The beliefs we hold develop from a complex dance between our internal and external lives. Our personal-level cognition and our relationships with others work in concert to shape our views of the world and influence how likely we are to update those views when we encounter new information.
In the past, these two levels of belief have been studied largely in isolation: psychologists have modeled the individual-level cognitive processes while researchers in fields from computational social science to statistical physics have offered insights into how beliefs spread and change within a society.
"This disconnect when different disciplines are doing parallel work limits progress," says Jonas Dalege, a former SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow and current Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Amsterdam.
In a study published on September 19 in Psychological Review, Dalege and co-authors present the Networks of Beliefs theory, which integrates the interplay of individual- and social-level belief dynamics, and also incorporates social beliefs: how individuals perceive the beliefs of those around them.
"A crucial point about our model is that it's about perceptions," says Dalege, "You never actually know what a person thinks. If you identify very strongly as a Democrat, for instance, you might assume that your friends do as well. It can take a lot to shift those perceptions."
