Motivated reasoning is a mental process through which individuals access, construct, and evaluate their beliefs in response to new information or experiences where their biases cause them to arrive at desired conclusions. While most people may be more likely to arrive at conclusions they want, such desires are generally constrained by the ability to construct a reasonable justification.
Motivated reasoning may involve personal choices, such as continuing to smoke after encountering evidence of the health effects of tobacco, leading to personal justifications for doing so. Other beliefs have social and political significance, being associated with deeply held values and identities. Political reasoning involves the goal of identity protection or maintaining status within an affinity group united by shared values.
Current research in motivated reasoning has been affected by technological change, both in the methods used by researchers and in the behavior being studied. Researchers employ the methodology of neuroscience to provide data on brain functioning, rather than relying solely upon self-reports or observations of behavior. Much of the information used by people in forming beliefs now comes from broadcast or social media, which may support biased viewpoints, including conspiracy theories. To attract an audience, news media favor content that stimulate strong emotions, favoring news stories about threats to the beliefs or social identity of consumers.
Definitions and history A number of psychological concepts are related to how individuals respond to threats to their current beliefs. Due to the need for cognitive consistency, contradictory beliefs cause the stress defined as cognitive dissonance. Motivated reasoning is a process for relieving this stress by either modifying beliefs to incorporate the new evidence, or constructing a rationale for maintaining current beliefs. Confirmation bias is one of the means to do the latter, by seeking to find additional evidence to support current beliefs, to discredit the new information, or both.
As described in 1990 by Ziva Kunda, motivated reasoning takes two forms, a more rational "cold" motivation favoring accuracy; or "hot" motivation to reach a desired goal, usually to maintain current beliefs at the expense of rationality. This distinction has been controversial, some finding that apparently self-serving conclusions may be seen as plausible, rather than biased, based upon prior beliefs. Cognitive psychology was also dominated in the 1970s by research into biases that explained departures from rationality in terms of heuristics rather than affect. However, exploration of the underlying mechanisms finds that motivation plays a role in the outcome by determining which cognitive processes are used in a particular situation.
Early research on how humans evaluated and integrated information supported a cognitive approach consistent with Bayesian probability, in which individuals weighted new information using rational calculations ("cold cognition"). More recent theories endorse these cognitive processes as only partial explanations of motivated reasoning, but have also introduced motivational or affective (emotional) processes ("hot cognition").
Some research found a "tipping point" at which new information had accumulated to a level at which belief change occurred.
Motivated reasoning has become associated more often with efforts to maintain beliefs in the face of substantial contrary evidence, individuals or groups using different criteria for evaluating propositions they favor versus those they oppose. Extreme examples of refusal to accept the validity of beliefs that are well-supported by evidence is called denialism, while the invention of alternative "facts" is the basis of conspiracy theories.
Categories Motivated reasoning can be classified into two categories: 1) Accuracy-oriented (non-directional), in which the motive is to arrive at an accurate conclusion, irrespective of the individual's prior beliefs, and 2) goal-oriented (directional), in which the motive is to arrive at a particular conclusion favored based upon other considerations. Such considerations include identity protection and affirming shared values and norms. However, the question as to whether citizens, in making political decisions, are more likely to be rational or rationalizing has not been determined.
Accuracy-oriented motivated reasoning Being motivated towards forming accurate beliefs is primary in situations that allow for the time and mental effort required for making correct decisions necessary for survival. However, many everyday decisions are made using mental shortcuts, or heuristics, that provide adequate results. Kunda asserts that accuracy goals delay the process of coming to a premature conclusion, in that accuracy goals increase both the quantity and quality of processing—particularly in leading to more complex inferential cognitive processing procedures. When researchers manipulated test subjects' motivation to be accurate by informing them that the target task was highly important or that they would be expected to defend their judgments, it was found that subjects utilized deeper processing and that there was less biasing of information. This was true when accuracy motives were present at the initial processing and encoding of information.
In reviewing a line of research on accuracy goals and bias, Kunda concludes, "several different kinds of biases have been shown to weaken in the presence of accuracy goals". However, accuracy goals do not always eliminate biases and improve reasoning: some biases (e.g. those resulting from using the availability heuristic) might be resistant to accuracy manipulations. For accuracy to reduce bias, the following conditions must be present:
Subjects must possess appropriate reasoning strategies. They must view these as superior to other strategies. They must be capable of using these strategies at will.
