Hazards of a Rigid Belief System

The hazards of concrete thinking were still of interest to me when I pursued my master's and then my doctorate in psychology at the University of Florida in the late '60's.

In my research project for my master's degree, I used a Conceptual Systems Test to distinguish between concrete and abstract thinkers. The concrete thinkers showed greater acceptance of control by a divine authority, a need for assurance and certainty, an intolerance of ambiguity, and a strong need for structure and order. Abstract thinkers were at the other end of the spectrum. I then placed the folk in a situation where they were shown three geometric figures at a time that differed in size and asked to say which was the largest of the three.

I found that folk who were more concrete in their thinking were more likely to deny their own perceptions and conform to the (false) opinions of others than were folk who were more abstract in their thinking.

In my undergraduate work, I had found that a more rigid belief system tended to restrict one's awareness of a wider universe. Now I had found that a more rigid belief system could lead one to deny one's own senses and judgment of reality in favor of the false opinions of others.

I was on my way to thinking that holding on to, clinging to, any belief system was not a good thing -- and knowing that getting dogmatic about that would land me right back where I started -- my head firmly stuck up my assumptions.