Beliefs (as opposed of factual knowledge) and self perception will influence your attitudes and life-span

Can beliefs influence our way of thinking? Because I'm a psychological scientist and I live in Helsingfors, I meet and interact with a lot of people in this bi-lingual culture to discuss various matters. Here I present a few interactions as well as proposing models to explain why people behave the way they do, as well as consequences. Self-perception seems to influence people's beliefs which in turn seem to influence their lifestyle choices, and vulnerability for mental fallacies. Finnish people's life span is on average shorter compared to Swedes ditto, and Finns who do not speak Swedish seem to have even shorter lifespan. 6 pages.

Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden) or MobilePay (Finland).

Can beliefs influence our way of thinking?

Because I'm a psychological scientist and I live in Helsingfors, I meet and interact with a lot of people in this bi-lingual culture to discuss various matters. Because of my profession, I aim to frame these conversations with factual knowledge (that's common academic knowledge - information which has been validated through the academic process). I mostly network with Swedish speaking people, including Finns, but I also network with Finns who speak the other, uralic, language which was imposed by Russia in 1863, as well as people from other countries. That means, a socio-cultural smorgasbord. A dream situation for any psychological scientist.

One example of such meetings is a weekly culture café we started in late 2022 where I'm one of the hosts. Anyone who wants to discuss cultural matters in an open-minded way, mostly in Swedish, is welcome. Coffee is included. Every week, ~8 guests join in to have an hour long conversation about a theme chosen by my co-host.

Last week, one of the guests, a senior man who sometimes shows up, started to narrate his view on the ongoing US presidential election. And even though our social event has no ambition to be politically biased or to be a one-person-show, the man used a lot of our sixty minutes to promote his viewpoint which was in favor of one of the candidates. His narration was also very dystopic - a warning about what he believed would happen if the candidate he didn't favor would be chosen by the people. This kind of doomsaying tends to trigger something called negativity bias among those unlucky who are on the receiving end (Baumeister et al. 2001).

I also meet people with health issues. One of them is an acquaintance who suffers from high blood pressure. Common academic knowledge is that high blood pressure, like Type 2 diabetes and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD), is caused by life-style and will increase the probability of contracting cancer and cardiovascular disease (Hall et al. 2019). Belly fat is a marker (Lustig, 2020). But instead of being curious about how he can get rid of this lifestyle disease (by changing his lifestyle), the man clings to a strong belief or conviction that high blood pressure is related to aging. In his mind, it is his destiny. And to rationalize his life situation, living with a lifestyle disease that can be put into remission if he changes his lifestyle, he repeated a very common but at the same time contradictory phrase for why he continues his lifestyle: - You have to live!

A similar thing happened in 2019, when the then mayor of Helsingfors published an op-ed where he promoted vegetarianism and veganism. Common academic knowledge is that our species have adapted to an animal source diet (Mann, 2018; McPherron et al. 2010; Pobiner, 2013, 2016; Thompson et al. 2019); we need to consume animal source protein, fat, and micro-nutrients to sustain physical and mental health (Adesogan et al. 2020; Allen, 2003; Balehegn et al. 2019, 2023; Cui et al 2024; Dehghan et al. 2017, 2018; Dobersek et al. 2023; Ede, 2019, 2022, 2024; Itkonen et al. 2020; Johnson et al. 2023; Tong et al. 2020; Vepsäläinen et al. 2018; Ylilauri et al. 2019; Österberg, 2020). After I confronted the mayor with some questions about references, he confessed that he didn't know what he was talking about. A few years later he contracted cardiovascular disease (Österberg, 2024).

Why do people promote and then stick to viewpoints that aren't factual (common academic knowledge)?

Part of the explanation is referred to something called bias - “a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is inaccurate, closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief” (Steinbock, 1978; Wikipedia). In some situations, we just aren't able to activate the executive functions to suppress impulses (Ardila, 2008, Ardila et al. 2018; Adornetti, 2016; Österberg, 2004).

