What does it mean to believe?
We often say things like “I believe…” and “they think that…”
But what do we really mean by a “belief”? It’s notoriously tricky to define.
For starters, we sometimes think of beliefs in binaries (true vs. false) and other times in probabilities (a 90% chance of coming true). We sometimes would be willing to bet on our beliefs (“I’ll bet you $100 that New York City is not the capital of New York State”), and other times we wouldn’t be willing to bet (e.g., that your favorite team will win the Super Bowl, even though you may feel confident about it). It seems, sometimes, like we don’t fully believe our beliefs (e.g., we say, “I know it’s not dangerous,” and mean it, but then act as though it’s dangerous).
So what’s going on here? My theory: what makes discussing beliefs so confusing is that there are actually many different mental states we can have that are “belief-like.” In other words, beliefs are not one type of thing. They come in many forms.
We usually lump these divergent forms together, which creates a lot of confusion. At best, we divide them into dichotomies like explicit, cognitive “beliefs” vs. automatic “aliefs,” which still combine disparate forms together.
Below is my ambitious attempt to distinguish all the different belief-like states our minds can have.
I’m sure I missed some. So, I’d be very interested to know: what types of beliefs am I missing?
FORMS OF BELIEF
Beliefs On Reflection
Endorsed Belief: there are some things we’re willing to sincerely say we believe (or willing to say we’re X% confident about), and this is a form of belief – the things we “believe” that we believe.
Ex: you write as a social media post, “I believe healthcare should be free for everyone,” and there is no doubt in your mind that you really do endorse this.
Simulation Belief: we can ask ourselves hypotheticals like: “if I suddenly took my clothes off in the street, how would people react?” Our brains will then simulate the scenario and provide the best guess of what will happen. This is a form of belief about what would happen.
Ex: you consider how your friend would react if you told them you don’t like their haircut, and your belief is that they would be angry at you.
Automatic Beliefs
Anticipation Belief: our brains constantly predict what is about to happen (based on current sensory input, knowledge, and what happened recently). When these anticipations are far off from what actually happens, we feel surprised. These are a kind of “belief” about what is about to happen in the next moment.
Ex: you knock over a full cup of coffee and anticipate it will spill onto the ground. If it doesn’t spill, you will be surprised.
Sensed Belief: when someone makes a claim, such as “most pirates are ninjas,” we have a felt sense of whether we believe that statement or not (and how strongly/confidently we believe it). This is just a feeling, but it is a feeling about our level of “belief.”
Ex: you say to yourself, “I believe I am a good person,” and then you consider that statement carefully to see if you really FEEL like you believe it.
This idea relates to techniques like Focusing, where you learn to pay attention to the “felt sense” of whether a statement resonates with you.
Emotional Belief: our emotions activate in specific sorts of situations (e.g., risk -> anxiety, contamination -> disgust). So if our emotions are activated, they can be interpreted as a form of “Emotional Belief.” If I’m anxious about X, on some level, I believe X could go badly.
Ex: you know it’s totally safe to walk across the balance beam suspended above the pit of foam cubes, but your heart is pounding in your chest, and your sympathetic nervous system seems convinced you’re about to plummet to your death.
Intuitive Moral Belief: we have feelings about whether most things are good, neutral, or bad (and to what degree). For instance, you might like tea and hate coffee. You might like Biden and dislike Trump. These are beliefs of a sort – about what’s good.
Ex: are guns good or bad? What about nuclear power? Youth? Avocados? Spiders? If you pay close attention, you’ll probably realize you have an automatic sense of how good or bad these things are.
Self-serving Belief: sometimes, we want something to be true badly, and we won’t even allow the possibility that it’s false (e.g., because the thought that it could be false gives us pain, and so we immediately flinch away from that thought).
Ex: Some people might say, “my partner has never cheated on me,” without actually even considering whether it could be true.
Association Belief: we associate ideas with each other. For instance, we might associate milk with health (because of those “got milk” commercials) and Segways with nerds. These are a sort of implicit belief about the nature of these things (health effects / who uses them). (These beliefs can also be thought of as automatic or implicit memory-based beliefs.)
Ex: do you associate cities with smog? Do you associate French people with an enjoyment of food?
Implied Belief: you have probably never considered whether 384883828382553 is a number, but you already believed it is, in the sense that you have beliefs about what makes something a number. By implication, they imply it is one. Beliefs can imply other beliefs.
Ex: if you believe all men are mortal, and you believe Elon Musk is a man, you also, in a sense, believe that Elon Musk is mortal, even if you’ve never thought about the mortality of Elon Musk.
Memory-based Beliefs
Autobiographical Belief: suppose someone asks you if you have ever eaten Flaming Hot Cheetos. If you can recall an instance of doing so, you’ll say you have eaten them; otherwise, you won’t. One type of belief is what we can recall being true. Another way this can manifest is if we’re considering a question (like: “Is Sally a flaky friend?”) we may try to recall an instance of her being flaky, and if we can, we conclude she is flaky, whereas if we can’t, we are more likely to conclude she is not.
