same questions that the Babylonians asked except with a lab coat button-up shirt with no tie and more paperwork, coming to the same conclusions: people are easily tricked and behave irrationally. Sure, now we have statistics to say, "67% of people engage in this behavior when presented with X," and we have journal articles saying, "When presented with X, this region of the brain experiences statistically significantly increased bloodflow, ergo pay us to do it again," but it all amounts to the same thing.

Basically, unless you want to learn how to counsel people* or be one of the guys in a button-up shirt with no tie, Psych 101 will teach you all you need to know. Or, you can read this website, I guess. It's not complicated stuff; anyone can teach it.

*The modern need for psychological counseling is something else I take issue with. That we live in a society where people are so emotionally isolated that they have to pay someone to listen to their problems and ask, "And how does that make you feel?" is so fucked up it makes me want to scream sometimes.

So yeah, I chose a poor subject to major in.

[Nique]

It might not be complicated but it's uncomfortable to remember that your brain is always trying to take these shortcuts - I think it's good, and actually really interesting, to step back to gain a larger perspective on our own thought process. Everyone can fall into reciting what becomes some sort of rhetoric without always considering where it really comes from.

Also, is this really pop-psychology? When I think pop-psych it's like Dr.Phil and questionable self-help books that are about a step away from horoscopes in terms of usefulness.

[phil_]

Also, is this really pop-psychology?Man, I was browsing some psych journals to find you a really good article title like, "Learning across senses: Cross-modal effects in multisensory statistical learning," to show what research psychology is like, but I keep getting stuff on drinking games. GET OUT OF MY HEAD, PSYCNET!

Anyway, as that article title demonstrates, "real" psychology is just pop-psych with big words. Once someone explains the vocabulary, it's still blindingly simple stuff that any child can understand and generalities. "What's the difference in learning when the dude gets audio and visual presentations as opposed to just one or the other?"

What I'm saying is that Dr. Phil is an asshole because he gives bad advice, not because he claims his advice is based on psychology.It might not be complicated but it's uncomfortable to remember that your brain is always trying to take these shortcuts - I think it's good, and actually really interesting, to step back to gain a larger perspective on our own thought process. Everyone can fall into reciting what becomes some sort of rhetoric without always considering where it really comes from.Let me get off my hater horse for a second here and address what you actually want to talk about before I look like more of an ass than I already do. I agree, more people should be aware of how their mind works. My first draft of the "How?" post was much wordier and went something like, "Maybe they should just make PSYC 101 mandatory for all humanities degrees so that I could stop hearing this stuff when I'm not at school." I mean, I don't want to hear it because I'm sick of it, but more people should know this stuff so that, say, they can give sound emotional encouragement to their friends instead of awful responses like, "Suck it up," or, "Man, you think that's bad? Well, listen to this." Or, people might stop pushing the WoW lever if they recognize it for what it is and this "Play for X hours to unlock content" stuff might not be so ubiquitous (wishful thinking).

I'm getting a little ramble-y here and I have to go to Health Psychology =DDD seven minutes ago, so I'll just wrap up with

Basic Psychology: useful to know, sorta.

[Nique]

Let me get off my hater horse for a second here and address what you actually want to talk about before I look like more of an ass than I already do. I agree, more people should be aware of how their mind works. My first draft of the "How?" post was much wordier and went something like, "Maybe they should just make PSYC 101 mandatory for all humanities degrees so that I could stop hearing this stuff when I'm not at school." I mean, I don't want to hear it because I'm sick of it, but more people should know this stuff so that, say, they can give sound emotional encouragement to their friends instead of awful responses like, "Suck it up," or, "Man, you think that's bad? Well, listen to this." Or, people might stop pushing the WoW lever if they recognize it for what it is and this "Play for X hours to unlock content" stuff might not be so ubiquitous (wishful thinking).

Totally. Like most of the time everyone seems to assume that they have this stuff figured out like we've all moved beyond silly prejudices and so forth. And since we all understand this that must mean we aren't still subject to it at all.

After which some of us promptly get right back out there 'not seeing what all the fuss was about this hilarious blackface stuff'. EDIT: Or maybe, less offensively, playing farmville.

EDIT: Also I don't think you were really being that much of an ass at all, especially considering that 1) you have to actually like write essays and attend lectures and stuff about this and 2) I ramble even when it's written out so I tend to go on with topics like this as if it's somehow new information or a unique and magical perspective rather than just a conversation starter, which probably comes across as pretty obnoxious especially if you have to write essays and attend lectures about it

[phil_]

Oh, I was reminded of another everyday use for basic psychology. If you want to successfully malinger your way to valuable anti-depressants and government disability checks, you better have some familiarity with the assessments they're going to use to see what's supposed to be wrong with you.

[Nique]

Phil_, you're on Nique's couch.

Tell me about your mother.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Pertinent question: If I murder my psychiatrist in a session is it still a crime? LIke sure I murdered him but really it was his criminal negligence which caused it.

[Amake]

The Misconception: You do nice things for the people you like and bad things to the people you hate.

