Abstract
Belief is introduced as the cognitive act or state in which a proposition is taken to be true, and the psychological theory of belief is reviewed under the headings: belief as a propositional attitude, belief as subjective probability, belief as inference, and belief as association. Apart from its importance as a separate area of cognitive theory, the study of belief is of considerable metatheoretic importance for cognitive theory generally, since belief is an essential part of the definition of cognition. It is argued here that cognitive theories must admit, at least in principle, of a distinction between forms of arousal which imply that a proposition is believed and others which do not. Otherwise it is impossible to model the element of rational judgment, which is a feature of belief and hence of cognition also.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Abelson, R. P. (1967). A technique and a model for multi-dimensional attitude scaling. In M. Fishbein (Ed.), Readings in attitude theory and measurement (pp. 341–348). New York: Wiley.
Abelson, R. P. (1979). Differences between belief and knowledge systems. Cognitive Science, 3, 355–366.
Abelson, R. P., & Rosenberg, M. J. (1967). Symbolic psycho-logic: A model of attitudinal cognition. In M. Fishbein (Ed.), Readings in attitude theory and measurement (pp. 341–348). New York: Wiley.
Ackermann, R. (1972). Belief and knowledge. New York: Doubleday.
Anderson, J. R. (1976). Language, memory and thought. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Braine, M. D. S. (1978). On the relation between the natural logic of reasoning and standard logic. Psychological Review, 85, 1–21.
Brainerd, C. J. (1981). Working memory and the development analysis of probability judgement. Psychological Review, 88, 463–502.
Bruner, J. S., Goodnow, J. J., & Austin, G. A. (1956). A study of thinking. New York: Wiley.
Campbell, D. T. (1959). Methodological suggestions for a comparative psychology of knowledge. Inquiry, 2, 152–182.
Chomsky, N. (1959). [Review of B. F. Skinner´s Verbal Behavior]. Language 35, 26–58.
Cohen, P. R., & Perrault, C. R. (1979). Elements of a plan-based theory of speech acts. Cognitive Science, 3, 177–212.
Colby, K. M. (1973). Simulations of belief systems. In R. Schank & K. M. Colby (Eds.), Computer models of thought and language (pp. 251–286) . San Francisco: Freeman.
Collins, A. M., & Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82, 407–428.
Dennett, D. C. (1969). Content and consciousness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Dennett, D. C. (1981). Three kinds of intentional psychology. In R. Healy (Ed.), Time and reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dulaney, D. E. (1968). Awareness, rules, and propositional control: A confrontation with S-R behavior theory. In T. R Dixon & D. L. Horton (Eds.), Verbal behavior and general behavior theory (pp. 340–387). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Dummett, M. (1973) . Frege: Philosophy of language. New York: Harper & Row.
Edwards, W., & Tversky, A. (1967). Decision-making. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Edwards, W., Lindman, H., & Phillips, L. D. (1965). Emerging technologies for making decisions. In F. Barron, W. Dement, W. Edwards, H. Lindman, L. Phillips, J. & M. Olds, New directions in psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 259–325). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Egan, O. (1980). Intonation and meaning. Journal of Psycholinguistics Research, 9, 23–39.
Einhorn, H. J., Kleinmuntz, D. N., & Kleinmuntz, B. (1979). Linear regression and process tracing models of judgment. Psychological Review, 86, 465–485.
Faught, W. S., Colby, K. M., & Parkinson, R. C. (1977). Inferences, affects, and intentions in a model of paranoia. Cognitive Psychology, 2, 153–187.
Feigl, H. (1956). Some major issues and developments in the philosophy of science of logical empiricism. In H. Feigl & M. Scriven (Eds.), Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science (Vol. 1, pp. 3–37). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Feldman, J. A., & Ballard, D. H. (1982). Connectionist models and their properties. Cognitive Science, 6, 205–254.
Fishbein, M. (1967a). A consideration of beliefs and their role in attitude measurement. In M. Fishbein (Ed.), Readings in attitude theory and measurement (pp. 257–266). New York: Wiley.
Fishbein, M. (1967b). A behavior theory approach to the relations between beliefs about an object and the attitude towards the object. In M. Fishbein (Ed.), Readings in attitude theory and measurement (pp. 389–400). New York: Wiley.
Fishbein, M., & Raven, B. H. (1967). The AB scales: An operational definition of belief and attitude. In M. Fishbein (Ed.), Readings in attitude theory and measurement (pp. 183–189). New York: Wiley.
