This link seems to be assuming that one’s prior internal state does not influence the initial mental representation of data in any way. I don’t have any concrete studies to share refuting that, but let’s consider a thought experiment.
Say someone really hates trees. Like ‘trees are the scum of the earth, I would never be in any way associated with such disgusting things’ hates trees. It’s such a strong hate, and they’ve dwelled on it for so long (trees are quite common, after all, it’s not like they can completely forget about them), that it’s bled over into nearly all of their subconscious thought patterns relevant to the subject.
I would think it plausible that the example claim in the article you link wouldn’t reach whatever part of this person’s brain/mind encodes beliefs in the form “You’re a tree”. Instead, their subconscious would transform the input into “<dissonance>You’re a <disgust>tree</disgust>.</dissonance>”. Or perhaps the disgust at the term tree would inherently add the dissonance while the sentence was still being constructed from its constituent words. Just as their visual recognition and language systems are translating the patterns of black and white into words and then a sentence before they reach their belief system, their preexisting emotional attachments would automatically be applied to the mental object before it was considered, causing their initial reaction to be disbelief rather than belief.
It may be more accurate to say we believe everything we think, even if only for a moment; and in most cases we do think what we read/hear in the instant we’re perceiving it. But when the two are different I’d expect even our instantaneous reactions to reflect the actual thought, rather than the words that prompted it.
This link seems to be assuming that one’s prior internal state does not influence the initial mental representation of data in any way. I don’t have any concrete studies to share refuting that, but let’s consider a thought experiment.
Say someone really hates trees. Like ‘trees are the scum of the earth, I would never be in any way associated with such disgusting things’ hates trees. It’s such a strong hate, and they’ve dwelled on it for so long (trees are quite common, after all, it’s not like they can completely forget about them), that it’s bled over into nearly all of their subconscious thought patterns relevant to the subject.
I would think it plausible that the example claim in the article you link wouldn’t reach whatever part of this person’s brain/mind encodes beliefs in the form “You’re a tree”. Instead, their subconscious would transform the input into “<dissonance>You’re a <disgust>tree</disgust>.</dissonance>”. Or perhaps the disgust at the term tree would inherently add the dissonance while the sentence was still being constructed from its constituent words.
Just as their visual recognition and language systems are translating the patterns of black and white into words and then a sentence before they reach their belief system, their preexisting emotional attachments would automatically be applied to the mental object before it was considered, causing their initial reaction to be disbelief rather than belief.
It may be more accurate to say we believe everything we think, even if only for a moment; and in most cases we do think what we read/hear in the instant we’re perceiving it. But when the two are different I’d expect even our instantaneous reactions to reflect the actual thought, rather than the words that prompted it.