Belief Perseverance

Abstract

People’s proclivity to passionately cling to, and advocate for, beliefs or attitudes that exist in the absence of evidentiary support manifests in a range of life domains, including politics, sports, the workplace, social media, and relationships, among others. In fact, this propensity to develop, maintain, and unwaveringly cling to one’s beliefs in the absence of sufficient evidence is one of the most well-established tendencies in the social-psychological canon. It is a tendency that contributes to numerous psychological effects, including those involved in impression formation, comparative bias, attitude persuasion, intergroup perception, and social judgment, to name a few. And just as importantly, this tendency also has significant implications for judgment and decision-making in critical applied domains, including politics, jury deliberation, and medicine. The area of research that most directly illustrates this tendency is that on belief perseverance. Initially documented in the 1960s, belief perseverance refers to the tendency to maintain held beliefs even when the evidence supporting such beliefs is fully invalidated. It is the most extreme manifestation of espousing attitudes or belief systems in the absence of objective support—they are not merely beliefs based on evidence that is difficult to muster or verify, but rather, they are beliefs that persist despite their very evidential foundation being fully discredited as factually false. Since its initial conceptualization, research on belief perseverance has explored various mechanisms underlying the effect, moderating factors that influence the effect’s strength, and applied domains where belief perseverance has direct implications for judgment and decision-making. This bibliography explores the belief perseverance literature and is divided into six sections. General Overviews contains written works that provide a broad overview of the belief perseverance phenomenon. Seminal Demonstrations contains empirical articles considered to be seminal demonstrations of the belief perseverance effect. Explanatory Mechanisms includes studies that highlight key mechanisms driving belief perseverance, while Moderating Factors reviews boundary conditions that exacerbate or limit the strength of belief perseverance effects. Finally, Applied Investigations reviews articles exploring implications of belief perseverance in political, academic, judicial, and entertainment domains, while Related Perspectives discusses research areas closely related to, yet distinct from, belief perseverance in the social psychological literature.