Chapter 2

Fundamental Needs Motivating Beliefs

Assumed and Actual Belief Guidance

Critical Belief Analysis (CBA) focuses on the degree to which beliefs provide the guidance agents expect. As such, this type of analysis encourages attention to the guidance agents rely on (assume) their beliefs to provide, the guidance those beliefs actually provide, and the differences between agents’ expectations and reality. More specifically, CBA encourages systematic attention to three consequential but commonly ignored characteristics of beliefs that powerfully affect the guidance beliefs provide. Those characteristics are (a) the fundamental needs (motivations, desires, goals) agents look to their beliefs to satisfy (this chapter), (b) the precision/ambiguity of the beliefs’ predictions (Chapter 3), and (c) the beliefs’ viewpoints — that is, the nature of the issues beliefs address and their relationships with other beliefs (Chapters 4 and 5). Thus, CBA directs analysts’ attention to:

• The fundamental needs agents assume their beliefs satisfy.
• The fundamental needs those beliefs actually satisfy.
• The precision of the guidance agents assume their beliefs provide.
• The precision of the guidance those beliefs actually provide.
• The viewpoints (i.e., the nature of the issues) agents assume their beliefs address.
• The viewpoints those beliefs actually address.

Two Fundamental Needs Motivating Beliefs

CBA holds that humans look to beliefs to satisfy one or both of two fundamental needs. The first is the need for information to help them survive and prosper: information about how things are, what is likely to happen, and how to get things done. Beliefs agents treat in ways that support the satisfaction of these needs are called informative beliefs.

The second fundamental need motivating beliefs is the need to feel comfortable and confident. Such feelings result from seeing oneself as wise, powerful, loving, connected, and valued and from seeing the world as safe and one’s position in it as secure. Beliefs engendering those feelings help agents cope with realities that might otherwise be overwhelming. Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and his disciples described those beliefs as the products of an individual’s “defenses.”^[1] CBA refers to these as reassuring beliefs.

Both informative beliefs and reassuring beliefs can be beneficial or detrimental. Optimal functioning requires understanding the benefits and dangers of both kinds of belief, using them appropriately, and finding the proper balance between them. 

Agents reveal the fundamental need they assume their beliefs satisfy through their words and actions. If agents rely on their beliefs for guidance concerning consequential matters, they assume their beliefs are informative. If they freely admit choosing to believe as they do — although they recognize the guidance of their beliefs is misleading or useless — they assume their beliefs are reassuring. Of course, such self-awareness and honesty are rare. People are generally biased toward viewing their beliefs as informative — even beliefs objective observers view as transparently worthless or blatantly false.

Determining whether a particular belief provides information or reassurance requires investigating the agent’s relationship with the belief. If that relationship is characterized by commitments to impartiality, objectivity, openness to criticism, detachment, and struggles against bias and irrationality, the agent’s treatment of the belief renders it informative. If, on the other hand, that relationship is characterized by attachment, bias, defensiveness, closed-mindedness, rampant subjectivity, and blindness to the effects of such belief-protective strategies, the agent’s treatment of the belief renders it reassuring.

When determining whether a belief is informative or reassuring, several aspects of the agent’s relationship to the belief must be considered, including whether the agent:^[2]

• Wants the belief to be true.
• Feels good about believing as they do.
• Sees the belief as making them a better person.
• Considers the belief essential to their identity.
• Views affirming the belief as rendering them morally or intellectually superior to skeptics.
• Finds the belief comforting.
• Would be upset by information raising serious questions about the belief.
• Avoids information that has the potential to challenge the belief.
• Views the belief’s guidance as unquestionable.
• Finds critical inquiry into the belief pointless.
• Does their best to “explain away” information that appears to have the potential to challenge the belief.
• Finds challenges to the belief distressing.
• Views those who believe differently as flawed.
• Feels justified ignoring challenges to the belief.
• Advocates silencing those with different beliefs.
• Suppresses their doubts to avoid upsetting others.
• Responds to potential challenges by increasing the ambiguity of their belief.
• Feels obliged to champion their belief.

