We explain what a belief is, its function, types and examples. Also, what are popular and limiting beliefs.
What is a belief?
A belief is a mental attitude that consists of accepting an experience, an idea or a theory, considering them true without the need for argumentative or empirical demonstrations. That is, it is what we decide to believe and affirm without having the knowledge or the evidence that it is or could be true.
The Humans we have beliefs of all kinds. They are almost always expressed as logical propositions or statements about the real or imaginary world, since they are one of the first forms of approach to the world that our civilization had in its beginnings. Today they still exist, although we have other more reliable knowledge tools.
Not all beliefs are necessarily false, but the moment we proceed to verify them factually or scientifically, they cease to be beliefs and become knowledge, scientific laws or other types of knowledge. There are even deep beliefs, of which we are not fully aware, and which nevertheless play a role in shaping our way of seeing the world.
Belief types
According to their origin, beliefs can be of two types:
- External. When they come from outside the individual, either because we accept those of our social environment to better fit, or because we receive a inheritance or education informal about it. This is the case of religious beliefs (concerning God and the divine), cultural (related to one's own tradition and the alien), social (related to the treatment of others) or political (which have to do with the exercise of can).
- Internal. When they come from the individual's own mind, as a result of their direct experience with the world, or of the interpretation (wrong or not) that a person of some event. This is the case with many personal beliefs, especially during childhood.
There are also other ways of classifying beliefs, distinguishing between opinions (which are held on some kind of interpretation or elucubration from reality), ideologies (which are born from the very meaning of identity of the group to which they belong) or the religions (They do not have any appreciable link with the knowledge of the world).
Examples of beliefs
Some examples of beliefs are:
- The flat-earther collective has the firm belief that the planet Earth it is flat, rather than spherical.
- In certain regions of Latin America There is a popular belief that sweeping a person's feet prevents that person from marrying. In other places the same is believed, but with respect to opening an umbrella indoors.
- The Catholic creed upholds the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah, son of God, and that his death freed the world from its sins.
- There is a denialist movement in different Western countries that defends the belief that the Holocaust, that is, the extermination of almost 6 million Jewish people by the Nazi regime in Germany during the WWII, was a hoax concocted by Jewish Zionism to justify the creation of the State of Israel.
- Some economists believe that the capitalist market is regulated by an "invisible hand" that sooner or later always balances the offer and the demand.
Belief function
Beliefs are approximations to the real world that try to satisfy our needs, through some kind of more or less plausible explanation. Beliefs guide us through the world, orient us about who we are and what we want, without actually telling us what things are, but who we are who observe them.
In many cases, shared beliefs allow for a kinder social interaction, giving a sense of belonging. They can even serve to establish a certain idea of the rule within a collective, as many religions did in the ancient civilizations.
All belief is, deep down, an attempt to calm the anguish that living in a world devoid of more meaning than the one that we ourselves give it causes us.
Popular beliefs
Popular beliefs are known as those that belong to the collective, that are inherited from previous generations and lack singular authors or defenders, but are simply “told”. They may be due to remnants of extinct religions or cultural traditions lost in the weather, or they may be the result of the way that the collective unconscious has to face some reality punctual.
Urban legends are an example of popular belief. They consist of supposedly true anecdotes, always occurring to someone outside our circle, and that vary according to each society.
The same thing happens with superstitious beliefs, such as that sweeping at night attracts the devil or that opening the refrigerator after ironing, cooking or some activity close to the heat, causes dizziness or fainting spells.
Limiting beliefs
A limiting belief is called a perception of oneself that, despite having no further foundation, prevents us from carrying out any action that we would like to do, and therefore causes us suffering. In other words, these are personal beliefs that we never dare to test, because we are convinced of their certainty.
For example: a teenager has the belief that his physique is unpleasant and that he could never romantically interest a girl. This is not true, since he is an average young man, neither very handsome nor very ugly, but who is so convinced of his ugliness that he never dares to approach a girl, much less ask her out, which eventually it would make him realize the truth.