Additional cross‐cultural evidence on the selective usage of nonmaterial beliefs in explaining life events

Two studies, one conducted in the Netherlands (N=87) and one in Italy with two samples—Catholic Youth (N=41) and Young Communists (N=41)—assessed the cross‐cultural generality of the previously confirmed hypothesis (Pepitone & Saffiotti, 1997) that six universal nonmaterial beliefs—fate, God, luck, chance, just punishment, and just reward—are used selectively to interpret life events. A ‘selective correspondence’ between the six beliefs and the standard life event cases specifically constructed to engage the belief‐specializations was predicted. All three samples showed the predicted correspondence in terms of significant ordinal correlations in a 6 nonmaterial belief ×9 life events classification. In addition, the findings are consistent with the assumption that the degree of selective correspondence depends upon the importance of beliefs in the sample under study. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Just World Beliefs Are Associated With Lower Levels of Metabolic Risk and Inflammation and Better Sleep After an Unfair Event

This study's goal was to conduct a preliminary test of the theory that just world beliefs can buffer against negative physiological outcomes after people experience certain types of negative life events by testing associations between just world beliefs and physiological outcomes among people with different life event histories. In a sample of 247 adults (M_age = 46.01; 24.31% men; 60.78% White), this research investigated the relationship between just world beliefs and metabolic symptoms, inflammation, and sleep among people who had recently experienced an unfair event, another type of negative event, or no negative event. Stronger just world beliefs correlated with lower metabolic risk, lower inflammation, and better sleep among people who had recently experienced an unfair event, but not among those in the other two event groups. These findings suggest that people's beliefs about the world may interact with their life experiences in ways that have implications for health‐relevant outcomes.     

The Nature and Predictive Value of Mothers' Beliefs Regarding Infants' and Toddlers' TV/Video Viewing: Applying the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction

Viewing television and video programming has become a normative behavior among U.S. infants and toddlers. Little is understood about the extent of parents' decision making regarding their young children's viewing, although numerous organizations are interested in reducing time spent viewing among infants and toddlers. Prior research has examined parents' belief in the educational value of TV/videos for young children and the predictive value of this belief for understanding infant and toddler viewing rates, although other possible salient beliefs remain largely unexplored. This study employs the integrative model of behavioral prediction to examine 30 maternal beliefs about infants' and toddlers' TV/video viewing, which were elicited from a prior sample of mothers. Results indicate that mothers tend to hold more positive than negative beliefs about the outcomes associated with young children's TV/video viewing and that the nature of the aggregate set of beliefs is predictive of their general attitudes and intentions to allow their children to view, as well as children's estimated viewing rates. Analyses also uncover multiple dimensions within the full set of beliefs, which explain more variance in mothers' attitudes and intentions and children's viewing than the uni-dimensional index. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

The Mystery of Direct Perceptual Justification

In at least some cases of justified perceptual belief, our perceptual experience itself, as opposed to beliefs about it, evidences and thereby justifies our belief. While the phenomenon is common, it is also mysterious. There are good reasons to think that perceptions cannot justify beliefs directly, and there is a significant challenge in explaining how they do. After explaining just how direct perceptual justification is mysterious, I considerMichael Huemer’s (Skepticism and the Veil of Perception, 2001) and Bill Brewer’s (Perception and Reason, 1999) recent, but radically different, attempts to eliminate it. I argue that both are unsuccessful, though a consideration of their mistakes deepens our appreciation of the mystery.     

Hume's Reflections on the Identity and Simplicity of Mind1

The article presents a new interpretation of Hume's treatment of personal identity, and his later rejection of it in the “Appendix” to the Treatise. Hume's project, on this interpretation, is to explain beliefs about persons that arise primarily within philosophical projects, not in everyday life. the belief in the identity and simplicity of the mind as a bundle of perceptions is an abstruse belief, not one held by the “vulgar” who rarely turn their minds on themselves so as to think of their perceptions. the author suggests that it is this philosophical observation of the mind that creates the problems that Hume finally acknowledges in the “Appendix.” He is unable to explain why we believe that the perceptions by means of which we observe our minds while philosophizing are themselves part of our minds. This suggestion is then tested against seven criteria that any interpretation of the “Appendix” must meet.     

