Credition – Processes of Believing: Foundations and Implications

The history of psychology has included many keywords that summarize and reflect large bodies of research and theory. The present article introduces the term credition as analogous to emotion for feeling and cognition for information processing. It refers to the processes of believing – not beliefs as the specific manifestation of what someone believes (on which there has been much research in psychology), but believ ing (whatever it may concern). We contend that the creditive processes underlying believing are semi- or non-conscious, although their content can become conscious. On the phenomenological level creditive processes are related to but not synonymous with emotion and cognition. The process can be understood on multiple levels from neurological to psychological to social and cultural. We posit that credition signifies a genuinely universal human neurocognitive function such that there is no living person whose system does not have this. It is concluded that the novel notion of credition integrates psychological knowledge reminiscent of the constituting role of “connective tissue”.