26th Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology
8-12 July, 2024, Visegrad, Hungary
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FALSE BELIEFS
Convened by
Joseph P. Forgas
The conference seeks to bring together researchers who are
interested in understanding why humans so frequently subscribe to
false and incorrect beliefs and how the widespread-acceptance of
incorrect narratives influences our thinking, our interpersonal
behaviours as well as many social, political and cultural phenomena.
We hope to invite researchers working in any area of psychology and
related fields who can contribute to our understanding of the
nature, functions, origins and psychological and cultural
antecedents and consequences of false beliefs, with special emphasis
on the psychological, evolutionary, cultural and civilizational
processes that contribute to the creation and maintenance of false
beliefs. Given the recent worrying rise of irrational beliefs in the
public sphere and the increasingly polarized nature of public
discourse, this topic seems particularly interesting and relevant at
this time.
We believe that many substantive areas of psychology and related
fields have an important contribution to make to understanding how
humans create, share, maintain and apply irrational beliefs and
narratives in their daily lives. We would like the get contributions
from leading international researchers like yourself whose work has
some interesting implications for understanding the psychological
processes underlying the formation and maintenance of false beliefs,
including research from areas such as cognitive, evolutionary,
social, motivational and political psychology, as well as related
areas such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology and others. As
always the topic is broadly defined and we are interested in
contributions from a wide variety of empirical and theoretical
backgrounds that can contribute to our understanding of the nature
and role of the psychological processes underlying the role of false
beliefs in our private and public lives.