The Truth: You grow to like people for whom you do nice things and hate people you harm. I guess that's why I try to be nice to everyone.
The Misconception: You celebrate diversity and respect others’ points of view.

The Truth: You are driven to create and form groups and then believe others are wrong just because they are others. Probably not belonging to any group for the first 25 or so years of my life has taught me not to dismiss anyone for being "other".
The Misconception: You always know why you feel the way you feel.

The Truth: You can experience emotional states without knowing why, even if you believe you can pinpoint the source. I almost never know what I feel, but pinpointing the source of a feeling is often helpful in figuring it out.
The Misconception: You make rational decisions based on the future value of objects, investments and experiences.

The Truth: Your decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it. That's why I've tried to be very careful about what and who I care about since I was about sixteen.
The Misconception: People who riot and loot are scum who were just looking for an excuse to steal and be violent.

The Truth: You are are prone to losing your individuality and becoming absorbed into a hivemind under the right conditions. This should be obvious to anyone who's heard the phrase "group psychology".
The Misconception: You rationally analyze all factors before making a choice or determining value.

The Truth: Your first perception lingers in your mind, affecting later perceptions and decisions. I noticed when I was ten years old I had no idea how to make decisions or judgments. Maybe low self esteem made me believe every choice I made would turn out wrong, or maybe I was dimly aware of how little I knew about the factors I should analyze.
The Misconception: When your emotions run high, people can look at you and tell what you are thinking and feeling.

The Truth: Your subjective experience is not observable, and you overestimate how much you telegraph your inner thoughts and emotions. "Don't ever think someone knows what you're thinking or feeling, or that you know what someone's thinking or feeling" was literally the first thing I learned when I was diagnosed with Asperger's.
You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself.

While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them.

You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside.

At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.

You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.

At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved.

Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.
I'd say it's more of a wish than a need, like the wish to be able to fly.
My personality is a weakness and I try to defeat it.
It's true about the unused capacity, but then, people rarely use more than 10% of their bodily strength, intellect or emotional capacity. I don't know that I can even act as disciplined as I used to be when I was younger and tried to be a robot, though.
"At times" meaning "always", "doubts" meaning "regrets" and "right" meaning "wrong", yes.
I have an implicit need for predictability and routine which I try to fight by embracing change. I have found it necessary to trust people's words to some degree and to be completely frank with them in order to function, but I do pride myself as an imaginative thinker.
Being extroverted gives me a headache.
I don't think realistic aspirations are worth aspiring to.
The Misconception: In romance, opposites attract.

The Truth: When it comes to personality, you want someone a lot like you, and when opposites do attract the relationships often fall apart. I think I was fifteen when I first envisioned my ideal girlfriend as me with boobs.
The Misconception: After you learn something new, you remember how you were once ignorant or wrong.

The Truth: You often look back on the things you’ve just learned and assume you knew them or believed them all along. Let's see. I used to believe that global warming was fake, that God could not exist, that I was the center of the universe, that drugs were bad, that people were evil, that I was going to start a war on racism, that Final Fantasy 8 was a masterpiece and that Spawn was a great comic. But now I know better.
The Misconception: You smile when you are happy.

The Truth: Voluntary and involuntary smiles are different, and involuntary smiles are used to communicate you aren’t looking for a fight.
I'm happy when I smile, not the other way around. But yes, I remember a few times I've smiled involuntarily, precisely because I felt confronted and defensive. I also remember hating myself for doing it.
The Misconception: People who are losing at the game of life must have done something to deserve it.

The Truth: The beneficiaries of good fortune often do nothing to earn it, and bad people often get away with their actions without consequences.
I think I first realized this when I saw the school bully getting all the girls fawning over him because he hurt his foot kicking me, when I was eight.
The Misconception: Knowing a person’s history makes it easier to determine what sort of person they are.

The Truth: You jump to conclusions based on how representative a person seems to be of a preconceived character type. Only if you have any grasp of preconceived character types. Or determining what sort of person someone is to begin with.
The Misconception: You prefer the things you own over the things you don’t because you made rational choices when we bought them.

The Truth: You prefer the things you own because you rationalize your past choices to protect your sense of self. I refuse to tie my sense of self to material things. If we care too much about the things we own, the things own us, as some wise monk said.
The Misconception: You can predict how well you would perform in any situation.

The Truth: You are generally pretty bad at estimating your competence and the difficulty of complex tasks. I haven't really tested this, but I'm sure my self-esteem is not the kind that leads to me normally overestimating my skills.
The Misconception: Both consumerism and capitalism are sustained by corporations and advertising.

The Truth: Both consumerism and capitalism are driven by competition among consumers for status. I think it's a little of both, really. Anyway I find it funny how far removed even from counter-culture I stand. Yet, you still listened to music and bought shirts and went to see movies. Someone was appealing to you despite your dissent.

If you think you can buy your way to individuality, well, you are not so smart. Cause I never thought that. I didn't listen to music in my rebellious teenage years, nor did I buy clothes or go to the theater.
The Misconception: When you are around others, you feel as if everyone is noticing every aspect of your appearance and behavior.

