<p>I am focusing on subconscious belief changing.</p>
<p>Suppose you read a headline passively. It claims that the lottery has better odds than you think and partaking in the lottery once a week is a smart thing to do.</p>
<p>Assuming you are passively reading, at a very abstract level, do we know if the brain will mutate its knowledge in some way that moves it towards believing this?</p>
<p>If it can, then how much skepticism do we apply to halt such a thought? Given the previous example of the lottery, if I say to myself &quot;no, that idea about a lottery being easier to win at than I currently know is statistically unsound, and I need to ignore that&quot;, then is that sufficient enough to prevent information from <em>ever so subtely, worse, imperceptibly</em>, changing my belief system?</p>
<p>My naive thoughts are that if it can change our brains, then applying some level of questioning should reinforce whatever neural structures we have in place by hopefully overwriting or strengthening the neurons that make up our knowledge.</p>
<p>I assume neuroplasticity can vary, so different individuals might have different thresholds of changing, or maybe there is a study that has strong evidence against everything I said, which I would like to read.</p>
<p>Do we have any studies in this area?</p>
<p>I am not asking if questioning stops bad thoughts, but <em>how much</em> questioning is needed to prevent passive scanning of things like headlines or abstracts from imperceptibly changing belief systems subconsciously, given what we know about the brain.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-01-23T04:12:00.047Z
I answer a similar question in: [Repeating a rumor that you started?](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/20865/7001).  You may also be interested in: [Is there a term to refer to humans' automatic belief of encountered information?](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/28335/7001) and [Why do people believe what they believe?](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/26757/7001)
Arnon Weinberg
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-01-23T16:17:48.143Z
One more phenomenon to consider is the [sleeper effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_effect). This is where the presence of reason to disregard the legitimacy of a message can give it more unconscious influence.
Michael
<brain><belief>
Neuroplasticity: Does reading information subconsciously transform the brain towards believing said information? What level of skepticism prevents it?
Water
# Neuroplasticity: Does reading information subconsciously transform the brain towards believing said information? What level of skepticism prevents it?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2023-01-22)

I am focusing on subconscious belief changing.

Suppose you read a headline passively. It claims that the lottery has better odds than you think and partaking in the lottery once a week is a smart thing to do.

Assuming you are passively reading, at a very abstract level, do we know if the brain will mutate its knowledge in some way that moves it towards believing this?

If it can, then how much skepticism do we apply to halt such a thought? Given the previous example of the lottery, if I say to myself "no, that idea about a lottery being easier to win at than I currently know is statistically unsound, and I need to ignore that", then is that sufficient enough to prevent information from *ever so subtely, worse, imperceptibly*, changing my belief system?

My naive thoughts are that if it can change our brains, then applying some level of questioning should reinforce whatever neural structures we have in place by hopefully overwriting or strengthening the neurons that make up our knowledge.

I assume neuroplasticity can vary, so different individuals might have different thresholds of changing, or maybe there is a study that has strong evidence against everything I said, which I would like to read.

Do we have any studies in this area?

I am not asking if questioning stops bad thoughts, but *how much* questioning is needed to prevent passive scanning of things like headlines or abstracts from imperceptibly changing belief systems subconsciously, given what we know about the brain.

**Tags:** brain, belief

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: I answer a similar question in: [Repeating a rumor that you started?](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/20865/7001).  You may also be interested in: [Is there a term to refer to humans' automatic belief of encountered information?](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/28335/7001) and [Why do people believe what they believe?](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/26757/7001)  
> **username_2**: One more phenomenon to consider is the [sleeper effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_effect). This is where the presence of reason to disregard the legitimacy of a message can give it more unconscious influence.  

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## 0 answers

