Unconscious Belief

From "Global Mind Change"

by Willis Harman (1988, pp 14-18)

Study Notes

This concept of unconscious beliefs and the extent to which they are capable of shaping and distorting our perceptions of everything around us-and within us-is so central to understanding the global mind change that we shall make a temporary digression to look into it more deeply.

Each of us holds some set of beliefs with which we conceptualize our experience -- beliefs about history, beliefs about things, beliefs about the future, about what is to be valued, or about what one ought to do. What may be less obvious is that we have unconscious beliefs as well as conscious ones. (There are many ways in which people have attempted to talk about the processes and contents of the conscious and unconscious minds. In the following discussion we will use a way that is adequately powerful, yet as free as possible of psychological jargon. It employs the concept of the conscious and unconscious belief system as introduced by psychologist Milton Rokeach in The Open and Closed Mind [1960].)

Persons may not realize they have these unconscious beliefs, but the beliefs can be inferred from behavior-from slips of the tongue, compulsive acts, "body language", and so on. A familiar example from psychotherapy is an unconscious belief in one's inadequacy or inferiority. Individuals may consciously feel adequate and equal, at least most of the time, but under certain circumstances the behavior, body posture, etc. may betray that they unconsciously believe something else to be the case.

Thus we cannot take at face value what a person says he believes. He may be deceiving us deliberately, or he may be rationalizing, not knowing what he deeply believes. We have to infer a person's unconscious beliefs from everything he says and does. That is as true of ourselves as it is of others. We do not know what we believe unconsciously, but it is almost certainly not what we consciously believe we believe.

The person's total belief system is an organization of beliefs and expectancies that the person accepts as true of the world he or she lives in-verbal and nonverbal, implicit and explicit, conscious and unconscious.

The belief system does not have to be logically consistent; indeed, it probably never is. It may be compartmentalized, containing logically contradictory beliefs which typically do not come into conscious awareness at the same times. The person unconsciously wards off evidence that might reveal such an inner contradiction. Notice that this decision to not become consciously aware of something is unconscious. We choose as well as believe unconsciously.

The belief system can be conceived of as comprising "concentric" regions or shells. The outermost region contains beliefs that are relatively accessible to conscious awareness and relatively easy to change (as by education). Somewhat more deeply embedded in the system are intermediate-level beliefs, less accessible and more resistant to change. Some of these intermediate- level unconscious beliefs are worked with in psychotherapy (such as the judgments of the "internalized parent"). This intermediate region contains beliefs about the nature of authority (for example, whether I trust my own experience or accept the interpretation of some external authority). In the innermost core of the belief system are basic unconscious assumptions about the nature of the self and its relationship to others, and about the nature of the universe. Typically a person may go through most of life with these core beliefs essentially unchanged. When they do change, the shift is likely to be accompanied by a rather stressful period in the person's life.

Belief systems serve two powerful and conflicting sets of motives at the same time. One is the need for a cognitive framework to interpret new experience-to know and understand and act responsively. The other is the need to ward off threatening aspects of reality. Our belief systems are our way of making sense out of raw experience. However, they may also distort if necessary to preserve the illusion of order-as, for instance, when we "forget" an incident that doesn't "fit in". (Repression of early childhood memories of traumatic experiences is a familiar example.)

A belief system may be defined as open to the extent that new data can enter and affect existing beliefs. A person will be open to information insofar as possible, but will unconsciously reject it, screen it out, or alter it insofar as is necessary to ward off threat and anxiety. The closed mind can distort the world and narrow it down to whatever extent is needed to serve these protective goals, and still preserve the illusion of understanding it. The more closed the belief system, the more it can be understood as a tightly woven network of cognitive defenses against anxiety, designed to shield a vulnerable mind.

As was just suggested, we not only believe unconsciously, we also choose unconsciously. This shows up with particular clarity in the case of subliminal perception. In one form of this well-known phenomenon an image is flashed on a screen for a very brief interval-so brief that the person is not consciously aware of having seen anything. However, a physiological response (such as a change in the electrical conductivity of the skin indicating an emotional reaction, or an "event-related potential" in the brain indicating surprise) or a psychological response (for example, influenced free-association) may make it clear that at an unconscious level the person indeed perceive the image, analyze its meaning, and "choose" an appropriate response.

We need not have gone to the laboratory for an example, of course. Unconscious choosing is evident in everyday life. For instance, I may consciously choose to carry out a certain action which contradicts an unconscious belief (possibly implanted in childhood) that the action is bad. As a result of an unconscious choice, then, a feeling is telegraphed to the conscious mind-a feeling which we call guilt. From still another part of the mind, the deep intuition, may come another choice: to reconcile the conflict and get rid of the guilt feelings.

This is but one example of a more general observation, namely that the typical individual is psychologically fragmented. While the conscious mind is making one set of choices, other fragments of the mind, outside of conscious awareness, are choosing other things. (A rather old-fashioned term describes the individual who had more or less integrated these various fragments into a whole, capable of conflict-free decision: a person of integrity.)

Few findings in the social sciences are as well established as the fact that the greater portion of our total mental activity goes on outside of conscious awareness: We believe, value, choose, and know unconsciously as well as consciously. Furthermore, our perceptions, values, attitudes, and behavior are influenced far more by what is going on in the unconscious mind than by what is easily accessible to the conscious mind. Although this fact is quite well publicized in our day, we typically live, think, and behave without taking seriously its many implications. (Think, for example, how differently education would be viewed if this fact were taken seriously.)

The way we perceive reality is strongly influenced by unconsciously held beliefs. The phenomena of denial and resistance in psychotherapy illustrate how thoroughly one tends not to see things threatening to deeply held images conflicting with deeply held beliefs. Research on hypnosis, self- and experimenter-expectations, authoritarianism and prejudice, subliminal perception, and selective attention has demonstrated over and over that our perceptions and "reality checks" are influenced, far more than is ordinarily assumed, by beliefs, attitudes, and other mental processes of which a large portion is unconscious. We perceive what we expect, what it has been suggested to us we should perceive, what we "need" to perceive-to an extent that we might be shocked if we realized it consciously.

The influence of beliefs on perception is intensified when a large number of people believe the same thing. Cultural anthropologists have thoroughly documented how persons who grow up in different cultures perceive literally different realities