The Case for Motivated Reasoning¶
Kunda, Z. (1990). The Case for Motivated Reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480-498.
Cited by¶
5 citations across 5 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Confirmation Bias
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This sourceEstablishes that the motivation to reach a desired conclusion biases the cognitive processes of accessing, constructing, and evaluating beliefs.
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- Motivated Reasoning
- Motivated reasoning occurs when a non-epistemic goal or preferred conclusion steers which evidence is sought, admitted, interpreted, weighted, remembered, or allowed to update belief.
This sourceEstablishes that directional goals steer which evidence is accessed and how it is evaluated, within the limits of plausible justification, and unifies the separately named biased-processing effects under one mechanism.
- Motivated reasoning occurs when a non-epistemic goal or preferred conclusion steers which evidence is sought, admitted, interpreted, weighted, remembered, or allowed to update belief.
- Wishful thinking
Mechanisms¶
- Consensus Claim Evidence Log
- A well-formatted entry can lend a biased anchor an air of due diligence — the paperwork of rigor without its substance — and a motivated author can write a claim boundary loose enough to be technically defensible while still misleading, a documentary cousin of motivated reasoning
This sourceExplains that motivation toward desired conclusions can bias how people construct and evaluate apparently reasonable justifications.
- A well-formatted entry can lend a biased anchor an air of due diligence — the paperwork of rigor without its substance — and a motivated author can write a claim boundary loose enough to be technically defensible while still misleading, a documentary cousin of motivated reasoning
- Counterfactual Founder Intent Probe
- Because the founder is unavailable to object, motivated reasoning has unusual freedom here: the analyst finds the origin facts that fit the answer already wanted and calls the result "what the founder intended."
This sourceExplains that motivation toward a desired conclusion can shape which beliefs are accessed, constructed, and evaluated so that they support the answer already wanted.
- Because the founder is unavailable to object, motivated reasoning has unusual freedom here: the analyst finds the origin facts that fit the answer already wanted and calls the result "what the founder intended."
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