However, these last two conditions introduce the construct that accuracy goals include a conscious process of utilizing cognitive strategies in motivated reasoning. This construct is called into question by neuroscience research that concludes that motivated reasoning is qualitatively distinct from reasoning in which there is no strong emotional stake in the outcomes. Accuracy-oriented individuals who are thought to use "objective" processing can vary in information updating, depending on how much faith they place in a provided piece of evidence and inability to detect misinformation that can lead to beliefs that diverge from scientific consensus.
Goal-oriented motivated reasoning Directional goals enhance the accessibility of knowledge structures (memories, beliefs, information) that are consistent with desired conclusions. According to Kunda, such goals can lead to biased memory search and belief construction mechanisms. Several studies support the effect of directional goals in selection and construction of beliefs about oneself, other people and the world.
Cognitive dissonance research provides extensive evidence that people may bias their self-characterizations when motivated to do so. Other biases such as confirmation bias, prior attitude effect and disconfirmation bias could contribute to goal-oriented motivated reasoning. For example, in one study, subjects altered their self-view by viewing themselves as more extroverted when induced to believe that extroversion was beneficial.
Michael Thaler of Princeton University, conducted a study that found that men are more likely than women to demonstrate performance-motivated reasoning due to a gender gap in beliefs about personal performance. After a second study was conducted the conclusion was drawn that both men and women are susceptible to motivated reasoning, but certain motivated beliefs can be separated into genders.
The motivation to achieve directional goals could also influence which rules (procedural structures, such as inferential rules) are accessed to guide the search for information. Studies also suggest that evaluation of scientific evidence may be biased by whether the conclusions are in line with the reader's beliefs.
In spite of goal-oriented motivated reasoning, people are not at liberty to conclude whatever they want merely because of that want. People tend to draw conclusions only if they can muster up supportive evidence. They search memory for those beliefs and rules that could support their desired conclusion or they could create new beliefs to logically support their desired goals.
Neuroscientific evidence A neuroimaging study by Drew Westen and colleagues does not support the use of cognitive processes in motivated reasoning, lending greater support to affective processing as a key mechanism in supporting bias. This study, designed to test the neural circuitry of individuals engaged in motivated reasoning, found that motivated reasoning "was not associated with neural activity in regions previously linked with cold reasoning tasks [Bayesian reasoning] nor conscious (explicit) emotion regulation".
This neuroscience data suggests that "motivated reasoning is qualitatively distinct from reasoning when people do not have a strong emotional stake in the conclusions reached". However, if there is a strong emotion attached during their previous round of motivated reasoning and that emotion is again present when the individual's conclusion is reached, a strong emotional stake is then attached to the conclusion. Any new information in regards to that conclusion will cause motivated reasoning to reoccur. This can create pathways within the neural network that further ingrain the reasoned beliefs of that individual along similar neural networks to where logical reasoning occurs. This causes the strong emotion to reoccur when confronted with contradictory information, time and time again. This is referred to by Lodge and Taber as affective contagion. But instead of "infecting" other individuals, the emotion "infects" the individual's reasoning pathways and conclusions.
Reflective reasoning Careful or "reflective" reasoning has been linked to both overcoming and reinforcing motivated reasoning, suggesting that reflection is not a panacea, but a tool that can be used for rational or irrational purposes depending on other factors. For example, when people are presented with and forced to think analytically about something complex that they lack adequate knowledge of (i.e. being presented with a new study on meteorology whilst having no degree in the subject), there is no directional shift in thinking, and their extant conclusions are more likely to be supported with motivated reasoning. Conversely, if they are presented with a more simplistic test of analytical thinking that confronts their beliefs (i.e., seeing implausible headlines as false), motivated reasoning is less likely to occur and a directional shift in thinking may result.
Prevalence of conservative vs liberal bias Peter Ditto and his students conducted a meta-analysis in 2018 of studies relating to political bias. Their aim was to assess which U.S. political orientation (left/liberal or right/conservative) was more biased and initiated more motivated reasoning. They found that both political orientations are susceptible to bias to the same extent. The analysis was disputed by Jonathan Baron and John Jost, to whom Ditto and colleagues responded. Reviewing the debate, Stuart Vyse concluded that the answer to the question of whether U.S. liberals or conservatives are more biased is: "We don't know".
Examples Personal decisions Many instances of motivated reasoning in personal decisions are related to health, misinformation being used to justify continuing unhealthy behaviors or avoid recommended treatments.
Smoking