Why Do People Believe What They Believe?

I often read, and write comments on, the online news site Huffington Post. I am moved to write replies to people who express ideas counter to mine—such as "homosexuality is a sin (abomination, etc.)."  This may result in a back-and-forth dialog in which they in turn try to refute what I said.

Of course I have to suspect that no one convinces anyone. Neither they nor I am there to have my mind changed. Nor, generally, do we behave with open minds. So much of what we read only reinforces opinions we already hold. Liberals read liberal magazines, conservatives read conservative magazines. That's called "preaching to the choir." So we hear (or read) what we already believe because that's what we want to hear.

But as a thoughtful person—forgive a little patting-of-self-on-back—I wonder why people believe what they believe.

Often people have received their ideas, to put it simply: from parents, teachers, preachers. Of course that only begs the question, by moving it up, or back, to someone else, and then we have to ask why they believe. . . ad infinitum.

As to receiving ideas from one's teachers: it is commonly believed that education makes one more liberal. I'd agree, but would hasten to add that it depends on the kind of education. The business school student who reads Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman is going to have different ideas than the English major who reads John Steinbeck and Kurt Vonnegut.

Many people receive the ideas, attitudes, values, beliefs, etc., that are prevalent in their environment: their family, culture, church, etc. A great majority of people are not likely ever to doubt or question their beliefs. If and when people do question what they (and their family, etc.) have believed, it's often the result of something occurring. Something has occurred to shake a person's faith in God. A mother learns that her child is gay and starts to question the condemnations of homosexuality that she has heard all her life. The son of slave owners comes to feel that blacks deserve better treatment than they are receiving under the system of slave ownership.

There are characteristics of the individual at work sometimes. Those few people who question the beliefs received from their parents may possess a certain character--perhaps something like autonomy, or skepticism; at any event, what we might call an independent cast of mind. And, some people are more thoughtful, more "sensitive." This we might call personality, character, whatever. And they'd do well to have some courage, too, because they are going to be "on the outs" with their families, and that can be a difficult row to hoe.

I think people with a certain psychological makeup or personality type are more likely to be conservative, and there probably is something more or less parallel in the making of a liberal. And probably there is simply a certain mystery to it all.

Sometimes it's a whole culture that undergoes a conversion to new ideas. I was just reading some interesting ideas about why Hitler was as powerful and influential as he was. I think that's an interesting question. It's often been pointed out that here was a cultured nation, arguably the leader of the world in many fields of scholarship and the arts, that allowed itself to be led into an insane war and also to commit some of the worst atrocities in human history.

But maybe that was not so much a case of changing of minds as just stirring up and exploiting existing attitudes. The article on Hitler's influence said that the German people were already predisposed to anti-Semitism. But it did not go too much into the nationalistic ideas that had prevailed in Germany for a long time, nor Germany's wounded national pride as the result of its defeat in World War I and the humiliation (as they saw it) of the Treaty of Versailles. It's clear that all these things were going on.

Religious conversion might be an interesting case. If you look at they way in which many European cultures became converted to Christianity, often the king or other ruler was persuaded to convert—and then (certainly not miraculously!) the rest of the country converted, too.

Other times religious evangelizing has targeted individual after individual. One only has to think of missionaries, such as Mormon missionaries, who go door to door. So when this is successful, it is a case of changing people's minds. Christianity sometimes won converts because it promised an afterlife. It might be interesting to figure out what carrot (or stick) the Mormons use to gain converts; I'm neither inclined nor qualified to do this here and now.

So, back to my original question. Sometimes we can see where people's ideas have come from. Then there are the issues of whether and in what circumstances minds do or don't get changed. Sometimes we can see what has gone on. But to put it all in a larger perspective, human behavior is complex and very seldom explained simply.  We've got the science of the behavior of the individual—psychology—and sciences of the behavior of people en masse—sociology, political science, economics. I submit that none of these fields is so far advanced that we thoroughly, completely understand human behavior.

Revised and expanded April 29, 2013

Appendix A, Added April 29, 2013

Okay, now I would like to propose a question for my readers (with some possible answer choices). I pose this as a question put to my readers because, while this blog has, very gratifyingly, been getting a significantly greater readership lately, my postings—which sometimes try to be controversial and provocative—have not been getting any comments.

So, here is my question which at the very least I hope may provide food for thought. Why are conservatives anti-gay? Please feel free to vote with your answer or any other comment.

A. Because, in the sense of "conservative," they want to keep things as they are, and discriminating against gays is the way it's always been.
B. Because they subscribe to a brand of religion which is basically anti-sex.
C. It's their personality type. For example, they are tight-asses or maybe just mean and nasty people.
D. All of the above.
E. Some other reason (please specify).

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