Fitch, F. B. (1952). Symbolic logic. New York: Random House.
Fodor, J. A. (1979). Three cheers for propositional attitudes. In W. E. Cooper & E. C. T. Walker (Eds.), Sentence processing: Psycholinguistic studies presented to Merrill Garrett (pp. 419–436) . Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gilhooly, K. J. (1982). Thinking: Directed, undirected, and creative. New York: Academic Press.
Goodman, N. (1966). The structure of appearance. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Green, B. F. (1968). Descriptions and explanations: A comment on papers by Hoffman and Edwards. In B. Kleinmuntz (Ed.), Formal representation of human judgment (pp. 91–99) . New York: Wiley.
Gregg, L. W., & Simon, H. A. (1967). Process models and stochastic theories of simple concept formation. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 4, 246–276.
Griffiths, A. P. (1967). On belief. In A. P. Griffiths (Ed.), Knowledge and belief (pp. 127–143) . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.
Hunt, E. B. (1962). Concept learning: An information processing problem. New York: Wiley.
Inhelder, B., & Piaget, J. (1958). The growth of logical thinking from childhood to adolescence. New York: Basic Books.
Isles, D. (1978). Artificial intelligence as a possible tool for discovering laws of logic. Cognitive Science, 2, 329–360.
Johnson, D. M. (1978). Can belief be commanded? Synthèse, 39, 325–334.
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1975). Models of deduction. In R. J. Falmagne (Ed.), Reasoning: Representation and process in children and adults (pp. 7–54). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1981). Mental models in cognitive science. In D. A. Norman (Ed.), Perspectives on cognitive science (pp. 147–191). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Steedman, M. (1978). The psychology of syllogisms. Cognitive Psychology, 10, 64–99.
Jones, E. E., & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 219–266) . New York: Academic Press.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1972) . Subjective probability: A judgment of representativeness. Cognitive Psychology, 3, 430–454.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1982). Variants of uncertainty. Cognition, 11, 143–157.
Kaplan, B. (1971). Genetic psychology, genetic epistemology and theory of knowledge. In T. Mischel (Ed.), Cognitive development and epistemology (pp. 61–81). New York: Academic Press.
Kyburg, H. E., & Smokler, H. E. (1980). Studies in subjective probability. New York: Krieger.
Lemon, N. (1973). Attitudes and their measurement. New York: Wiley.
Maida, A. S., & Shapiro, S. C. (1982). Intensional concepts in propositional networks. Cognitive Science, 6, 291–330.
McGuire, W. J. (1960). A syllogistic analysis of cognitive relationships. In M. J. Rosenberg, C. I. Hovland, W. J. McGuire, R. P. Abelson, & J. W. Brehm (Eds.), Attitude organization and change (pp. 65–111). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Mowrer, O. H. (1954). The psychologist looks at language. American Psychologist, 9,660–694.
Newell, A. (1982). The knowledge level. Artificial Intelligence, 18, 87–127.
Norman, D. A. (1981). Twelve issues for cognitive science. In D. A. Norman (Ed.), Perspectives on cognitive science (pp. 265–295). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Ortony, A. (1978). Remembering, understanding, and representation. Cognitive Science, 2, 53–69.
Osgood, C. E. (1967). On understanding and creating sentences. In L. A. Jakobovits & M. S. Miron (Eds.), Readings in the psychology of language (pp. 104–127). EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Osgood, C. E. (1969). On the why´s and wherefore´s of E.P., and A. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 12, 194–199.
Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J., & Tannenbaum, P. H. (1957). The measurement of meaning. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Osherson, D. N. (1978). Three conditions on conceptual naturalness. Cognition, 6,263–289.
Piaget, J. (1971). Biology and knowledge: An essay on the relations between organic regulations and cognitive processes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Quillian, M. R. (1969). The teachable language comprehender: A simulation program and a theory of language. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 12, 459–476.
Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Quine W. V. O. (1969). Ontological relativity. New York: Columbia University Press.
Quine, W. V. O. (1974). The roots of reference. Lasalle, IL: Open Court Publishing.
Quine, W. V. O., & Ullian, J. S. (1970) . The web of belief. New York: Random House.
Ramsey, F. P. (1980). Truth and probability. In H. E. Kyburg & H. E. Smokler (Eds.), Studies in subjective probability (pp. 23–52). New York: Krieger. (Original work published in 1928)
Reitman, W. (1965). Cognition and thought. New York: Wiley.
Revlis, R., & Hayes, J. R. (1972). The primacy of generalities in hypothetical reasoning. Cognitive Psychology, 3, 268–290.