The Truth: People devote little attention to you unless prompted to.
I figured that out soon after my diagnosis, when working out how to deal with paranoia.
The Misconception: When someone is hurt, people rush to their aid.

The Truth: The more people who witness a person in distress, the less likely any one person will help. This is true for me as for most people, but only because the larger the crowd, the more the fear of breaching some unknown social protocol keeps me from acting.
The Misconception: Problems are easier to solve when a group of people get together to discuss solutions.

The Truth: The desire to reach consensus and avoid confrontation hinders progress. The ideal size of a group is three people. I read a Dilbert strip about it.
The Misconception: You are a strong individual who doesn’t conform unless forced to.

The Truth: It takes little more than an authority figure or social pressure to get you to obey. I don't have an authority figure or social pressure in my life so that's hard to test. Although there might be a reason for that.
The Misconception: You are too smart to join a cult.

The Truth: Cults are populated by people just like you.

You have an innate desire to belong to a group and to hang out with interesting people.

If you have ever admired someone you have never actually met – like a musician – you’ve experienced the seed of the cult phenomenon. I've always tried to separate my opinion of an artist's work from my opinion of the artist. More importantly, I guess, while I've always wanted to belong to a group, I've never in my life felt that I did.
The Misconception: You evaluate yourself based on past successes and defeats.

The Truth: You excuse your failures and see yourself as more successful, more intelligent and more skilled than you are. I value myself mostly by what I may do or become, and I don't think it's just because I haven't actually had a lot of success.

The point I'm trying to make here is that you're not as dumb as that site says you are. What they say applies to normal people, and I don't believe a single normal person exists. I don't think anyone who's reading this is more normal than I am.

[phil_]

Phil_, you're on Nique's couch.

Tell me about your mother.Coming on a little strong, huh, doc? 1920 called; they want their psychoanalytic psychotherapy techniques back.Pertinent question: If I murder my psychiatrist in a session is it still a crime? LIke sure I murdered him but really it was his criminal negligence which caused it.It would be a crime, but you could probably be found mentally unfit to stand trial. I'd suggest checking your local library for the specifics.
The point I'm trying to make here is that you're not as dumb as that site says you are. What they say applies to normal people, and I don't believe a single normal person exists. I don't think anyone who's reading this is more normal than I am.I'm super grateful that you gave me something at the end to respond to so that I have something to show after reading all that.

Yeah, all this stuff applies generally. But, like you suggest, it doesn't flawlessly predict individual behavior. If psychologists could do that, well, crap, beyond just treating all mental illness, they'd have created some manner of Akashic Library or something.

If there's anything one learns from psychology, it's that there is no "normal." Just normative...

[Nique]

Phil_ is clearly insecure with his masculinity as his posts are littered with subtle phallic imagery revealing his attraction to and hatred of his own mother. Also impotence. Then again sometimes a cigar is just a penis. I mean a cock. I mean penispenispenis.

[walkertexasdruid]

I crave attention, and yet I wish to be left alone. I want to make people happy, yet I do things that make people angry. I want to be a productive worker, yet I chaffe whenever I am lectured about doing things "the right way". Wutupwitme?

[Shyria Dracnoir]

You have a parasitic twin living in your brain that occasionally hijacks your neural functions. I recommend surgery.

[walkertexasdruid]

You have a parasitic twin living in your brain that occasionally hijacks your neural functions. I recommend surgery.

That could explain my "threadkiller" persona that pops up every once in a while.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

What can I say, your twin is an evil little mofo.

[Magus]

phil_, what if I want to use my love of psychology to take everyone's money in a psycho cult or create a dictatorship? Clearly there are real world applications to this stuff that we can apply in our everyday lives as evil, evil supervillains.

[walkertexasdruid]

Na, I may have dark impulses at times but I am not evil. I keep those impulses under wraps most of the time. So I am cool, right? :sweatdrop

[phil_]

phil_, what if I want to use my love of psychology to take everyone's money in a psycho cult or create a dictatorship? Clearly there are real world applications to this stuff that we can apply in our everyday lives as evil, evil supervillains.If you want to use your love of psychology to start a cult/dictatorship, then you're out of luck, I think. Love of a subject doesn't confer mastery of it. Now, if you want to skip the love part and just use psychology, yeah, you're on the right track. Using people's want to belong and ingrained desire for meaning are the foundation of any cult. However, you're going to need a pretty good chunk of start-up capital for advertising, getting a sweet compound, maybe printing up a sacred text, all that. The illusion of legitimacy isn't cheap. I'd say that's the real hurdle.

Also, you need a military to start a dictatorship. I don't think you have a personal military. Although, a successful cult could help with that...

[Mr.Bookworm]

phil_, what if I want to use my love of psychology to take everyone's money in a psycho cult or create a dictatorship? Clearly there are real world applications to this stuff that we can apply in our everyday lives as evil, evil supervillains.

Go into advertising.