Masculinity,Femininity, and Reported Paranormal Beliefs

Previous research has found that women are more likely than men to report belief in nonmaterial paranormal phenomena (e.g., psychics). There are inconsistent findings about whether men are more likely than women to report belief in material paranormal phenomena (e.g., bigfoot/sasquatch), and no prior survey research has examined gender expression (as masculine or feminine) as it relates to paranormal beliefs. This paper asks: How do gender identity and gender expression relate to reported paranormal beliefs? It answers this question using a large sample (n = 2504) of Canadians. Femininity helps explain differences between cisgender women and men on reported beliefs about foreseeing the future and telekinesis, but less so about reported belief in ghosts. Intriguingly, reported gender atypicality is associated with reported belief in all paranormal phenomena among cisgender women and among cisgender men. The results highlight the importance of measuring gender expression for beliefs that science cannot verify.     

Wittgenstein,Quasi-fideism,and Scepticism

In the discussion of certainties, or ‘hinges’, in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty some of the examples that Wittgenstein uses are religious ones. He remarks on how a child might be raised so that they ‘swallow down’ belief in God (§107) and in discussing the role of persuasion in disagreements he asks us to think of the case of missionaries converting natives (§612). In the past decade Duncan Pritchard has made a case for an account of the rationality of religious belief inspired by On Certainty which he calls ‘quasi-fideism’. Pritchard argues that religious beliefs are just like ordinary non-religious beliefs in presupposing fundamental arational commitments. However, Modesto Gómez-Alonso has recently argued that there are significant differences between the kinds of ‘hinges’ discussed in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and religious beliefs such that we should expect an account of rationality in religion to be quite different to the account of rational practices and their foundations that we find in Wittgenstein’s work. Fundamental religious commitments are, as Wittgenstein said, in the foreground of the religious believer’s life whereas hinge commitments are said to be in the background. People are passionately committed to their religious beliefs but it is not at all clear that people are passionately committed to hinges such as that ‘I have two hands’. I argue here that although there are differences between religious beliefs and many of the hinge-commitments discussed in On Certainty religious beliefs are nonetheless hinge-like. Gómez-Alonso’s criticisms of Pritchard mischaracterise his views and something like Pritchard’s quasi-fideism is the correct account of the rationality of religious belief.

     

Consistent Belief in a Good True Self in Misanthropes and Three Interdependent Cultures

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy—the tendency to view humans negatively—predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self‐attributions across cultural groups, by comparing samples from an independent country (USA) and a diverse set of interdependent countries (Russia, Singapore, and Colombia). Results indicated that the direction and magnitude of the effect are comparable across all groups we tested. The belief in a good true self appears robust across groups varying in cultural orientation or misanthropy, suggesting a consistent psychological tendency to view the true self as morally good.     

Where,O death,is thy sting? The meaning-providing function of beliefs in literal immortality

Terror management theory suggests that humans invest in cultural worldviews that allay mortality-related anxiety by promising death transcendence. Many religious individuals adhere to belief in literal immortality – believing that one will live on after death. Across two studies (n?=?1137), we explored the terror management function of such beliefs by exploring whether these beliefs are associated with lower death anxiety and greater meaning among individuals of varying religiousness. In both Study 1 (n?=?236) and Study 2 (n?=?901), belief in literal immortality was related to lower death anxiety only among intrinsically religious participants. Moreover, meaning in life mediated the relationship between belief in literal immortality and death anxiety. Study 2 clarified that this mediational relationship was only present for intrinsically religious individuals. We discuss the importance of particular religious beliefs in the provision of meaning in order to manage existential concerns.     

The Association Between Religious Beliefs and Practices and End-of-Life Fears Among Members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)

This study examines the association between various religious beliefs and practices and fears pertaining to death and dying in a national sample of liberal Protestant U.S. adults. Data were analyzed from a 2002 survey of members and elders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) (N = 935). Four measures of religion were tested together in models predicting four end-of-life fears. Church attendance (p < .01), other church involvement (p < .05), and belief in life after death (p < .001) had negative associations with the fear of what happens after death. Private devotion was inversely related to the fear of dying in pain (p < .05). Involvement in church activities (p < .05), aside from religious services, was inversely related to the fear of leaving loved ones behind. Females tended to be more fearful than males of dying alone and dying in pain and older adults tended to be less fearful than younger adults of the unknown and of leaving loved ones behind.     

