TY - JOUR
AU1 - Jelalian, Elissa
AU2 - Miller, Arthur G.
AB - “Belief perseverance” describes the individual's biased response to information in order to maintain an existing belief or conception. One line of research has focused on perseverance in the presence of discrediting evidence. Another emphasis has concerned the assimilation of information that is related to the initial belief in a more equivocal manner. Perseverance may reflect an individual's emotional investment in a given position and a resulting need to process information in order to avoid dissonant or self-disparaging thoughts. A more general theme in the literature is that perseverance involves a cognitive strategy of endorsing or soliciting confirming evidence but reacting more critically toward or even reacting disconfirming or inconsistent information. One conceptual account that has received considerable support is that the individual engages in a causal explanation of a given behavioral outcome that strengthens an initial belief or premise and results in perseverance even when the premise is subsequently contested. There is also evidence that people search for and recollect information that is consistent with an existing belief or impression. Behavioral confirmation in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy has been shown in a number of investigations. For a number of reasons, therefore, the individual is likely to experience far more support for an existing belief than may objectively exist in the available data. Illustrations of perseverance are described in contexts as diverse as the persistence of undesirable thoughts or behavioral patterns, the ramifications of jurors being overly influenced by discredited eyewitnesses, the consequences of false accusations in the media, the stability of liking and disliking responses toward others, the strategic avoidance of diagnostic behaviors in the area of self-handicapping, and the negative effects of deception in research. Research on perseverance represents a promising integration of certain clinical problem areas (e.g., depression and chronic gambling) and conceptual analyses of biases in social perception.
TI - The Perseverance of Beliefs: Conceptual Perspectives and Research Developments
JF - Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
DO - 10.1521/jscp.1984.2.1.25
DA - 1984-03-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/guilford-press/the-perseverance-of-beliefs-conceptual-perspectives-and-research-4mNkTccNsY
SP - 25
EP - 56
VL - 2
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -