Why Do People Believe Things That Aren’t True?

Many people with anxiety share that they sometimes “question everything, even [their] own core beliefs and reality,” as one forum user put it.

People believe untrue things because the brain builds beliefs from shortcuts. It prefers a clear answer to an open question, rebuilds memories rather than replaying them, and treats familiarity and strong feelings as evidence.

Stress and fear raise the pull of certainty. Even a flawed explanation feels better than not knowing. The research on anxiety itself is less clear-cut.

One large survey of 8,806 adults in eight countries or regions asked about conspiracy theories and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Higher depression scores went with more belief in most regions.

Anxiety was not strongly linked to either type of belief in most regions (De Coninck et al., 2021). It may still matter by other routes.

Anxiety and chronic worry can blur the line between real and imagined threats, making it genuinely harder to tell what’s real. Our minds are doing their best to protect us, even if they sometimes protect us in the wrong way.

How the Brain Builds Beliefs

Beliefs are like mental shortcuts: quick ways for our brains to make sense of the world. Three habits explain how they sometimes go wrong.

• Certainty: The brain prefers a clear explanation, even a flawed one, to an open question.
• Believing first: Understanding a claim means briefly accepting it, so doubt comes second and takes effort.
• Memory and schemas: Memories are rebuilt from fragments and filled in with expectations, so a confident memory can still be wrong.

The brain craves certainty and predictability. It would rather hold a clear (even if flawed) explanation than cope with uncertainty.

Psychologists call this the need for cognitive closure: a desire for a definite answer that rises in some situations. It has two tendencies, seizing an answer quickly and then freezing on it (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996).

The order of processing matters too. In three studies, interrupting people before they could check a statement made them more likely to judge false statements true, but not true ones false (Gilbert et al., 1990).

Rejecting a claim is a second step that costs effort and can be skipped when attention is divided, as with a rumor half-heard in a busy room.

The effect has limits. Repetition raised the perceived accuracy of plausible false headlines, but not of an entirely implausible claim such as “The Earth is a perfect square” (Pennycook et al., 2018).

We often think of memory as a perfect recording of the past, but it’s not. Psychologists note that memory is reconstructive. We piece together fragments of experiences, feelings, and past knowledge to form a coherent story.

Many people do not realize this.

In a representative US telephone survey, 63% agreed that memory works like a video camera and 48% that it is permanent (Simons & Chabris, 2011).

Mistaken ideas about memory are widespread among mental-health professionals, judges and police too (Lynn et al., 2015). That makes errors harder to spot.

We also rely on schemas, mental shortcuts, and constructions to help us navigate life efficiently. They’re the reason we don’t have to relearn reality every morning. Our brain uses what it already knows (or thinks it knows) to guide our beliefs about each new day.

However, the same shortcuts can mislead us.

Our need for quick answers and our imperfect memory can cause us to form beliefs that feel right in the moment, but aren’t actually true.

Understanding this is key: your brain isn’t “lying” to you on purpose; it’s trying to help by creating certainty and drawing on past patterns. Sometimes it just gets things wrong.

The Cognitive Biases That Trip Us Up

Even the best brains get tripped up by cognitive biases: systematic errors in how we think. These biases act like mental filters, making us notice some things and ignore others.

Here are a few common culprits that can lead us to believe false things:

• Confirmation bias: We notice and remember what fits what we already believe.
• Anchoring bias: The first piece of information we get colors everything after it.
• Availability heuristic: Vivid, memorable examples seem more common than they are.

Confirmation Bias

We tend to seek out or recall information that confirms what we already believe, while overlooking evidence that contradicts it.

For instance, if you suspect your boss is unhappy with you, you might only notice their frown (confirming your belief) and forget that they praised your work yesterday.

The bias works at three points. It shapes what evidence we look for, how we read mixed evidence, and what we remember.

In a classic demonstration, people who supported and people who opposed capital punishment read the same two mixed pieces of research. Each side rated the study matching its own view as more convincing.

Beliefs shifted accordingly. The authors argued that giving opposing camps the same mixed evidence can widen disagreement rather than narrow it (Lord et al., 1979).

Anchoring Bias

Our first impression acts as an anchor for later thoughts. The first piece of information we get has an outsized influence on our belief.

Imagine you assume a new acquaintance is unfriendly because they seemed quiet at first; that initial judgment might anchor your ongoing perception, even after they warm up.

Anchors work even when they are arbitrary. In one demonstration, a number was drawn by spinning a wheel of fortune. Groups given 10 and 65 as starting points then estimated medians of 25 and 45 for the percentage of African countries in the United Nations (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).

Experts are not immune. Experienced legal professionals let a sentencing demand sway their decisions, even when it came from dice they threw themselves (Englich et al., 2006).

Availability Heuristic

We judge how true or likely something is by how easily it comes to mind. Picture a dramatic news story about a plane incident.

You might conclude that air travel is more dangerous than it really is, simply because that vivid example is available in your memory. In reality, calmer, more common facts (like safe flights) don’t stick in our heads as much.

A real-world version has been studied. After the 11 September 2001 attacks, extra road deaths among Americans who drove instead of flying exceeded the passengers killed on the four hijacked planes (Gigerenzer, 2004). Other explanations for the extra driving cannot be ruled out.

Everyday Example: Misreading a Text

A relatable example: one person shared that they misread a friend’s brief “OK” text and immediately assumed the friend was upset with them.

In reality, the friend was just busy, but that snap judgment (anchored in fear) caused unnecessary stress.

During anxiety, we also tend to jump to worst-case scenarios without proof (“They’re late. Something terrible must have happened.”).

Our biased thinking convinces us these knee-jerk interpretations are true. Recognizing these mental habits is the first step to not letting them run the show.

Emotional Reasoning: When Feelings Become “Facts”

Emotional reasoning happens when we treat feelings as proof that something is true, even without supporting evidence.

Anxiety makes this especially likely. For example, “I feel unsafe, so I must be in danger,” or “I feel rejected, so they must dislike me.”

Psychologist Julie Smith explains that intense emotions can convince us they reflect reality:

“I feel it, therefore it must be a fact.”

Researchers see the same move in people’s own accounts. An interview study asked 21 undergraduates about losing control. One participant puzzled over an intrusive thought to scream in public and asked, “Why else would I be thinking of that?” (Kelly-Turner & Radomsky, 2024).

The participant treated the thought itself as a sign of losing control. The study was about control, not misinformation, but the pattern is similar.

Feelings are valid signals. They tell us what we care about or fear.

The reasoning error is the leap from “I feel it” to “it is a fact about the world.” Anxiety makes that leap easier, because the feeling itself is so intense.

Feelings also act as information. That holds until we learn where they came from.

Sad participants reported lower life satisfaction than controls (5.7 against 8.9). Told that the room might be making them tense, they scored 8.6, not significantly different from controls (Schwarz & Clore, 1983).

Different emotions bend beliefs differently. Fearful people gave pessimistic risk estimates, while angry people gave optimistic ones and took more risks (Lerner & Keltner, 2001). A frightened mind is biased toward threat, an angry one toward confidence.

Naming where a feeling comes from can loosen its hold.

Does Anxiety Make False Beliefs More Likely?

It sounds obvious that a frightened mind would believe more false things. The research is less clear. Three findings stand out:

• Anxiety alone: In a survey of 8,806 adults, anxiety was not strongly linked to belief in conspiracy theories or misinformation in most regions (De Coninck et al., 2021).
• Depression: A meta-analysis of 29 studies (N = 3,130) found only a small link (r = 0.11) with difficulty updating beliefs after positive information (Zabag et al., 2025).
• Feelings as proof: People with anxiety disorders rated scripted situations as more dangerous when the character felt anxious, while people without them did not (Arntz et al., 1995).

The third finding is the most useful. Arntz and colleagues proposed that anxious people use their own anxiety as evidence of danger, which could help maintain the anxiety. The scripts were hypothetical, though. The design cannot show that this reasoning causes anxiety.

Anxiety may still matter by other routes, such as biasing attention toward threat. But the claim that anxiety, as such, makes people hold more false beliefs goes beyond what the large surveys found. Those surveys also cannot say which came first.

Social and Cultural Influences on Belief

Beliefs are shaped by the people and culture around us. Humans crave belonging, so we often adopt the views of our social group, sometimes without realizing it.

Group identity and peer pressure can make false beliefs feel safe, especially when “everyone” seems to agree.

Social media can intensify this. In echo chambers, people mostly meet views that match their own, and algorithms show more of what they have already liked.

Misinformation is false or misleading information that people may believe and pass on, whether or not it was meant to deceive. It can spread quickly. This is especially true of emotional or sensational content.

For someone with anxiety about acceptance, group agreement can feel more important than evidence.

How Much Do Echo Chambers Matter?

The evidence is more mixed than the popular picture:

• Choice, not just algorithms: Among 10.1 million US Facebook users, people’s own choices limited their exposure to opposing views more than algorithmic ranking did (Bakshy et al., 2015).
• Fewer like-minded sources: Cutting exposure by about one third for 23,377 users had no measurable effect on eight preregistered measures, including belief in false claims (Nyhan et al., 2023).
• Hearing the other side: In a randomized study of paid Twitter users, a month of following opposing accounts did not reduce polarization, and among Republicans it increased it (Bail et al., 2018).

The Twitter sample was regular users who were paid to take part, so that result may not generalize. Feed design may still matter, but the popular picture is too simple.