Religion and the Acceptability of White‐Collar Crime: A Cross‐National Analysis

This article examines whether shared religious beliefs and religious social relationships (Durkheim) and belief in a personal, moral God (Stark) negatively affect attitudes toward the acceptability of white‐collar crime. In addition, using a large cross‐national sample and estimating multilevel models, we test whether effects are conditional on modernization and religious contexts characterized by belief in an impersonal or amoral God. Shared religious beliefs and the importance of God in one's life are negatively related to the acceptability of white‐collar crime. These effects, however, weaken in religious contexts characterized by belief in an impersonal or amoral God as do the effects of religious social relationships and belonging to a religious organization; modernization, on the other hand, does not have a moderating effect. In short, religious belief is associated with lower acceptance of white‐collar crime and certain types of religious contexts condition this relationship.     

“That is just what they want you to believe”: A modest defence of Marxist paranoia

This essay defends a rational reconstruction of a genealogical debunking argument that begins with the premise “that's just what the economic elite want you to believe” and ends in the conclusion “you should lower your confidence in your belief.” The argument is genealogical because it includes a causal explanation of your beliefs; it is debunking because it claims that the contingencies uncovered by the genealogy undermine your beliefs. The essay begins by defending a plausible causal explanation of your belief in terms of the wants of the elite. Then a number of recent objections to genealogical debunking arguments are considered. It is argued that the genealogy offered in the first part constitutes evidence that a testimony‐based belief is not safe and therefore does not constitute knowledge if the economic elite wants you to believe it.     

THE MORAL BELIEF PROBLEM

The moral belief problem is that of reconciling expressivism in ethics with both minimalism in the philosophy of language and the syntactic discipline of moral sentences. It is argued that the problem can be solved by distinguishing minimal and robust senses of belief, where a minimal belief is any state of mind expressed by sincere assertoric use of a syntactically disciplined sentence and a robust belief is a minimal belief with some additional property R. Two attempts to specify R are discussed, both based on the thought that beliefs are states that aim at truth. According to the first, robust beliefs are criticisable to the extent that their content fails to match the state of the world. This sense fails to distinguish robust beliefs from minimal beliefs. According to the second, robust beliefs function to have their content match the state of the world. This sense succeeds in distinguishing robust beliefs from minimal beliefs. The conclusion is that the debate concerning the cognitive status of moral convictions needs to address the issue of the function of moral convictions. Evolutionary theorising may be relevant, but will not be decisive, in answering this question.     

Symbols and Similarity: You Can Get Too Much of a Good Thing

A method for eliciting extended explanations was used to evaluate predictions from the “theory-theory” account of developing psychological reasoning. Children were repeatedly asked to explain the actions or emotions of story characters with false beliefs. Questioning elicited false belief attributions in half of 3-year-olds (Study 1, N = 16, age M = 3;6) and most 4-year-olds who failed belief prediction tasks (Study 2, N = 30, M = 4;5). In Study 3, 30 prediction failers (M = 5;1) gave significantly more false belief explanations for emotions than for actions. Across the studies, desire and emotion explanations emerged early and often, reflecting the primacy of these constructs in the children's understanding of psychological causality. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for developmental mechanism.     

Just world beliefs,perceived stress,and health behavior: The impact of a procedurally just world∗

Recent research suggests that a just world view may promote good health while low belief in a just world may deleteriously affect well-being. However, this research is limited in that specific components of justice beliefs that are important to health are not well articulated. Additionally, many potential pathways linking perceived fairness to physical health remain largely unexplored. In the present study, we examined how individual differences in both distributive (outcomes and allocations) and procedural (rules and processes) just world beliefs are associated with stress and health behavior. Participants were recruited from two universities (N = 426) to complete individual differences measures of procedural and distributive just world beliefs, and also measures of perceived stress, health behavior, and physical symptoms. Results suggested that procedural, but not distributive just world views were important to well-being. In particular, belief in a procedurally just world was associated directly with lower perceived stress, and also indirectly with adaptive health behaviors and fewer physical health complaints. In general, these results suggest that beliefs about a procedurally just world may be particularly important to well-being, while also suggesting specific directions and mechanisms for future attempts at developing justice-oriented health interventions.     

