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Psychologists study belief formation and the relationship between beliefs and actions. Three types of models of belief formation and change have been proposed: conditional inference process models, linear models and information processing models. Conditional inference process models emphasize the role of inference for belief formation. When ...
The need to justify our actions and decisions, especially the ones inconsistent with our beliefs, comes from the unpleasant feeling called cognitive dissonance. [1] Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two inconsistent cognitions. For example, "Smoking will shorten my life, and I wish to live for as ...
Here the belief in question is not a belief that one will do the action but a belief that the action in question is a means towards the positively evaluated end. [ 2 ] [ 12 ] This theory has been criticized based on the idea that there is a difference between evaluating a course of action and committing oneself to a course of action.
To reduce cognitive dissonance, the participant smokers adjusted their beliefs to correspond with their actions: Functional beliefs ("Smoking calms me down when I am stressed or upset."; "Smoking helps me concentrate better."; "Smoking is an important part of my life."; and "Smoking makes it easier for me to socialize.")
Social structure consists of those factors of influence (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, ability, customs, etc.) that determine or limit agents and their decisions. [1] The influences from structure and agency are debated—it is unclear to what extent a person's actions are constrained by social systems.
The term attitude with the psychological meaning of an internal state of preparedness for action was not used until the 19th century. [3]: 2 The American Psychological Association (APA) defines attitude as "a relatively enduring and general evaluation of an object, person, group, issue, or concept on a dimension ranging from negative to positive.
Every action has a reason but not every action has a good reason. Only actions with good reasons are considered rational. [34] For example, John's action of going to the fridge would be considered irrational if his reason for this is bad, e.g. because his belief that there is ice cream in the fridge is merely based on wishful thinking. [35]
Ludwig Wittgenstein was pessimistic about the idea that an elucidation would ever happen regarding the absolute values of actions or objects; "we can speak as much as we want about "life" and "its meaning", and believe that what we say is important. But these are no more than expressions and can never be facts, resulting from a tendency of the ...