Bias can be explained by:

1. “natural stupidity” - the tendency to believe information that is prototypical (Kahneman och Tversky, 1972), often repeated (Tversky och Kahneman, 1973) or is just easy to access (Kahneman and Tversky, 1977).
   
   
2.  Dysrationalia - the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence (this includes instrumental and epistemic rationality) (Stanovich, 1993).

After jumping to conclusion, a political stance or fictional viewpoint about health, may turn into a belief:

“A belief is a subjective attitude that a proposition is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance, take, or opinion about something. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. However, holding a belief does not require active introspection” (Wikipedia).

or even a conviction:

“A conviction is an unshakable belief in something without needing proof or evidence” (Wikipedia).

Usually, these viewpoints are 'seasoned' with negativity bias. That leads to another question.

Does thinking (Self-perception) have other implications?

In the 1970s, researchers sampled data from people older than 50 years.

“The final cohort comprised 338 men and 322 women. Their age at baseline ranged from 50 to 94 years (M 63.00 years, SD 9.23). Their mean score on the Health Scale for the Aged (Rosow & Breslau, 1966) was 4.84 (the items for this scale are listed under Covariates in the Measures section). Scores on the Health Score for the Aged ranged from 0 to 6, with a higher score reflecting better health. The participants’ average socioeconomic status, as measured by the Two-Factor Index of Social Position (Hollingshead, 1965), was 32.49, which indicates that participants tended to be middle class. Scores on this scale ranged from 11, indicating the highest socioeconomic status, to 77, indicating the lowest socioeconomic status” (p. 263).

“The results support the hypothesis of Study 1: Those with more positive aging self-perceptions at baseline live longer, after relevant factors are controlled for” (p. 265).

And the difference is staggering: 7.5 years! (Levy et al 2002) 

In 2023, the EU and OECD published data on mental health in the EU countries. Here are data from Finland and Sweden. These are the introductions:

“The leading causes of mental health issues in Finland in 2019 were depressive, anxiety, and alcohol and drug-use disorders. As in other countries, depression is more prevalent among people in the lowest income group, especially among women. Despite the reduction in recent decades, suicide rates in Finland remain higher than the EU average”.

“About 17 % of people had a mental health issue in Sweden in 2019, which is close to the EU average. Common disorders include anxiety and depression, with higher prevalence among women and those on lower incomes: 16 % of men and 18 % of women in the lowest income quintile reported depression in 2019, compared to 8 % of men and 9 % of women in the highest income quintile”.

The introduction for each country is expressed slightly differently, so you have to look for specific markers.

Language seems to play a role. In spring 2023, a researcher at the city of Helsingfors said that Finns who speak Swedish have better health compared to the other language group. They also said that language explained life expectancy. That is confirmed by the EU stats; On average, the lifespan for Swedes is 2 years longer compared to that of Finns.

The gender gap in Sweden is lower compared to the EU:

Whereas the gender gap in Finland is closer to EU:

Disabilities.

Sweden:

“In comparison to other EU countries, in Sweden women and men at 65 enjoy a significantly higher proportion of their additional years of life without disabilities, so the gap in healthy life years between Sweden and the EU average is even wider. Nevertheless, similar to other countries, the gender gap in healthy life years at 65 between Swedish men and women is smaller than the gap in life expectancy. This is because women tend to spend a greater portion of their remaining life years living with disabilities and limitations in daily activities” (p. 5).

Finland:

“However, the gender gap in healthy life years (defined as disability-free life expectancy) was much smaller (less than a year) because women spend a greater proportion of their remaining years of life after age 65 with some activity limitations (disabilities)” (p. 5).

Conclusion. Self-perception seems to influence people's beliefs which in turn seem to influence their lifestyle choices, and vulnerability for mental fallacies. Finnish people's life span is on average shorter compared to Swedes ditto, and Finns who do not speak Swedish seem to have even shorter lifespan.

This negativity seems also to influence people's outlook on politics.

Also read: Österberg (2024) ADHD and Alzheimer's disease in Finland. Nurture is more likely explanation compared to nature  

Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden ) or MobilePay (Finland).

More about my expertise:

Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | Twitter