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Are there benefits to practicing a belief?

At first glance, yes. Believing allows one to limit feelings of insecurity.

However, once cognitive dissonance is examined, it becomes clear that this gain in terms of security is matched by a loss in terms of being trapped—an inability to simply address problems.

Explanation

Objective facts form a coherent whole. A belief system may also potentially constitute a coherent whole. But combining facts with a belief system introduces contradictions, thereby generating cognitive dissonance, which inevitably leads over time to self-deception, an inability to simply take facts into account, and ultimately to suffering for oneself or others.

And that is precisely the problem: history shows that in many cases, practicing a belief produces a benefit for the individual at the expense of others. The maneuver of adopting love for one's neighbor as a belief is a noble idea that works no better than communism. Only love of facts yields a beneficial result, in the form of the capacity to solve problems simply and rationally.

Citations

Sigmund Freud in The Future of an Illusion: « The first step in this direction is already a conquest. It consists in 'humanizing' nature. Impersonal forces and destiny cannot be approached; they remain forever alien to us. But if within the elements the same passions rage as in our soul, if death itself is not something spontaneous but an act of violence due to a malignant will, if we are surrounded everywhere in nature by beings similar to the humans around us, then we finally breathe, we feel at home in the supernatural, then we can psychologically work through our fear, for which until now we could not find any meaning. We may still be unarmed, but we are no longer paralyzed without hope; we can at least react, perhaps even we are not truly unarmed: indeed, we can use against these violent superhumans the same methods that we employ within our human societies; we can try to ward them off, to appease them, to corrupt them, and by influencing them in this way, we will steal from them a part of their power. This replacement of natural science by psychology does not merely provide immediate relief; it shows us the path to follow to dominate the situation even better. »

Further Reading

See the related question Why is every belief dangerous?

Consult the question History and Overview of Psychotherapies, which explains the concept of the placebo effect.

Refer to the questions
What is cognitive dissonance?
Why is love for one's neighbor not a solid foundation for living well together?
What must one do to be a good person?

The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud explain the motivation behind beliefs, except that all of Freud's explanations remain biased by his focus on drives rather than social ambition.
Regarding the consequences, one may usefully refer to the work of Krishnamurti, and read the book Cognitive Dissonance: A Theory by Leon Festinger.