How Do People's Beliefs Form? | 2min snip from COMPLEXITY

Get the app

Jonas Dalege on The Physics of Attitudes & Beliefs

COMPLEXITY

chevron_right

notes

CHAPTER

How Do People's Beliefs Form?

Being a german, i kind of inspired me o our history and how people can have these extremely horrible beliefs and an act on them. So that it's one of the great mysteries i in our world. And then during my ph d, i also discovered complexity science aspects to the study ofb s. That read en led me to the research that iam curely doing, which is based mostly on the idea that we can understand how beliefs form and change through studying them as networks.

00:00

Transcript

chevron_right

Play full episode

chevron_right

Transcript

Episode notes

Human relationships are often described in the language of “chemistry” — does that make the beliefs and attitudes of individuals a kind of “physics”? It is, at least, a fascinating avenue of inquiry. In particular, the field of statistical mechanics offers potent tools for understanding how exactly people form their views and change their minds. From this perspective, everyone is a dynamic network of opinions and values, in a tense and ever-changing balance both with others and ourselves. The “chemistry” of social life, then, arises from multilevel interactions in our noisy minds and how they influence each other.

Welcome to Complexity, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.

In this conversation, we speak with SFI Postdoc Jonas Dalege about how his research uses physics models to understand the emergence of higher-level behaviors from lower-level behaviors, both within and between people. We discuss the role of entropy in the formation of individual beliefs; statistical approaches to the study of ambivalence and cognitive dissonance; the wisdom (and challenge) of tolerating ambiguity; and the social consequences when we try to minimize internal conflict…

If you value our research and communication efforts, please rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and/or consider making a donation at santafe.edu/podcastgive. You can find numerous other ways to engage with us at santafe.edu/engage. Thank you for listening!

Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.

Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.

Key Links:

Jonas’s Website | Google Scholar Page

Related Papers, Talks, and Complexity Podcast Episodes:

[Video] Explosive Proofs of Mathematical Truths by Simon DeDeo

Falling through the cracks: Modeling the formation of social category boundaries by Vicky Chuqiao Yang, Tamara van der Does, and Henrik Olsson

Conflicts of interest improve collective computation of adaptive social structures by Eleanor Brush, David Krakauer, and Jessica Flack

Integrating social and cognitive aspects of belief dynamics: Towards a unifying framework by Mirta Galesic, Henrik Olsson, Jonas Dalege, Tamara van der Does, Daniel L. Stein

Coarse-graining as a downward causation mechanism by Jessica Flack

9 - Mirta Galesic on Social Learning & Decision-making

29 - On Coronavirus, Crisis, and Creative Opportunity with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 3)