Human history has been marked by social instability and conflict, often driven by the irreconcilability of opposing sets of beliefs, ideologies, and religious dogmas. The dynamics of belief systems has been studied mainly from two distinct perspectives, namely how cognitive biases lead to individual belief rigidity and how social influence leads to social conformity. Here we propose a unifying ...

scrupulosity (also known as religious obsessive-compulsive disorder) is a sub-group of obsessive-compulsive disorder (ocd) that has not been well investigated internationally and in iran. in recent decades, scrupulosity has been the researchers’ subject of interest and relevant literature, mostly with a cognitive approach, has attracted attention. in this regard, investigators have tried to she...

background the use of metaphors rather than direct suggestions of treatment can help to weaken defense mechanisms against any functional changes and so cause an increase in the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. conclusions since imt can repeatedly neutralize patients’ defenses without aggravating their anxiety, and as the therapy can help patients via the development of a new awarenes...

At least since M ARX and F REUD , there has existed a conceptualization of religious belief as pathological. 1 According to this view, religious beliefs result from, and are indicative of, some kind of intellectual flaw or deficiency (P LANTINGA 2000). We might say that religious beliefs are here construed as reflecting doxastic dysfunction (from the Greek word “doxa”, meaning “opinion” or “bel...

Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is characterised by overvalued or delusional beliefs of 'imagined ugliness'. Delusional beliefs have been explained by a number of cognitive theories, including faulty perceptions, biases in attention, and corruption of semantic memory. Atypical aesthetics may also influence beliefs in BDD. In fourteen BDD patients, compared to controls (n=14), we examined these t...

from the ancient times up to this date, it has been thought that religion and spirituality have important effects on human being's mental life. however, some psychologists and psychotherapists have ignored this role, and thus neglected to study the effects of applying religion and spirituality in psychotherapy. however, many psychologists and psychotherapists have recently studied the relations...

high comorbidity between psychological disorders causes attention to the mechanisms responsible for this comorbidity and common cognitive factors involved in these disorders. these are known as transdiagniostic factors. similarity evidence and high comorbidity between generalized anxiety disorder (gad) and obsessive compulsive disorder (ocd) introduce them as neighboring disorders. the purpose ...

Anxiety disorders are characterised by distorted beliefs about the dangerousness of certain situations and/or internal stimuli. Why do such beliefs persist? Six processes (safety-seeking behaviours, attentional deployment, spontaneous imagery, emotional reasoning, memory processes and the nature of the threat representation) that could maintain anxiety-related negative beliefs are outlined and ...

In a non-clinical sample (N = 751), we investigated relations among two subscales (self-reported intrusiveness of unwanted thoughts and thought suppression) of the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI), metacognitive beliefs, and proneness to auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). Both subscales of the WBSI were found to be related to AVH-proneness and strongly positively related to metacogni...