belief-persistence: the tendency for an established belief to resist change even after the evidence or reasoning that originally justified it has been discredited. Parameters: (1) a belief must first be formed through some evidential or social process, (2) disconfirming evidence must arrive after formation, (3) the belief must survive the disconfirmation and continue to guide behavior or judgment. The persistence mechanism is cognitive — beliefs become embedded in identity and social networks, making them self-reinforcing through confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and social validation. This construct maps how human belief systems maintain stability over time, for better or worse. [formal: perseverantia credendi | substrate: mind | horizon: hours | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
belief-persistence
belief-persistence: the tendency for an established belief to resist change even after the evidence or reasoning that originally justified it has been discredited. Parameters: (1) a belief must first be formed through some evidential or so…
Definition
Why it is in scope
Belief-persistence is the human-made psychological concept describing how beliefs endure despite counterevidence or disconfirmation. It is a construct from cognitive psychology and social science, built through research paradigms, theoretical models, and academic discourse to classify a pattern of human reasoning behavior.
Names and aliases
- belief-persistenceen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrmwufxy01pxd1nllvxs1o1sINSTANCE_OF →
belief-persistence is a specific kind of cognitive bias: the tendency to maintain a belief even after receiving disconfirming evidence. 'belief-persistence is a specific case of cognitive-bias' → Law 9 INSTANCE_OF.
- cmrf51qwi005rcqqtmpyziy84DEPENDS_ON →
Belief-persistence is the tendency to maintain beliefs despite disconfirming evidence. It DEPENDS_ON memory: persistence means continuing a prior state, and memory is the mechanism that holds that prior state. Remove memory and you cannot maintain any prior belief — the mechanism of persistence literally ceases. This is constitutive (not incidental like optimism-bias → memory): belief-persistence IS the operation of memory across time, not merely influenced by it.
- cmreni1le00twg8vusqrsdf83DEPENDS_ON →
belief-persistence is the phenomenon where beliefs persist despite disconfirming evidence. Per Law 8 removal test: remove belief and belief-persistence cannot operate — it requires beliefs as its substrate. This is object-level: belief-persistence is a pattern of belief-behavior, not a belief itself.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 17, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 0001bc9d747cbca80c5717a8db2bcda5714ab5b824df50a0ac32b91acf2d81ce