Why Facts Alone Often Don’t Change Minds

Facts don’t always break false beliefs, especially when those beliefs feel tied to our identity or emotions.

Through motivated reasoning, we interpret information in ways that protect our self-image, letting in agreeable facts and deflecting those that challenge us. Accepting certain truths can feel like admitting we’re “bad” or wrong, so our minds resist.

There is a limit. People reach the conclusions they want, but only as far as they can build a justification that seems reasonable (Kunda, 1990).

Identity can even turn skill against accuracy. On a gun-control framing of a data problem, polarization grew among the most numerate people (Kahan et al., 2017).

There is some good news. When people first affirmed a different source of self-worth, they were more persuaded by evidence challenging their views on capital punishment (Cohen et al., 2000).

The backfire effect is the claim that correcting a false belief can make a person believe it more strongly. Research has not supported it. Three findings stand out:

• Backfire is rare: The original demonstration used small samples of undergraduates (Nyhan & Reifler, 2010), and five later experiments found no backfire on 52 issues (Wood & Porter, 2019).
• Corrections work, partly: Two meta-analyses agree that debunking reduces belief in a false claim without removing its influence (Chan et al., 2017; Walter & Tukachinsky, 2020).
• Repeating a myth is mostly safe: Correcting unfamiliar claims did not strengthen them, although a correction’s benefit can fade within a week (Ecker et al., 2020).

So facts alone fail for three real reasons: identity and motivation, memory for the original claim, and the weakness of a bare denial.

What Helps: Contemporary Research

Recent randomized experiments suggest a few approaches help, though mostly modestly:

• Inoculation videos: Short videos on how manipulation works improved people’s ability to spot untrustworthy content, across seven preregistered studies (Roozenbeek et al., 2022).
• Accuracy prompts: Subtly prompting people to think about accuracy improved the quality of the news they went on to share (Pennycook et al., 2021).
• AI dialogue: Chatbot conversations that argued with evidence against each person’s own conspiracy theory cut 2,190 believers’ belief by about 20%, still visible two months later (Costello et al., 2024).

Two cautions apply. The accuracy-prompt and chatbot studies share authors, so they are not independent confirmations. And in 2026 the journal placed an editorial expression of concern on the chatbot paper while a reanalysis is checked, so its percentages are provisional (Thorp, 2026).

When False Beliefs Become Harmful

Some mistaken beliefs cause more than minor misunderstandings. They can create real distress or disrupt daily life. Four patterns are common:

• Anxiety spirals: A false belief can fuel a loop where distorted thoughts trigger anxious feelings, which then reinforce even more distorted thoughts.
• Avoidance: Thinking “I can’t do anything right” or “I’ll embarrass myself if I speak up” leads you to dodge challenges and miss chances to disprove the belief.
• Strained relationships: Assumptions like “If my partner is quiet, they’re angry” can spark needless conflict. Cognitive distortions such as catastrophizing or mind-reading often work this way, damaging trust.
• Clinical conditions: In some cases, strong false beliefs are linked to conditions like illness anxiety disorder or psychosis.

Ordinary biases and clinical delusions are not the same thing. Clinicians look at how fixed a belief is, how much distress or impairment it causes, and what else is present.

False beliefs matter beyond the individual too. A review of research on conspiracy theories found a mix of psychological, political and social causes. It argued that in politics and science they do more harm than good (Douglas et al., 2019).

Evidence Check: Does the Research Hold Up?

Verdict: Supported with qualifications.

The best-tested ideas here, that corrections work imperfectly and that repetition makes falsehoods feel truer, rest on meta-analyses and large experiments.

The two most popular explanations for why facts fail have not held up: the backfire effect, and the idea that feeling out of control drives people to see patterns. Five findings carry the verdict:

• Corrections: Two meta-analyses (N = 6,878 and N = 6,527) agree that debunking works on average, but the false claim keeps some influence (Chan et al., 2017; Walter & Tukachinsky, 2020).
• Backfire: Five experiments with more than 10,000 participants on 52 issues chosen to favor it found none (Wood & Porter, 2019).
• Repetition: A meta-analysis of 51 studies supports it, though in one fake-news study the effect was small: 2.01 against 1.92 for new headlines (Dechêne et al., 2010; Pennycook et al., 2018).
• Lack of control: A meta-analysis found a small, non-significant effect on conspiracy belief (d = -0.05), and seven experiments found none (Stojanov & Halberstadt, 2020; van Elk & Lodder, 2018).
• Anxiety: In a representative survey of 8,806 adults, it was not strongly linked to conspiracy or misinformation beliefs in most regions (De Coninck et al., 2021).

The studies mostly used online workers, and the longest delay tested for repetition was one week. Corrections met months later may work less well, because a time lag lowered the effectiveness of correction.

