@bigdogg said
Your last point is important. People do have a tendency to backfill reasoning and evidence, often without realizing they have done so. If you ask them how they came to that belief, they will present it in the 'acceptable' order - first evidence, then reason, then belief - even though that's not what really happened.
It does make me wonder - how much of us that have ...[text shortened]... t quickly rewrites the inner narrative of how we came to our belief to avoid the unflattering truth.
Almost all of the really interesting factors involved in belief formation have already done their work in unconsciousness by the time a belief can be formulated in words, or been buried in the ancient past by the time a social prejudice becomes a hot political issue.