Rips, L. J. (1983). Cognitive processes in propositional reasoning. Psychological Review, 90, 38–71.
Roloff, M. E., & Miller, G. R. (1982). Persuasion: New directions in theory and research. London: Sage.
Rozeboom, W. W. (1960). The fallacy of the null-hypothesis significance test. Psychological Bulletin, 57, 416–428.
Rozeboom, W. W. (1961). Ontological induction and the logical typology of scientific variables. Philosophy of Science, 28, 337–377.
Rozeboom, W. W. (1969). Compositional structure in recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 622–632.
Rozeboom, W. W. (1971). Scientific inference: The myth and the reality. In S. R. Brown & D. J. Brenner (Ed.), Science, psychology and communication: Essays honouring William Stephenson (pp. 95–118). New York: Teachers College Press.
Rozeboom, W. W. (1972). Problems in the psycho-philosophy of knowledge. In J. R Royce & W. W. Rozeboom (Eds.), The psychology of knowing (pp. 25–93) . New York: Gordon & Breach.
Scott, W. A. (1963). Conceptualizing and measuring structural properties of cognition. In O. J. Harvey (Ed.), Motivation and social interaction (pp. 266–288). New York: Ronald Press.
Scott, W. A. (1969). Structure of natural cognitions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 12, 261–278.
Scott, W. A., Osgood, D. W., & Peterson, C. (1979) . Cognitive structure. New York: Wiley.
Searle, J. R. (1970). Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shaklee, H. (1979). Bounded rationality and cognitive development: Upper limits on growth. Cognitive Psychology, 11, 327–345.
Simon, H. A., & Lea, G. (1974). Problem solving and rule induction: A unified view. In L. W. Gregg (Ed.), Knowledge and cognition (pp. 105–127). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Singer, J. E. (1968). The bothersomeness of inconsistency. In R. P. Abelson, E. Aronson, W. J. McGuire, T. M. Newcomb, M. J. Rosenberg, & P. H. Tannenbaum (Eds.), Theories of cognitive consistency: A sourcebook (pp. 393–399) . Chicago: Rand McNally.
Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Slovic, P. (1982). Towards understanding and improving decisions. In W. C. Howell & E. A. Fleishman (Eds.), Human performance and productivity: Information processing and decision making (Vol. 2, pp. 157–183). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Somers, F. (1963). Types and ontology. Philosophical Review, 72, 327–363.
Stich, S. P. (1982). Dennett on intentional systems. In J. I. Biro & R. W. Shahan (Eds.), Mind, brain, and function (pp. 39–62). Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press.
Taylor, S. E., & Fiske, S. T. (1978). Salience, attention, and attribution: Top of the head phenomena. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 249–288). New York: Wiley.
Tennessen, H. (1972). On knowing what one knows not. In J. R. Royce & W. W. Rozeboom (Eds.), The psychology of knowing (pp. 111–175). New York: Gordon & Breach.
Tesler, L., Enea, H., & Colby, K. M. (1968). A directed graph representation for computer simulation of belief-systems. Mathematical Biosciences, 21, 2–24.
Tukey, J. (1977). Exploratory data analysis. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 207–232.
Wason, P. C., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (Eds.) . (1968) . Thinking and reasoning. Harmondworth: Penguin.
Woods, W. A. (1975). What´s in a link? Foundations for semantic networks. In D. G. Bobrow & A. M. Collins (Eds.), Representation and understanding (pp. 35–82). New York: Academic Press.
Wyer, R. S. (1973). Category ratings as “subjective expected values”: Implications for attitude formation and change. Psychological Review, 80, 446–467.
Wyer, R. S., & Carlston, D. E. (1979) . Social cognition, inference, and attribution. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Wyer, R. S., & Goldberg, L. A. (1970). A probabilistic analysis of the relationships between beliefs and attitudes. Psychological Review, 77, 100–120.
Wyer, R. S., & Hartwick, J. (1980). The role of information retrieval and conditional inference processes in belief formation and change. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 13, pp. 241–285). New York: Academic Press.
Zajonc, R. B. (1960). The process of cognitive tuning in communication. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 61, 159–167.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1986 Plenum Press, New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Egan, O. (1986). The Concept of Belief in Cognitive Theory. In: Mos, L.P. (eds) Annals of Theoretical Psychology. Annals of Theoretical Psychology, vol 4. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6453-9_23
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6453-9_23
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4615-6455-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-6453-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive