"We now live in a world where there are red facts and blue facts, and I believe these biased motivated-reasoning processes fuel political conflict. But right or left, both sides believe their positions are grounded in evidence, Ditto says. "People blur the line between moral and factual judgments," Ditto explains.įor people who identify strongly with one side of the political spectrum or the other, it can feel like their opponents are willfully ignoring the facts. Similarly, people who had moral qualms about capital punishment were less likely to believe it was an effective way to deter crime ( Social Psychology and Personality Science, 2012). They found people who were morally opposed to condom education, for example, were less likely to believe that condoms were effective at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. "In modern media terms, that might mean a person is quick to share a political article on social media if it supports their beliefs, but is more likely to fact-check the story if it doesn't," Ditto says.įor instance, Ditto and his former student Brittany Liu, PhD, have shown the link between people's moral convictions and their assessment of facts. Research shows we also interpret facts differently if they challenge our personal beliefs, group identity or moral values. We don't just delude ourselves when it comes to our health and well-being. "It takes more information to make you believe something you don't want to believe than something you do," Ditto says. People who were told they'd tested positive for a (fictitious) enzyme linked to pancreatic disorders were more likely to rate the test as less accurate, cite more explanations to discount the results and request a second opinion ( Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1992). Lopez, PhD, compared study participants who received either favorable or unfavorable medical tests results. More than two decades ago, Ditto and David F. Much of the early research on motivated reasoning showed that people weigh facts differently when those facts are personally threatening. In today's era of polarized politics-and when facts themselves are under attack-understanding this inclination (and finding ways to sidestep it) has taken on new urgency, psychologists say. "People are capable of being thoughtful and rational, but our wishes, hopes, fears and motivations often tip the scales to make us more likely to accept something as true if it supports what we want to believe." "Motivated reasoning is a pervasive tendency of human cognition," says Peter Ditto, PhD, a social psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who studies how motivation, emotion and intuition influence judgment. This natural tendency to cherry pick and twist the facts to fit with our existing beliefs is known as motivated reasoning-and we all do it. In reality, we rely on a biased set of cognitive processes to arrive at a given conclusion or belief. But it turns out judging facts isn't nearly as black-and-white as your third-grade teacher might have had you believe.
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