Introduction
Everyone has the rights to believe and follow their own conscience. However,
individuals idolize their beliefs because of certain reasons, ranging from cultural impacts
on biological psychology. It is important to understand why we believe in events to
maintain appropriate behaviors and not to affect the surrounding community negatively.
This report is set out to determine the reasons why human believe what they believe and
how we develop our school of thoughts. Moreover, some issues related to belief system
will be discussed from national to global perspectives, including opinions from Vietnam,
my country of origin, where beliefs play an important role in our daily life.
Issues
After analyzing and evaluating sites from different sources, I have chosen to
investigate three main factors that decide our beliefs: culture, confirmation bias and the
bandwagon effect. Besides the following reasons, there are still several elements which
can contribute to our mindset, faiths and beliefs.
Culture
Culture shapes human’s attitudes and forms our norms in daily life. Culture and
religious beliefs varied from different geographical locations. In other words, what human
believe is influenced by the environment where we were raised. Each nation’s origin and
conceptions are distinct and unique, so they pursue their very own beliefs and values.
For instance, if a person grows up across the Bible section in the Southern Part of United
States, there is a high chance that the individual may practice a type of evangelical
Protestantism than the one who experienced his/her childhood within the ultraprogressive Bay Area of California (Thought Monkey,2017).
One of the most significant examples is religions. Cultural elements such as ethics,
morals, worldviews, beliefs or practices in each religion are dissimilar to each other,
leading to the huge difference in religious individuals. Regarding global perspective, there
are clashing opinions in terms of food across the world. For instance, while eating beef is
taboo to Hindus, consuming pork and shellfish is spiritually unclean to Jews and Muslims
(Beyer, 2019). This data claimed that religious notions from religions are distinctive, and
can largely affect human consciences, especially when they have committed to strictly
follow a certain religion. As a result, individuals will likely pursue their nations’ customs
and seek after beliefs, simply like how their progenitors did in the past. For instance,
regarding national and local perspective, according to Jeffrey Hays (2014), approximately
70% population of Vietnam are either Buddhist or pursue Buddhist practices, such as
worshipping ancestors or visiting temples and pagodas on special annual occasions (New
Year’s Eve,…). This means that most individuals who were born in Vietnam are religious
and have developed a habit of following customs and practices within that religion.
Additionally, they will likely to maintain those traditions for the rest of their lives unless
there are extreme external factors such as religion conversion ( marital conversion, forced
conversion or conversion for convenience).
Confirmation bias
The second reason is confirmation bias. Humans are likely to follow evidence that
supports their views and reject any information which goes against them (UOW, n.d). The
declined data is thought-provoking, which lead to anxiety, and “as humans, we
understandably prefer to feel good about ourselves” (Skinner and Jones, 2019). Some
individuals do not accept certain facts since their cognitive bias favor, interpret, recall and
search for data that benefit preexisting beliefs (Effectiviology.com, 2019). Contradictions
result in human discomfort and uncertainty since they have advocative feelings for their
existential beliefs.
According to Effectiviology (2019), human experience confirmation bias due to two
major cognitive systems: challenge avoidance and reinforcement learning. Two of these
factors take place in human minds since they want to reduce their cognitive dissonance,
a pressure that people experience when they simultaneously acquire two or more
conflicting notions. In terms of the former, it supports individuals to eliminate data that
negates their existential beliefs and therefore grow up the dissonance in our thinking. As
regards the latter, it encourages individuals to lessen the cognitive dissonance which they
might undergo, by urging them to seek for their original state of mind, which may help
them tackle with every discomfort when they come across contradictory beliefs.
A common example of this phenomenon is Donald Trump, an anti-climate change
advocates, claimed that global warming is a hoax, and inferred in his tweet: “ The concept
of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S.
manufacturing non-competitive.” (Schulman, 2018). Moreover, after an extreme ice storm
came over and turned the southern part of the United States into catastrophe, he
confidently stated climate change as a hoax despite scientific records and evidence which
clearly show that global warming is now an alarming problem worldwide. There are global
warming advocates out there around the world and those sceptics, such as Trump, who
will immerse themselves in data that is consistent with their beliefs, for example, …and
dismiss factual data like causes of the phenomenon, including biodiversity loss, rising in
sea level or ozone depletion.
In order to alleviate the tendency of confirmation bias, some course of actions can
be implemented. Individuals can consider seeking for different sources of information
within the subject, which can be collected from primary or secondary research. Moreover,
we can build up a set of hypotheses that goes against the preexisting ideas, whereby
individuals actively searching for contradictory evidence, leading to a more thoughtful and
ultimate conclusion. By examining a wide range of data, the process of brainstorming will
be more sophisticated and well-developed.