An agent may (a) assume a belief is either informative or reassuring while (b) relating to the belief in a way that renders it informative or reassuring. As such, the agent may:

1. Accurately assume an informative belief is informative.
2. Accurately assume a reassuring belief is reassuring.
3. Inaccurately assume a reassuring belief is informative.
4. Inaccurately assume an informative belief is reassuring.

In situations #1 and #2 above, the agent has a realistic view of the guidance their belief provides. As such, they have a good chance of using its guidance wisely. However, as you’ll discover, doing so requires discipline, skill, and self-awareness. 

In situation #3 above, agents are likely to treat their beliefs as profound truths and defend them by distorting data and violating the laws of logic. Situation #3 is usually pernicious and is commonly discovered when conducting security analyses. For example, agents may: 

• Refuse to accept distressing realities.
• Convince themselves of reassuring falsehoods.
• Deny their feelings.
• Selectively attend to supportive data and arguments.
• Selectively ignore challenging data and arguments.
• Interpret vague or ambiguous data as supportive.
• Selectively cast doubt on the accuracy or relevance of challenging information.
• Use ad hominem (personal) arguments to attack the credibility of those who challenge their beliefs.
• Overlook the motives and failings of those who support their beliefs.
• Accept supportive evidence and logic of dubious quality.
• Reject challenging evidence and logic of higher quality.
• Refuse to examine the assumptions undergirding their beliefs.
• Subject the assumptions of competing views to exacting critiques.
• Selectively remember supportive events.
• Selectively forget challenging events.
• Create or accept unfalsifiable excuses for failures.

As a result, agents’ faith in the guidance situation #3 beliefs provide is likely misplaced.

Agents in situation #4, who assume informative beliefs to be reassuring, are, like agents in situation #3, intoxicated by certainty. However, where the certainty of agents in situation #3 is the product of credulity, the certainty of agents in situation #4 is the product of such factors as cynicism, bitterness, and distrust. 

Agents who falsely view informative beliefs as reassuring are likely to defend those beliefs by distorting data and violating the laws of logic. Such agents are likely to downplay the contribution of subjective experiences to life satisfaction and to view experiences and reports to the contrary as products of reassuring self-deception. However, the objective value of love, kindness, empathy, charity, and compassion is supported by extensive research.^[3] Dismissing such objective realities as subjective fantasies can lead to the erroneous view that relationships, at their best, are temporary alliances motivated by self-interest and that power, wealth, status, and symbols of success make life rewarding.

On occasion, investigation may reveal an agent’s assumptions about their beliefs and their treatment of those beliefs vacillate. An agent’s words and actions may indicate they (a) view certain beliefs as informative at some times and as reassuring at others, or that they (b) sometimes relate to such beliefs in ways that render them informative while at other times relating to those beliefs in ways that render them reassuring. When agents are unclear about whether they (a) assume their beliefs to be informative or reassuring, or (b) treat their beliefs in ways that render them informative or reassuring, they are likely to treat their beliefs inconsistently. Predictably, inconsistently treated beliefs are likely to do a poor job of providing either information or reassurance.

NOTES

1. J. G. Draguns, “Defense Mechanisms in the Clinic, the Laboratory, and the Social World: Toward Closing the Gaps,” in Defense Mechanisms: Theoretical, Research, and Clinical Perspectives, eds. U. Hentschel, G. Smith, J. G. Draguns, and W. Ehlers (New York: Elsevier, 2004), 55-75.↑

2. A checklist detailing this evaluation process can be found near the end of Barnet D. Feingold "Barney's Place, A new look at beliefs," http://barneysplace.net/site/ (accessed December 19, 2020), art. 7 and in Figure 6.4.↑

3. See J. Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis (New York: Basic Books, 2006). B. Frederickson, Love 2.0. (New York: Penguin Group, 2013), and S. Johnson, Love Sense (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013).↑