Something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The word “belief” is just a way to label and describe what we think is true.
For example, believing the world is flat means a person thinks that’s true. To disagree with that assertion is to say you don’t think it’s true the world is flat: put another way, you don’t believe the world is flat.
We use beliefs to process stimuli we encounter through our senses, such as our eyes, ears, mouth, brain, etc1.
Beliefs are our brain’s way of making sense of and navigating our complex world.
Psychiatrist Ralph Lewis – What Actually Is a Belief? And Why Is It So Hard to Change?
In summary, I think we can view beliefs as information stored in our brain that tells us what something is, what it means, how it works, or how we think it should work.
Example beliefs
- I’m intelligent
- Something is wrong with me
- I can’t look or be uncomfortable
- Making mistakes is bad
- Assumptions are good
- Not knowing what to do is bad
- Rüdiger J. Seitz, Hans-Ferdinand Angel, Belief formation – A driving force for brain evolution, Brain and Cognition, Volume 140, 2020, 105548, ISSN 0278-2626, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2020.105548. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278262619303860) ↩︎
