Memory of Former Beliefs May Affect the Single Belief Formation Process

Abstract

Belief is an attitude toward a proposition. Current studies suggest that single belief formation is an active process. The key step in the belief formation process is information-seeking. Multiple sites of the brain play an important role in motivating individuals to seek information such as cortico-basal ganglia neural networks, neural systems for reward prediction errors, and orbitofrontal cortex. Based on previous studies, the information is processed by single neurons in higher areas of the brain. It can be assumed that some features of belief are encoded as information in memory. We hypothesize there can be a relationship between former beliefs and formation of new beliefs.