Resistant Beliefs: The Role of Individual and Social Networks

Project Information

Ind-Soc-Bel-Net

Grant agreement ID: 889682

DOI

10.3030/889682

Project closed

EC signature date 25 April 2020

Start date 1 February 2021

End date 17 March 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 253 052,16

EU contribution

€ 253 052,16

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Ind-Soc-Bel-Net (Resistant Beliefs: The Role of Individual and Social Networks)

Reporting period: 2023-02-01 to 2024-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The overall objective of the project was to gain a better understanding of resistant beliefs that are inconsistent with scientific knowledge. To do so, we developed a theoretical model of the interplay of personal beliefs (e.g. moral beliefs related to an issue) and social beliefs (e.g. perceived beliefs of what one's friends think). In addition to developing a theoretical model of this interplay, we conducted empirical tests on the central assumptions of our theoretical model and on its implications for belief change. Our model showed that many established phenomena in the literature on beliefs follow from assuming that individuals want to reduce dissonance both within their own belief network and their social network. Empirical tests of the model showed that taking the network structure of beliefs into account allows for better prediction of which individuals change their beliefs in response to an intervention. The general conclusion of my project is that we need to take the complex interplay of personal and social beliefs into account if we want to reduce pressing societal issues, such as polarization and harmful erroneous beliefs. Gaining a better understanding of the formation and change of resistant beliefs allows to better address some of the most pressing issues currently facing our society, such as polarization and vaccine hesitancy.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

My project has focused on two main goals. The first goal was to test whether network modeling can be used to better predict which individuals change their beliefs about genetically modified food and childhood vaccinations. We were able to show that representing moral and social beliefs as a network and deriving a dissonance measure from this network representation results in more accurate prediction of which people change their beliefs. This measure outperformed more classical measures of belief dissonance in predicting belief change. The second goal was to develop a theoretical model of the interplay of personal and social beliefs affecting belief change. For this project, we developed a mathematically rigorous theory of belief change, validated the theory's core assumptions in empirical studies, and performed several simulations to show that this theory can explain established phenomena in the belief change literature. Empirical tests confirmed the core assumptions of our model: (a) Individuals, who want to reduce dissonance in their belief networks have more extreme beliefs, (b) individuals, who want to reduce dissonance in their social networks, showed little variance in how they perceived their friends' beliefs, and (c) individuals, who want to hold accurate beliefs, showed more extreme beliefs. Simulations showed that our model, which rests on the core assumptions that individuals want to reduce dissonance in their own belief network and in their social network, can reproduce several phenomena in the literature on beliefs, such as polarization, minority influence, and group radicalization.
These core projects and related results have been published in the following papers:
Dalege, J., Galesic, M., & Olsson, H. (2025). Networks of beliefs: An integrative theory of individual- and social-level belief dynamics. Psychological Review, 132, 253–290.
Dalege, J., & van der Does, T. (2022). Using a cognitive network model of moral and social beliefs to explain belief change. Science Advances, 8, eabm0137.
Galesic, M., Bruine de Bruin, W., Dalege, J., Feld, S. L., Kreuter, F., Olsson, H., ... & van Der Does, T. (2021). Human social sensing is an untapped resource for computational social science. Nature, 595, 214-222.
Galesic, M., Olsson, H., Dalege, J., Van Der Does, T., & Stein, D. L. (2021). Integrating social and cognitive aspects of belief dynamics: towards a unifying framework. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 18, 20200857.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

There are two main contributions of my work that go beyond the state of the art in current research on belief change. First, using our formal model we were able to show that we can more accurately predict belief change, which allows one to identify individuals, who are most likely to be open to interventions. Second, my theoretical work provides a fundamental advance for the research on belief change, because it is (a) more precise and rigorous in its formulation (usually theories on belief change are only verbal and not formalized) and (b) it integrates several disconnected areas of research on belief change, such as personal and social dynamics. I expect that my work will be helpful in combating beliefs that are harmful to individuals and society, such as erroneous beliefs towards vaccines. In the future, I will build on this fundamental research to develop concrete interventions aimed at reducing polarization.

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