This is why people get upset when their beliefs are challenged.

in cognitive •  4 years ago 

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This came up for me again just now, that THIS is our problem, or at least ONE of the more resistant-to-change problems, that I will here admittedly simplify.

From an early age... BELIEFS are drilled into us. Parents generally can't wait to get started. Rarely are they presented to us as freely embraced IDEAS (very different than beliefs) that might possibly be open to opinion or interpretation.

Our lives were full of them, were they not?... (Which ones jump out for you?) "Please stand! Hand over you heart! Repeat after me. Memorize! Trust in GOD and COUNTRY and AUTHORITY and MORALITY (i.e. be a good boy or girl!) "WE" don't do that?"

Moral psychologist, Jonathan Haidt even found evidence for the inculcation of these imposed beliefs concurrent to potty training time... (That makes sense that it would have to do with your relationship to your own body parts, and feelings of icky and poopy - things which if you get them wrong, just might get you smacked.) However they are introduced to us, they are there within each of us, deeply-rooted and easily-accessed.

When faced with new events or new data, we are each to varying degrees inclined to call up those initial primal indoctrinations, to assess the implications of the new idea - after which we take out our old twisted instruments of belief, fear and suspicion and try to force the new events to fit into our old bias/ belief molds... thinking that in this way, we can avoid unwanted "stress" - This is what is called "cognitive dissonance."

"Cognitive Dissonance:" In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, and is typically experienced as psychological stress when they participate in an action that goes against one or more of them." (wikipedia)

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