For readers, the message is simple. Clear, coherent corrections usually help, and fear of backfire is not a reason to withhold them.

Repetition makes claims feel truer, but only modestly, and only for claims that are at least somewhat plausible. Claims that anxiety makes people believe more false things should be stated cautiously.

How to Gently Challenge a Belief

Challenging a belief doesn’t mean harshly telling yourself “that’s stupid” or simply trying to eliminate the thought. In fact, the gentler and more curious you are with your beliefs, the more effectively you can shift them.

Here are some supportive strategies to test out a belief when you suspect it might not be true:

• Slow down: Weigh the evidence for and against the belief.
• Consider alternatives: Come up with two or three other ways to read the situation.
• Ground yourself: Calm your body before you re-examine the belief.
• Talk it out: Test the belief with someone you trust.

Slow down and gather evidence

Treat yourself like a friendly investigator. Ask, “What’s the evidence for this belief, and what’s the evidence against it?”

Write it down if you can. Seeing facts in black-and-white can be grounding. Often, you’ll find you have lots of feelings about the belief but not much solid evidence for it.

For example, if you think “Nobody likes me,” list times people have shown warmth toward you as evidence against that thought.

Asking how something works can also expose overconfidence. Explaining in detail how a policy would work led people to more moderate attitudes (Fernbach et al., 2013). That result concerns political views, so treat it as promising, not proven.

Be honest about the technique itself. A review found little evidence that challenging thoughts directly adds to the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (Longmore & Worrell, 2007), though a commentary disputed that conclusion (Hofmann, 2008). Testing a belief in real life may matter as much as arguing with it.

Consider alternative explanations

Our first interpretation is not always the only one. Challenge yourself to come up with 2–3 other ways to view the situation.

If a friend cancels plans, instead of “They secretly dislike me,” alternatives could be “Maybe they were overwhelmed with work or not feeling well.”

This doesn’t deny your concern; it just reminds you that reality might not be as dire as your worry suggests.

The strategy has experimental support. Experts who listed arguments against an anchor were less swayed by it (Mussweiler et al., 2000).

One caution. Alternative explanations are not always more accurate. Two people with opposing beliefs can both strengthen them after seeing the same data and still reason sensibly (Jern et al., 2014). The aim is to test alternatives, not to assume the most reassuring one is right.

Use grounding or mindfulness techniques

Strong emotions can hijack our thinking, so it helps to calm your nervous system before re-examining a belief.

Try a few deep breaths or a quick grounding exercise to get out of the swirl of thoughts. For example, name five things you can see around you.

When you’re a bit more centered, return to the question. Does the belief still hold the same power? Often, a calmer mind can spot flaws in an anxious thought more easily.

The logic fits the research on emotion and judgment. Direct tests of whether brief grounding or mindfulness exercises make beliefs more accurate appear to be lacking, so treat this as practical advice, not proven treatment.

Talk it out with someone you trust

Saying a belief aloud helps you hear it from the outside. A therapist, counselor, or trusted friend can gently question your assumptions in a way you might not do yourself.

They might ask, “What makes you say that?” or “Do you think everyone who texts late is upset with you, or could it be something else?” The goal is not judgment. It is an ally in reality-checking.

How the conversation is conducted matters. In three preregistered field experiments with 6,869 voters, arguments alone had no detectable effect on exclusionary attitudes.

Conversations that also included a non-judgmental exchange of narratives reduced those attitudes for at least four months (Kalla & Broockman, 2020).

The effects were small and concerned prejudice, not factual beliefs. Still, they suggest the gentle stance has some direct support.

A professional, in particular, can guide you through techniques (like cognitive-behavioral thought challenging or mindfulness practices) tailored to unrooting unhelpful beliefs.

Remember, the aim is not to invalidate everything you feel. It is to separate genuine signals from potentially misleading ones. Think of it as holding your beliefs up to the light to see if they’re solid.

By slowing down and using these strategies, you give yourself a chance to update a false belief into a more accurate one. It’s a skill. With practice, it gets easier to ask: “Is this really true, or is it my anxiety/anger/sadness talking?”

When to Seek Professional Support

If a false or distressing belief dominates your life, professional help can make a difference. Here are signs it may be time to reach out:

• The belief causes significant distress: Persistent thoughts like “I’m in danger” or “I’m unlovable” trigger anxiety, panic, or hopelessness despite reassurance.
• It interferes with daily life: The belief disrupts sleep, concentration, work, relationships, or leads to avoidance (e.g., not driving due to fear).
• You can’t break the cycle on your own: Some beliefs stem from trauma or patterns like transference or limerence, making them hard to shift without support.

Therapists can help identify root causes and use approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or trauma-focused methods. Seeking help is an act of self-care, not failure.

If your beliefs cause ongoing distress or isolation, you don’t have to face them alone. Professional guidance can help you move forward.

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