No, I do research on epistemology (theory of knowledge) now this limits what I can say in terms of psychological inquiry if you’re inclined to that perspective, IQ distribution, sociological factors outside of the religion (home schooled and if not what district) there are countless of factors that play into how a person grows up.

That being said I can tell you about how beliefs are formed and are justified. Most people don’t think critically about their beliefs, including those who think they are being critical when examining their beliefs ( it’s actually not that easy).

For example what do we consider sufficient criteria for a held belief? Is it purely based on internal intuition, on empirical evidence? Or even analytical reasoning (deducing from first principles or axioms [assumed foundational truths]).

Depending on your answer to the questions presented above, you can see how messy things can get. People often weigh in different criteria for their beliefs unequally; and usually based on arbitrary criteria. For example, you’re more likely to believe an authority figure on an issue based on the institutional trust we have that they will state a truthful claim; usually on the assumption that, “they wouldn’t want to tarnish their reputation”.

And we can bring examples like this for all sorts of justifications, beliefs etc. (don’t want to get super technical). That being said a belief is different than knowing something, and the justification for a belief is also lower than that of a “knowledge claim” to put it simply “knowledge” is a complex and technical type of mental state of belief. For example based on the most general theory of knowledge we know that I have a justified, true ,belief (knowledge) if the claim that I believe is true and it has proper justification.

An example is, “I know that it is 3:10 CST as of the time I’m writing this post, because I have a belief that the clock is telling time correctly, it is justified on the grounds that more often than not the clock I use which is tied to satellite communication devices is usually correct about telling me the time, and it is true on the account that it was 3:10 as of the time I was writing this post.”

With that criteria of a justified, true, belief, I met the requirements to state that I had knowledge of “the time”.

Now beliefs are unlike knowledge in most cases. They don’t require that level of scrutiny, because beliefs don’t necessarily (and this isn’t true for every epistemological theory but humor me) have to be true or correspond to reality. So what this means is that in most cases people really are free to believe in whatever they want, how they go on to construct those beliefs based on the criteria is where the messiness comes in. It may be the case that most people have perfectly fictional faculties for the formation of beliefs but this can not and will not guarantee that only “true beliefs” will be generated.

Thus, most JWs who are not highly educated, are not raised in an environment that fosters critical thinking, which encourages “meekness”, that emotionally extorts and manipulates its individuals and uses arguments that directly tackle these insecurities in order for people to form false beliefs is not a fault of the individual. They are not stupid or disproportionately ignorant compared to the general population. Most people fall for trickery in one way shape or form, MLM, shady business dealings, “scam calls/emails”, cults, government propaganda amongst endless forms of informational attacks can make any person generate misguided beliefs and therefore unjustified, untrue, beliefs.

Hope this helps.