Bandwagon effect
Bandwagon is a psychological effect whereby individuals take actions which have
already been accomplished by the majority, without considering their feelings and
convictions. Our surrounding environment creates this effect, where we are encouraged
and stimulated to align our notions with herd mentality. Subsequently, human origin ideas
and our personal values are dismissed, which are impossible to investigate whether they
are suitable and relevant to the subject. This happens because those individuals are more
comfortable when taking a less complicated route and sticking to a group’s response,
rather than examining carefully about a decision (Consulting.com, n.d). Moreover, by
going along with others, they want to avoid the sense of unbelonging and wish to be
socially accepted. Not only that, the phenomenon often happens when people are not in
a stable state of mind, in which they suffer from pressures, tiredness or distractions and
choose not to develop reasonings of a decision that others have already developed.
Bandwagon effect can manipulate humans’ beliefs, in which can leave significant impacts
in the way we think and act. The phenomenon can also affect such fields as political
notions, stock market or retail industry. In terms of brands, smart devices and gadgets
from Apple are good examples of herd mentality (Medium, 2018). We are living in the
ever-changing era of technology, and whenever Apple launches a new product, there will
be massive lines and groups queueing in front of stores from the night before in order to
admire the latest gadget without expressing any exhaustion and impatience. This claims
that most of the individuals are keeping up with trends and accept to follow other people
to avoid the sense of being isolated in a crowd. Therefore, they may not need this new
product, however, they are dramatically influenced by the norms created by people
surround us (Psychology Today, 2017) and then end up purchasing the gadget.
Another example is that people who were affected by the pressure of the antivaccination campaign becomes more neglected of detrimental repercussion that
hazardous diseases result in Consequently, rubella and measles saw a great outbreak in
recent years: in the United States, in 2013, three significant measles outbreaks took
places in groups where parents rejected vaccinations for their children due to the pressure
of the anti-vaccination movement (Measles & Rubella Initiative, n.d.). Moreover,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2019, the majority of
people who were infected was not taking any vaccinations against measles in the past.
Therefore, we can claim that being involved in the anti-vaccination movement is a
consequence of bandwagon effect, whereby parents are actively involved in the
campaign just because others are on it without acknowledging the severe consequences
from it.
There are some courses of action to diminish the impacts of the bandwagon effect,
including seeking for a variety of options or keeping track on the brainstorming process.
As regards the former, people can consider a wide range of possible choices, both from
social cues and from different sources to conduct a comprehensive interpreting process.
Social cues are not always bad, their power depends on how human make use of it,
whether to let them manipulate our beliefs. In terms of the latter, individuals can develop
a concept map while brainstorming about a topic. By following this process, ideas are
organized logically, and researchers will find it easy to gather all relevant points in the
end. In addition, groupthink influence will be minimized and individuals will have a clear
mindset on why they are doing something.
Source evaluation
All information is collected from a variety of sources. In terms of recency of
sources, many sources do not contain publication date or publishers, which lessen its
authenticity. Moreover, several sources are biased, such as the Youtube channel
“Thought Monkey”, which contains personal feelings and opinions towards the topic, ….
As regards the level of accuracy of sources, several websites are unreliable to utilize
since they do not contain any references or in-text citations, including the article from the
University of Wollongong, the website “Consulting.com” and the blog “Psychology Today”.
Due to all-included information such as author’s name, article title or website title, most
sources that I have come across are trust-worthy when it comes to referencing.
Nevertheless, I believe that it would be even better if I had chances to analyze
testimonies and studies from such experts or professors who specialized in psychology.
The data and statistics from those sources are much more certified and precise to
investigate than blogs that contain individuals’ point of views. Experts have welldeveloped knowledge background and are proficient at examining on belief system, an
abstract aspect of the phenomenon.
Personal perspective and Conclusion
After finish researching and conducting a report, I have accomplished the aim
of the paper: to find out reasons why human believe their beliefs and analysed different
perspectives towards the subject. Besides, while relevant examples are given as
justifications and backup evidence for my arguments, some course of actions for
confirmation bias and bandwagon effect were suggested in details.
Before completing researches, I was prone to the idea that the bandwagon effect,
as well as group thinking, always leave positive impacts on our belief system. However, I
realize that the need for evaluating different sources of data is crucial and beneficial when
researching since individuals should stay balanced between social cues and their own
opinions. Also, social cues are not always wrong to follow, so having a mindset which
contains both the former and the latter is recommended to implement.
Bibliography
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