The Cognitive Dynamics of Beliefs: The Effect of Information on Message Processing

This study investigated the time course of belief change from univalent versus mixed‐valence messages, both while the message was being received and after receipt while it was being considered. Hypotheses about the temporal patterns of belief change were tested with belief trajectories from S. E. McGreevy (1996) , valid N= 78, with an average number of time points per person = 5,267 (126.41 seconds) for the message‐receipt phase and 2,467 (59.22 seconds) for the postmessage phase. Results showed that while receiving a message, beliefs changed according to the value and the order of presentation of information in the message. A greater number of positive belief changes were generated in response to a positive univalent message than to a mixed‐valence message. In the postmessage phase, a greater oscillatory pattern of belief change was found for a mixed‐valence message than for a univalent message. Theoretical and methodological implications of these findings are discussed.     

Social Dominance Orientation Relates to Believing Men Should Dominate Sexually, Sexual Self-Efficacy, and Taking Free Female Condoms Among Undergraduate Women and Men

Gendered-based power affects heterosexual relationships, with beliefs in the U.S. prescribing that men dominate women sexually. We draw on social dominance theory to examine whether women??s and men??s level of support for group-based hierarchy (i.e., social dominance orientation; SDO) helps explain gender-based power beliefs and dynamics in heterosexual relationships. We conducted a laboratory study at a Northeastern U.S. university among 357 women and 126 men undergraduates who reported being heterosexual and sexually active, testing three sets of hypotheses. First, as hypothesized, women endorsed SDO and the belief that men should dominate sexually less than men did. Second, as hypothesized, among women and men, SDO was positively correlated with the belief that men should dominate sexually, and negatively correlated with sexual self-efficacy (confidence in sexual situations) and number of female condoms (a woman-controlled source of protection) taken. Third, structural equation modeling, controlling for age, family income, number of sexual partners in the past month, and perceived HIV/AIDS risk, supported the hypothesis that among women and men, the belief that men should dominate sexually mediates SDO??s association with sexual self-efficacy. The hypothesis that the belief that men should dominate sexually mediates SDO??s association with number of female condoms taken was supported for women only. The hypothesis that sexual self-efficacy mediates SDO??s association with number of female condoms taken was not supported. Results suggest SDO influences power beliefs and dynamics in heterosexual relationships. Although female condoms are an important woman-controlled source of protection, power-related beliefs may pose a challenge to their use.     

Lay Beliefs About Developing Countries in Relation to Helping Behaviors

ABSTRACT

We study the beliefs in a developed country about the attribution of responsibility for the situation in developing countries, in relation to helping behaviors and level of commitment. Two samples were used: one for the synthesis of knowledge (N = 527) and a second for the synthesis of beliefs (N = 287). From the results, we analyze the synthesis of beliefs and obtain the structure of beliefs. The synthesis of beliefs sample was made up of 137 individuals who help developing countries and 150 who do not. ANOVAs show that developed countries activate three implicit theories as beliefs to explain poverty in developing countries. Attribution external to the actor is more significant at higher levels of commitment to help. The implications for social communication campaigns in the developed world are discussed.     

Relationships Between Dysfunctional Beliefs and Positive and Negative Indices of Well-Being: A Critical Evaluation of the Common Beliefs Survey-III

The Common Beliefs Survey-III is a factored measure of dysfunctional beliefs and has generally shown satisfactory convergent validity and test–retest reliability [(2001) Journal of Rational-Emotive and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 19(2), 89–103). We sought to further establish the utility of the measure by examining the extent the dysfunctional belief subscales related to a wide variety of positive and negative indices of well-being, after controlling for a potential confound, namely, social desirability. Four hundred and fifty-seven university students completed questionnaires that assessed six dimensions of dysfunctional belief, seven negative indices of well-being (depression, anxiety, stress, guilt, hostility, hopelessness, suicidal thinking), three positive indices of well-being (life satisfaction, joviality, state self-assurance), and social desirability. Analyses revealed that lower well-being was associated with (1) beliefs that self-worth is dependent on success, (2) beliefs that self-worth is dependent on approval, (3) demanding beliefs that reflect unrealistically high expectations for events and individuals. Belief variables predicted 14% of the variance in the negative indices but only 7.3% in the positive indices. Stepwise regression revealed that the optimal set of belief predictors depended on the type of well-being predicted. These findings have implications for both theory and practice.