Motivated Reasoning

Motivated reasoning is a mental process through which individuals access, construct and evaluate their own beliefs in response to new information or experience, in a way where their own existing biases cause them to arrive at whatever conclusions they are already motivated to reach. While most people are more likely to arrive at the conclusions they want to reach, this tendency is generally constrained by a person's own ability to construct a reasonable justification for that conclusion along the way. Motivated reasoning can involve purely personal choices, such as continuing to smoke after encountering evidence of tobacco's health effects and then constructing a personal justification for doing so anyway, but other beliefs shaped by motivated reasoning carry social and political significance, since they are associated with a person's deeply held values and identity, and political reasoning in particular often involves the underlying goal of protecting one's own identity or maintaining status within a group united by shared values.