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:
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