Thursday, December 8, 2011

What branch of psychology would study why people believe what they do?

If Epistemology is the branch of Philosophy that deals with how we know what we know, the branch of psychology studying why we BELIEVE what we do is ____________.








This is something I am very interested in.|||I think it is a typical exercise which one has to experiment oneself independently.|||i don't know. But the area has been studied, there are one or 2 great books on why believe in conspiracies, even after the conspiracy has been disproven.





As best i recall ( this is way simplified) people feel scared that NO ONE is on control of all the strange or even normal things in life. Postulating and believing in the Illuminati ( or whatever) is somewhat calming because it says


-someone is in charge


-it is controllable by someone


-the believer now has more power because he knows who is in control.





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That doesn't deal with religions, or cults.





in some ways, it seems to me that psychology has sort of kept its distance from the question you ask - which gets so close to religion. I believe that the psychologists don't want a fight with the religious of any group, so they mostly keep hands of.|||Try cognitive therapy, which I feels probably comes closest...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_t鈥?/a>|||i'm not sure ask a librarian

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