Thought Studies

Thought must be studied, observed, and understood.

Thought is the instrument through which human beings approach knowledge, relationship, culture, conflict, and the future itself. Yet our understanding of thought’s actual operation remains limited: how it forms images, defends conclusions, binds itself to emotion, divides people into opposing camps, and then tries to solve the very problems it has helped create. Thought Studies collects work that can make this process more visible, because understanding thought is not a narrow academic question; it is essential to the well-being and survival of our species.

Recent posts

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  1. Predicting Learning: Understanding the Role of Executive Functions in Children's Belief Revision Using Bayesian Models Paper: 2024Posted:
    Belief Formation & Belief RevisionEducation
    Summary: This study investigates how executive functions support belief revision in elementary school children, finding that making predictions enhances learning by increasing metacognitive flexibility, whereas post-hoc evaluation relies more heavily on inhibition and switching skills.
  2. Political Ideology in Early Childhood: Making the Case for Studying Young Children in Political Psychology Paper: September 11, 2022Posted:
    Social Cognition & Group IdentityPolarization, Conflict & DivisionMeaning, Worldviews & Ideology
    Summary: This article challenges the assumption that young children lack the capacity for political thought, arguing that early social cognition and proto-political attitudes lay the foundation for adult political ideologies such as authoritarianism, social dominance, and hawkish ideology. It demonstrates how studying early childhood is critical for a complete understanding of political psychology.
  3. The Pragmatic Hypothesis Testing Theory of Self-Deception and the Belief/Acceptance Distinction Paper: 2023Posted:
    PhilosophySelf-Deception & Collective Deception
    Summary: Kevin Lynch argues that the pragmatic hypothesis testing theory of self-deception likely models acceptance rather than belief, challenging its relevance to explaining self-deception. The article suggests that doxastic error costs may contribute to an evolutionary explanation of some forms of self-deception.
  4. On the belief that beliefs should change according to evidence: Implications for conspiratorial, moral, paranormal, political, religious, and science beliefs Paper: July 1, 2020Posted:
    Belief Formation & Belief RevisionDecision-MakingMeaning, Worldviews & Ideology
    Summary: This article investigates how individuals' meta-beliefs about whether beliefs ought to change in light of evidence relate to their actual beliefs across domains such as religion, politics, and science. The findings show that endorsing an actively open-minded style toward evidence is associated with more liberal political views, greater acceptance of scientific claims, and greater skepticism toward paranormal and conspiratorial claims, underscoring the importance of meta-cognitive factors in belief formation and revision.
  5. Mathematical Theory of Social Conformity I: Belief Dynamics, Propaganda Limits, and Learning Times in Networked Societies Paper: 2025Posted:
    Belief Formation & Belief RevisionCultural Cognition & Collective Belief
    Summary: This paper develops a probabilistic theory of belief formation in social networks, using belief-adoption probabilities and fixed-point dynamics to model rapid local consensus and slower global diffusion, and deriving quantitative results on propaganda limits and the temporal structure of social conformity.
  6. Self-caught methodologies for measuring mind wandering with meta-awareness: A systematic review Paper: January 12, 2023Posted:
    MetacognitionAttention
    Summary: This systematic review examines 39 studies on self-caught measures of mind wandering, which capture instances when participants spontaneously notice their attention drifting. It documents methodological heterogeneity across tasks and highlights the potential of such measures for assessing meta-awareness, a key factor in mental health and psychological interventions.
  7. Effective mitigation of the belief perseverance bias after the retraction of misinformation: Awareness training and counter-speech Paper: March 8, 2023Posted:
    Cognitive Bias & Motivated ReasoningBelief Formation & Belief RevisionCognitive Regulation & Flexibility
    Summary: This study examines techniques to reduce the belief perseverance bias—the tendency to maintain biased beliefs after misinformation is retracted—by comparing counter-speech, awareness training, and counter-explanation. It finds counter-speech most effective, contributing to understanding of cognitive debiasing in the context of belief revision and misinformation.
  8. Domain-specific updating of metacognitive self-beliefs Paper: July 25, 2023Posted:
    Metacognition
    Summary: This study investigates how individuals update their self-beliefs about cognitive abilities after experiencing uncertainty across memory, visual, and general knowledge domains. The findings demonstrate that while metacognitive confidence is domain-general, belief updating is highly domain-specific, challenging assumptions about a unified cognitive hierarchy and highlighting the nuanced nature of metacognitive self-evaluation.
  9. The preference for belief, issue polarization, and echo chambers Paper: September 29, 2022Posted:
    Belief Formation & Belief RevisionCultural Cognition & Collective Belief
    Summary: This paper argues that a weak mechanism—the preference for belief—can produce issue polarization and echo chambers even without social or cognitive exclusion, challenging common explanations and suggesting that polarization may be more intractable than assumed.
  10. Self-deception as omission Paper: May 4, 2020Posted:
    Cognitive Bias & Motivated ReasoningBelief Formation & Belief RevisionSelf-Deception & Collective Deception