Ex: have you called a friend on their cell phone in the past seven days? If you can recall a case of doing so, you’ll believe it’s true. If not, you’ll very likely believe it’s not.
Memorized Belief: you can believe a statement in the sense of memorizing that the statement is supposed to be “true.” For instance, if you’re taught from age three that “Morloc is the sky god,” You say “Morloc is the sky god” and believe you believe it. You may not know what it means.
Ex: TV rots your brain. Opposites attract. Do you believe these statements are “true” because you heard that they were before you’ve had a chance to reflect on whether or not they really are true?
Elicited Beliefs
Generated Belief: when we are asked a question (by ourselves or others), we usually will generate an answer (e.g., “Why did you do that?” -> “Because I was angry”). This answer is a kind of belief related to the query. On reflection, though, we may decide we don’t believe it.
Ex: your friend asks you whether you want to go camping. You immediately blurt out “yes” – but then you immediately start considering whether or not you would actually enjoy camping.
Queried Belief: suppose you are shown a picture of a person and asked to “predict where this person is from.” A guess will likely appear in your head. In a sense, you have a belief that this person is from this place (arguably even if you have not yet run that mental query).
Ex: What country in the world do you think has the smallest landmass? Your brain may well generate a guess upon hearing that query.
Reactive Belief: we may find that a thought pops into our head (e.g., “Joe is a jerk”), and some people may view merely having this thought as a form of belief. Of course, upon reflection, we may or may not agree with the thought.
Ex: upon seeing Marty throw the bowling ball into the next lane by accident, you may have the thought, “Marty is awful at bowling.”
Behavioral Beliefs
Enacted Belief: sometimes, we believe something in order to create a state of affairs that is true by virtue of having the belief. For instance, we may think that “good people believe X” and we find that we can get ourselves to believe X, so we try to believe it, or we may think “my company will succeed if I believe it strongly enough” and so we push ourselves to believe we will succeed in hopes of making it true (e.g., dismissing any thoughts that we will fail, and trying to focus just on evidence in support of our future success).
Ex: someone who believes deeply in the placebo effect might do everything they can to believe the medicine will make them feel better, with the theory that, if they believe hard enough, it will work – which means then that they will be justified in that belief. (H/T Alli Smith and Annie Kotowicz.)
As-if Belief: sometimes we believe something in the sense of simply acting as though it is true, whether or not we would say we are highly confident in it. For instance, we might have heard a rumor that our neighbor once went to prison for molesting a child. We are considering how to act towards this neighbor. We may conclude that, even though there is uncertainty (since it’s just a rumor), we will act “as if” it is true – even though, if pressed on the topic, we will say we are uncertain whether it is true. Or we could decide the opposite (to act as though it is NOT true, on the principle that we shouldn’t act as if someone committed a criminal act unless we have strong evidence – like the principle of being “innocent until proven guilty”).
Sometimes these “as-if” beliefs are much deeper; for instance, we might act “as-if” induction works, even if we know we can’t provide strong arguments in favor of it, or we might act “as-if” god doesn’t exist, even if we aren’t really sure about it. Or we might act “as-if” we have a death wish (e.g., by engaging in extremely risky behavior), even though we don’t think we have any desire for self-harm. H/T to Pepe Le Pew for inspiring this belief type.
There are many forms of belief. In plenty of cases, it’s unnecessary to differentiate between them, but on complex questions of human psychology, we may need to get granular with the idea of “belief” to really understand what’s happening.
Consider advanced cases like these, that are hard to make sense of without a nuanced perspective of the different forms of belief:
• Why do people who are absolutely convinced they’re going to heaven get scared of dying?
• Why do people claim that Trump or Biden is definitely going to win but then refuse to make a bet on that claim (even though normally they enjoy betting)?
• Why do we say things like “I believe in love,” even though, when asked what it means, we may struggle to explain it, and we may not have thought in detail about its meaning before?
This essay was first written on October 11th, 2020, and first appeared on this site on January 14th, 2022.
> on complex questions of human psychology, we may need to get granular with the idea of “belief”
I believe(sorry), that the granularity would allow us to “really understand what’s happening” when it’s a granularity of how beliefs work/what they are composed of/based on. In coaching and some kinds of therapy there is a useful idea that we believe things to get something and inquiry into the profit can strengthen or weaken them.
Eg: I believe I am worthy, it doesn’t matter to me what moral philosophy it can be based upon, because having those words in my mind makes me less sad and eases me into defending myself from others. When I found I believe that I should never give anything without a fight -to protect myself because I was raised in a situation where it was needed and my therapist asked me whether it’s still useful – I instantly realized it became harmful to my relationships and miraculously stopped.
I don’t see how I can use your categorization to gain anything. It seems too close to just enumerating anything you can believe in, description without prediction. Maybe you have some use in mind that you could share?