Motivated Reasoning: Why Evidence And Facts Don’t Matter
If you’re like me, you’ve felt surrounded by the enemy lately. The media, strangers on the street, even your family and friends have revealed viewpoints that you never suspected they held. I’ve struggled to understand how individuals I once thought intelligent, could hold such simpleminded perspectives. Could it really be possible? A trusted teacher, a close friend, the child I had so much hope for; they all prefer Star Wars to Star Trek. I never saw it coming.
It’s often disappointing when you find that your close associates have different beliefs than you. Sometimes it’s easy enough to rationalize, we all have different preferences, but when the belief is something deep, something you hold to your core, even conceiving the opposite perspective exists is almost impossible. The correct choice, (Star Trek) is so obvious. I even had all of those charts and graphs proving that Trek was the superior franchise. Could that many people, (Star Wars Fans) really all suffer from the same absence of a brain? That’s the only logical explanation as to why they wouldn’t listen to the evidence, right?
As it turns out, no, there is another logical explanation, some might even say “more” logical explanation for why folks hold to beliefs despite evidence to the contrary. It’s called motivated reasoning and it refers to our emotionally-motivated-bias when forming decisions and attitudes. Like the Enterprise-D with its separated saucer section, motivated reasoning attacks from two points.
The first way motivated reasoning influences our attitudes is in how we select information. It is much more convenient and comfortable to seek out news that already agrees with our opinions. This has become a popular criticism of how social media regulates our news, but we were already doing it on our own. We have an active motivation to prefer information that fits into our worldview. It’s less work to understand, to utilize, and it means we don’t have to hop around from channel to channel. If our brains are already conditioned for Star Wars, we are motivated to make Star Wars supporting decisions.
It’s the same reason I’m keeping my couch. Sure it’s falling apart, missing a pad, and smells like garlic butter, but everything else I own matches it. If I were to pick out a new couch, I would have to redecorate the entire living room and that sounds like a lot of work.
The second way motivated reasoning influences our decisions is in how we process the information we find, and this is where we get into the intelligence of the opposing view. Researchers are finding that it’s actually the more intelligent individuals who are less likely to change perspective when confronted with evidence. The idea is that intelligence isn’t about pure brain power, it’s about the ability to make connections between diverse ideas. The more intelligent you are, the more you’re able to fit a dissenting piece of information into your worldview. The more you are able to convince yourself that that counterevidence really doesn’t alter your position. Reasoning away contradictions becomes easier than revising feelings.
When I hear about the immense Star Wars profits or it being a perfect model for Campbell’s hero’s journey, my Star Trek motivated brain processes it as Star Wars preferring sales to story and stealing from great works of literature.
Maybe Star Wars fans aren’t as ignorant as I thought. Maybe my reasoning is Star Trek motivated. Maybe I should acknowledge the emotional bias and try to listen to evidence with my brain instead. Maybe we can bridge this rift in the science fiction world… or whatever difference of opinion you might be dealing with.
