Short description:

This insightful book outlines the social psychology of false beliefs, examining the common human tendency to create and maintain collectively shared belief systems that are not supported by evidence. 

Long description:

This exciting book outlines the fascinating social psychology of false beliefs and tribal delusions, examining the common human tendency to create and maintain collectively shared belief systems that have no foundation in reality. Bringing together leading international researchers, contributors explore how evolutionary, biological, cognitive, and social variables shape the creation and maintenance of widely shared but obviously false belief systems. The authors review how psychological processes promote the formation and maintenance of fallacious beliefs and discuss the philosophical and epistemological criteria we can use to classify some beliefs as false, and others as true.

The chapters draw on many core areas of contemporary social life where false beliefs are of topical interest, highlighting the applied implications of this line of research. Topics include political polarisation, false narratives about group differences, pandemic conspiracy theories, fallacious theories in academia and the role of the media and the internet in creating distorted narratives.

This book is engagingly written and will be of great interest to students and researchers in social psychology and the social sciences, as well as anyone seeking to understand one of the most intriguing issues that shape human social life.

Table of Contents:

Part 1. The Nature and Origins of False Beliefs

Chapter 1.  Forgas, Joseph P. (University of New South Wales, Sydney). From false beliefs to collective delusions: The psychology of human credulity.

Chapter 2. Goel, Vinod (York University) False beliefs and the tethered mind

Chapter 3. Cooper, Joel & Packman, James (Princeton University) The care and feeding off false beliefs: A cognitive dissonance analysis

Chapter 4. Albarracin, Dolores & Javier Granados Samayoa (University of Pennsylvania) Beyond Confrontation: Bypassing and Motivational Interventions to Curb the Impact of False Beliefs

Chapter 5. Crano, William D. (Claremont College) The Birth, Development, and Transformation of False Beliefs.

Part 2. False beliefs as consensual delusions

Chapter 6. Krueger, Joachim (Brown university) and Gruening, David J. (University of Heidelberg) The false belief in free will.

Chapter 7. Dunbar, Robin (University of Oxford) Religion and the susceptibility to false belief

Chapter 8. French, Chris (Goldsmith's, London). The psychology of paranormal beliefs

Chapter 9. Sutton, Robbie, Hopkins-Doyle, Aife, Petterson, Aino, Zibell, Hannah, Chalmers, Jocelyn and Leach, Stefan (University of Kent) The false and widespread belief that feminists are misandrists.

Part 3. False beliefs in academia

Chapter 10. Jussim, Lee, Yanovsky, Sonia, Honeycutt, Nathan and Finkelstein, Danit (Rutgers University) Academic misinformation and false beliefs.

Chapter 11. Forgas, Joseph P. (University of New South Wales) Tribal delusions in academia: Three elephants carried by a turtle

Chapter 12. Fiedler, K. (University of Heidelberg) On the illusion of correct beliefs and the suspicion that correct beliefs may not exist

Chapter 13. Dunning, Dave (University of Michigan) False beliefs among experts and the cognitively able

Part 4. False beliefs and conspiracy theories

Chapter 14. van Prooijen, Jan-Willem (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Pandemic conspiracy theories: Implications for health and polarisation

Chapter 15. Stanovich, Keith (University of Toronto) and Toplak, Maggie (York University)  Reconceptualising the rationality of conspirational thinking

Chapter 16. Douglas, Karen, Ricky Green, Daniel Toribio-Flórez, Lea Kamitz, Cassidy Rowden, Mikey Biddlestone, and Dylan De Gourville (University of Kent) Conspiracy beliefs and interpersonal relationships

Chapter 17. Ritov, Ilana & Bruck, Amy (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) False beliefs about an antagonistic group