Belief and Autosuggestion: A New Integrative Model of Belief Formation

Practitioners and theorists of psychology, from cognitive psychologists to clinical psychologists, regularly work with beliefs without often being aware of this fact. This paper explores the profound influence of beliefs on various psychological phenomena, emphasizing their pivotal role in shaping thinking, perception and behavior. The authors highlight the often overlooked and fragmented nature of the field, demonstrating how diverse psychological domains – like placebo effect, cognitive biases or attribution in cognitive psychology – share a common foundation in beliefs. The main goals of the paper are to showcase the importance of beliefs and to draw attention to the necessity of a unified framework of the topic across different fields. To address this gap, the paper also introduces a novel belief formation model which integrates insights from personality psychology, cognitive psychology, hypnosis, CBT, schema therapy, emotion-focused therapy, and psychodynamic therapy. Grounded in the dialogical self theory, and autosuggestion, the model proposes that autosuggestion continuously updates one's belief system in real time. The connected topics of suggestion, autosuggestion, placebo, belief, subjective reality, schema, meta-cognition, imagination, and the dialogical self are reviewed in the light of the proposed belief formation theory. We also illustrate how seemingly distinct therapeutic approaches of treating the same core negative belief (“I am worthless”) exhibit clear similarities only to show how universal work with beliefs are, strengthening the importance of the need of a sound theoretical background. Finally, the paper calls for the convergence of researchers and practitioners using beliefs and advocates for the establishment of the Science of Belief, envisioning a collaborative field that maximizes the potential of beliefs for professionals, scientists, and society at large.