PSY 3109 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Motivated Reasoning, Confirmation Bias, Cognitive Dissonance
15 May 2018
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The Case for Motivated Reasoning- Ziva Kunda 1955-2004
Motivated reasoning: is an emotion-biased decision-making phenomenon studied in
cognitive science and social psychology. This term describes the role of motivation in
cognitive processes such as decision-making and attitude change in a number of
paradigms, including: Cognitive dissonance reduction
Confirmation bias: also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to
search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting
beliefs or hypotheses
Confirmation Biases in Action:
• Examples in slides
• People have very different opinions on the same subject and their interpretations
are based on that
• Even if they read the same story, their bias tends to shape the way they perceive it
because it confirms their beliefs
Motivated Cognition:
• On the one hand, people are powerfully motivated to confirm what they wish to
believe. But on the other hand, it is generally not feasible for people to go through
life believing only what they want to believe, evidence be damned
• On the one hand we seek desired conclusions, but on the other hand we have to be
at least minimally open to undesired information or else risk living in delusion
• As Ziva Kunda notes in the present article, for a long time the very existence of
motivated cognition was a matter of some controversy. Behavioural scientists from
a range of theoretical perspectives argued—with considerable empirical backing—
that many apparently motivated phenomena can in fact be reduced to non-
motivated principles
*MORE INFORMATION IN SLIDES
The Case for Motivated Reasoning two major categories:
1. Those in which the motive is to arrive at an accurate conclusion, whatever it
may be
2. Those in which the motive is to arrive at a particular directional conclusion
▪ The two categories are often discussed in the same breath
because they are both indicative of motivated reasoning, but, it
is important to distinguish between them because there is no
reason to believe that both involve the same kinds of
mechanism.
▪ Cognitive perspective
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