    Summary: Gibson critiques existing models of self-deception and argues that many cases are best understood as epistemic omissions, where subjects unconsciously form comforting beliefs and then fail to correct them for motivated reasons, thereby reconciling psychological plausibility with personal responsibility.
  11. Overcoming resistance to belief revision and correction of misinformation beliefs: psychophysiological and behavioral effects of a counterfactual mindset Paper: 2024Posted:
    Belief Formation & Belief RevisionCognitive Bias & Motivated ReasoningCognitive Regulation & Flexibility
    Summary: This study presents four experiments demonstrating that inducing a counterfactual mindset increases individuals' willingness to revise their beliefs and correct misinformation when confronted with contradictory evidence. The findings highlight a psychological strategy for promoting belief flexibility and reducing resistance to evidence, with implications for addressing misinformation.
  12. Domain-specific updating of metacognitive self-beliefs Paper: October 8, 2024Posted:
    Metacognition
    Summary: This study explores metacognitive belief updating across memory, visual, and general knowledge domains, finding that while metacognitive confidence exhibits domain generality, belief updating is highly domain-specific, as participants adjust their self-confidence according to performance in each domain.
  13. Enhancing misinformation correction: New variants and a combination of awareness training and counter-speech to mitigate belief perseverance bias Paper: 2024Posted:
    Belief Formation & Belief RevisionCognitive Bias & Motivated Reasoning
    Summary: This study examines the effectiveness of awareness training and counter-speech techniques, individually and in combination, for reducing belief perseverance bias after misinformation retraction. The findings demonstrate that combining these methods yields greater mitigation of persistent biased beliefs, contributing to strategies for correcting misinformation in real-world contexts.
  14. The science of belief: A progress report Paper: July 6, 2020Posted:
    Belief Formation & Belief RevisionDecision-MakingCognitive Bias & Motivated Reasoning
    Summary: This review synthesizes empirical research on belief from cognitive science, highlighting evidence for automatic belief fixation, fragmented storage, and dual systems of belief change, with implications for understanding how misinformation exploits cognitive processes.
    Editor’s comments: This title is intriguing. And in the abstract it states: "The empirical study of belief is emerging at a rapid clip, uniting work from all corners of cognitive science." But you have to pay to access this paper so I will reach out to one of the authors to see if I can obtain it directly.
  15. Introspection confidence predicts EEG decoding of self‐generated thoughts and meta‐awareness Paper: February 5, 2022Posted:
    AttentionCognitive Neuroscience & Neural MechanismsMetacognition
    Summary: This study uses EEG to decode mind wandering and meta-awareness, finding that alpha power increases during mind wandering and that lower frequency bands are associated with unaware mind wandering. The authors further show that individual differences in decoding accuracy correlate with introspection confidence, linking neural discriminability to metacognitive judgments.
  16. Polarization is the psychological foundation of collective engagement Paper: May 6, 2024Posted:
    Cultural Cognition & Collective BeliefSocial Cognition & Group IdentityPolarization, Conflict & Division
    Summary: This paper argues that group polarization—the tendency for discussion to intensify shared views—provides the psychological foundation for political polarization, showing how social interaction builds collective identities that mobilize groups to action.
  17. Truth over identity? Cultural cognition weakly replicates across 23 countries Paper: August 15, 2022Posted:
    Social Cognition & Group IdentityCultural Cognition & Collective BeliefBelief Formation & Belief Revision
    Summary: This study tests the Cultural Cognition Thesis across 23 countries, finding that cultural cognition is a weak predictor of climate change beliefs, policy preferences, and actions, and that polarization is not greatest among the highly educated, challenging the view that identity-driven cognition is central to climate change thought.
  18. Meta-awareness, mind-wandering, and the control of automatic external and internal orientations of attention Paper: 2026Posted:
    AttentionCognitive Neuroscience & Neural MechanismsMetacognition
    Summary: This study examines the interplay between meta-awareness and mind-wandering, proposing that meta-awareness plays a key role in controlling automatic shifts of attention between external and internal orientations. The findings contribute to understanding how metacognitive processes regulate attentional focus, with implications for cognitive neuroscience and models of awareness.
  19. Imagined otherness fuels blatant dehumanization of outgroups Paper: May 6, 2024Posted:
    Social Cognition & Group IdentityPolarization, Conflict & Division
    Summary: This paper introduces the concept of 'imagined otherness'—the perception that outgroup members construe social reality in fundamentally different ways—and demonstrates that such attributions fuel blatant dehumanization beyond general perceived difference and group identification, using correlational and experimental evidence from U.S. political partisans.
  20. Exploring the Relationship Between Need for Closure, Religious Ideology, and Identity Fusion Paper: 2025Posted:
    Belief Formation & Belief RevisionMyth, Spirituality, & ReligionSocial Cognition & Group Identity
    Summary: This study demonstrates that the need for closure indirectly strengthens identity fusion with religious groups by fostering adherence to religious ideology, highlighting how epistemic needs for certainty shape group identification and potential conflict.