Title: What Actually Is a Belief? And Why Is It So Hard to Change? | Psychology Today
Headings: What Actually Is a Belief? And Why Is It So Hard to Change?
Ralph Lewis M.D.
What Actually Is a Belief? And Why Is It So Hard to Change?
Beliefs evolved as energy-saving shortcuts. Restructuring them is costly.

Content: Alain Lacroix/Dreamstime
Beliefs are a slippery concept. What actually are they? Philosophy has long struggled to define them. 2 In this post-truth and ideologically polarized world, we need a better understanding of beliefs. As a psychiatrist, my job frequently involves identifying distorted beliefs, understanding how they formed, and helping people to learn to be more skeptical of their own beliefs. Let’s consider a helpful evolutionary framework for making more coherent sense of what beliefs really are, and why mistaken beliefs can sometimes be so hard to change. Then we’ll talk about how to gain a more accurate grasp of reality, and how, ultimately, to advance society. Beliefs as energy-saving shortcuts in modeling and predicting the environment 3
Beliefs are our brain’s way of making sense of and navigating our complex world. They are mental representations of the ways our brains expect things in our environment to behave, and how things should be related to each other—the patterns our brain expects the world to conform to. Beliefs are templates for efficient learning and are often essential for survival.