How is behavioral psychology connected to belief?

two incredibly broad topics – need more detail

I’m not sure what this question means. I don’t know how to measure belief empirically, but behavior can be observed, categorized and measured objectively. How would they be linked, and how would anyone know?

Freud believed he knew what he was talking about when he came up with the idea. Of course, he was stoned to the max on some seriously pure cocaine.

What kind of belief?

Pavlov (yeah, the guy who messed around with salivating dogs and bells) found that if you put a pigeon in a cage and had a pellet of food drop into the cage at regular intervals, sometimes the pigeon thought that their ACTION is what caused the pellet to drop. As a result, they thought that they’d have to repeat the SAME action if they wanted a pellet.

So if they happened to spread their wings by chance before the pellet of food dropped, they might think that spreading their wings was the CAUSE of the food pellet dropping and do that whenever they wanted a pellet of food.

From this we see the fundamental elements of superstitious behavior, often leading to religious belief. One such example would be how Indians believed they would make it rain by doing a special rain dance.

“Fake it ‘til you make it”. By choosing behavior that may not feel ‘natural’ but is more like the person you want to become, you will progressively integrate those behaviors into your personality.

My personal experience comes from have zero self-esteem, and even some self-loathing resulting from childhood abuse. I was a horrible under-acheiver and painfully shy. In my late 20s, as I was starting a new job and building a career. I had finished Grad School and given birth to my son a few years before. I found a therapist I really liked, and one of the things she suggested was the above theory.

So I observed people around me, and their behaviors. Those qualities which I found admirable were the ones I tried to emulate. I wasn’t imitating them—I watched how they could stand up for themselves to an authority figure and remain poised and dignified (for example), and then I’d consider times that I’d had to deal with confrontation and imagine what I could do differently to avoid getting flustered. That’s been the toughest challenge, so that’s why it makes a good example.

At first, it did feel awkward; but as I persisted, I became more comfortable with those behaviors and they are now a part of who I am. When I meet people now and tell them how I was as a teen and young adult, they seem genuinely surprised. I am no social butterfly, because I have realized that I don’t want to be that way. A new aquaintance described me as a “sociable introvert”, which suits me well. I am at ease in social situations and confident meeting new people.

Pretending to have confidence gave me practice at behaving like a confident person, until the point I became comfortable with being confident. I grew up believing that I was ugly and stupid, and undeserving of happiness or success. Logically, I knew that to be untrue, but that didn’t change how I felt about myself. So by changing my behavior, I was able to challenge and change those beliefs about myself.

I hope this makes sense, and that it relates to your question the way I interpreted it.

@Quagmire I did a rain dance the other day, and egg beaters fell from the sky. I must have been doing the wrong dance. I’ll try again once this concussion heals.

Our behaviour and the justifications for such adjust themselves considerably dependant upon our beliefs, although there appears to be some fairly frequent exceptions to this principle as can be observed in the famous LePiere (1934) study on the relationship between attitudes and behaviour.
When a human genuinely believes something it shall inevitably affect their regular psychological processes (though not necessarily majorly) and this, whether conciously or unconciously, will cause their behaviour to become altered. Reversely, acting in certain manners can gradually cause a persons beliefs to change perhaps due to a sense of cognitive dissonance (someone acting in such a way that is contrary to their beliefs might make them seek to amend said beliefs so as to make themselves feel more content with their behaviour) or maybe due to self-fulfilling prophecy.
One of the most easily observable examples I can offer which emphasises the relationship between behavioural psychology and beliefs is that if one were to make a claim about anothers behaviour which illustrated it as contrary to that persons beliefs it is likely that they would become aggrivated and take offence (this is often followed by the offended party either re-analysing and altering their behaviour or convincing themselves that the claims are inaccurate, sometimes by discrediting the offending source). We as a species tend to take a bizarre sense of pride in our ability to display our attitutes physically and passively. From how we approach situations to how we walk.
In truth the connections between behavioural psychology and beliefs, when regarding humans (other animals could be discussed in greater depth at a later time), are countless but I have presented a few examples and explanations here in hopes that they shall atleast partially quench your curiosity my friend.
@Zendo Freud spoke little of behavioural psychology, this particular sub-discipline is generally believed to have been founded by Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner (while John B. Watson is considered the founder of modern behavioural psychology)

People are more likely (or less likely) to engage in a behavior based on a given belief. This a elementry definition of THorndike’s Law of Effect. For example, If you believe running across the steet while a car is coming will get you killed (and you don’t want t die), you are less likely to engage in the behavior of running across the street.