Belief and the Cognitive Unconscious

Abstract

AbstractBeliefs influence perceptions, emotional reactions, and behaviors. Much intellectual activity is devoted to their acquisition and to protecting them from corruptive influences. Beliefs also influence the encoding and recall of experience, resulting in memories that tend toward consistency with what is already believed to be true. They have been an important focus of study despite difficulties in providing a precise and meaningful definition of the construct. Some have added to the problem by suggesting that beliefs also exist in the cognitive unconscious, and that such “implicit” beliefs have unrecognized but significant impacts on emotion and behavior. This notion is examined and rejected in this chapter. While implicit biases and conditioned emotional responses certainly exist, they do not constitute belief, which is a truth-testable proposition involving both content and a subjective probability estimate of its truth. An implicit belief therefore violates the normal sense of what it means to believe.