Why does brain get influenced by beliefs?

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The brain gets influenced by beliefs because beliefs are deeply ingrained in our subconscious mind and influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Beliefs are formed based on past experiences, cultural and social conditioning, and personal values and attitudes. These beliefs can be positive or negative, and they can have a significant impact on our perception of the world around us.

Beliefs can also create cognitive biases, which are mental shortcuts that the brain uses to make sense of information. These biases can cause us to see things in a certain way, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. For example, confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out information that confirms our beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them.

Additionally, beliefs can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is when our expectations about a situation or person actually influence the outcome. This is because our beliefs can shape our behavior, which in turn can impact the behavior of others.

Here are 2 critical research studies about how the brain gets influenced by beliefs:

1. Alia Crum and Ellen Langer conducted a study where they found that people’s beliefs about aging affected their physiological and cognitive functioning. In the study, a group of hotel maids were told that their daily work of cleaning rooms was enough exercise to meet the recommended daily activity levels. Another group of maids were not given this information. After four weeks, the maids who were told that their work was exercise had a decrease in weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and improved attitude towards their job compared to the group that was not given this information. The study showed that beliefs can have a powerful effect on physiological functioning.
2. In a study by Carol Dweck, students were given a difficult IQ test. After the test, half of the students were praised for their intelligence and the other half were praised for their effort. The students who were praised for their intelligence were more likely to choose an easier task to work on in the future, whereas the students who were praised for their effort were more likely to choose a more challenging task. The study showed that beliefs about intelligence and ability can influence the type of goals people set for themselves and their motivation to achieve those goals.

Overall, beliefs play a significant role in how we perceive and interact with the world, and understanding the influence of beliefs on the brain can help us to better understand ourselves and others.

Untangling thoughts

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Often, we are so identified with our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations that we don’t realize that these are momentary phenomena — they come and go. We get so caught up in them that they become habitual, taking on a life of their own, and owning us in the process.“By default, most of us spend almost every waking second of our life thinking without knowing that we’re thinking,” says Sam Harris, a leading neuroscientist, “We feel identical to our thoughts, and so we’re held hostage by them.”

With effort, you can observe what your brain is thinking about and also what it’s doing with those thoughts — the feelings, ideas, emotions, and urges it’s producing. This capability falls into a category that psychologists sometimes call metacognition – basically, thinking about thinking. And there’s evidence that practicing this sort of mental self-awareness holds immense therapeutic power.

“Introducing this idea of self-monitoring is one of the first steps in cognitive behavioral therapy,” says Michelle Newman, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Penn State University. “When you have a greater awareness of what the brain is doing, you can take a step back and take a more objective view of the world and your reactions to it.”

In quantum physics, there’s a phenomenon known as the observer effect: Scientists, where certain subatomic particles change their behavior when under observation. And the closer the observation, the greater the change. Brewer says that something similar seems to happen when people pay closer attention to their own minds.

When we start observing, we find that we can’t be as caught up in, or identified with, our thoughts and emotions.

Second order thinking

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In his exceptional book, The Most Important Thing, Howard Marks explains the concept of second-order thinking, which he calls second-level thinking.

First-level thinking is simplistic and superficial, and just about everyone can do it (a bad sign for anything involving an attempt at superiority). All the first-level thinker needs is an opinion about the future. Second-level thinking is deep, complex, and convoluted.

First-order thinking is fast and easy. It happens when we look for something that only solves the immediate problem without considering the consequences. For example, you can think of this as I’m hungry so let’s eat a chocolate bar.

Second-order thinking is more deliberate. It is thinking in terms of interactions and time, understanding that despite our intentions our interventions often cause harm. Second-order thinkers ask themselves the question “And then what?” This means thinking about the consequences of repeatedly eating a chocolate bar when you are hungry and using that to inform your decision. If you do this you’re more likely to eat something healthy.

First-level thinking looks similar. Everyone reaches the same conclusions. The road to out-thinking people can’t come from first-order thinking. It must come from second-order thinking. Extraordinary performance comes from seeing things that other people can’t see.

Brain and mind

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Sir John Eccles, Nobel Laureate, stated that after a lifetime of study it became apparent that the brain is not the origin of the mind, as science and medicine had believed, but the other way around. The mind controls the brain, which acts as a receiving station (like a radio) with thoughts being similar to radio waves and the brain is similar to the receiver.

The brain is like a receiving set, a switchboard that receives thought forms and then translates them into neuronal functioning and memory storage. For instance, until recently it was believed that voluntary movements of the muscles originated in the brain’s motor cortex. But now, as Eccles has reported, the intention to move is recorded by the supplemental motor area of the brain next to the motor cortex. The brain is, therefore, activated by the mind’s intention and not vice versa.

Thought and feelings

According to scientific findings, all thoughts are filed in the mind’s memory bank under a filing system based upon the associated feeling and its finer gradations (Gray–LaViolette, 1982). They are filed according to feeling tone, not fact.

Consequently, there is a scientific basis for the observation that self-awareness is increased much more rapidly by observing feelings rather than thoughts.

The understanding of the underlying emotion and its correct handling is, therefore, more rewarding and less time-consuming than dealing with one’s thoughts.

(Hawkins, David R., Author, Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender)