There are clear routes from lived experience to conviction. Perceptual plausibility matters: if a description matches what a person has seen or felt, it feels more credible. Strong emotional events can create lasting inferences about cause and meaning, prompting beliefs that explain what happened. Cultural technologies such as rituals, media, and virtual environments can manufacture persuasive experiences that simulate evidence and reinforce particular narratives. These mechanisms interact with social influences and cognitive tendencies, together shaping which extraordinary ideas take root and spread.
For readers curious about human potential, this perspective matters because it points to interventions that change experience rather than only correcting facts. If immersive practices and emotionally charged events help form beliefs, then creating inclusive, evidence-rich experiences could foster more resilient reasoning. Follow the full article to explore how experience-driven pathways illuminate recurring patterns in belief, why rituals often accompany strong convictions, and what this means for cultivating wiser public understanding.
The ubiquity of extraordinary beliefs across human societies, such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and supernatural beliefs, is a long-standing puzzle in cognitive science. Prevailing accounts emphasize cognitive biases and social dynamics but often neglect a key factor: experience. We synthesize recent evidence and identify three pathways by which experience can shape these convictions: by filtering which beliefs feel perceptually plausible, by sparking new beliefs through anomalous and emotionally charged events, and by being engineered through immersive cultural technologies that simulate sensory evidence. These pathways function alongside cognitive biases and social processes, helping explain why certain extraordinary beliefs recur, why they often accompany vivid rituals, and why they can feel convincing despite evidence that challenges their veracity.
