The case for motivated reasoning.

By Ziva Kunda. 1990

Subfields: Cognitive Science & Psychology, Social Sciences & Humanities

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Citations in the corpus

Improving alignment of dialogue agents via targeted human judgements (2022, background): “Numerous mechanisms for this have been proposed, the most well-known of which is that of the motivated reasoning bias (Kunda, 1990).”
A Meta-Analytic Examination of the Continued Influence of Misinformation in the Face of Correction: How Powerful Is It, Why Does It Happen, and How to Stop It? (2019, background): “To reconcile preexisting beliefs with a seemingly contradicting reality, people are motivated to discount information that challenges their worldview by derogating the source of the message or questioning the accuracy of the claims (Kunda, 1990).”
Working While Liberal/Conservative: A Review of Political Ideology in Organizations (2020, background): “Political ideology represents values and beliefs that together serve as a cognitive filter when gathering and evaluating information, which can lead to biased conclusions (Kahan, Peters, Dawson, & Slovic, 2013; Kunda, 1990).”
Social Categorization and the Perception of Social Groups (2012, background): “…can simply serve to reinforce initial association-based impressions; this is particularly likely to happen in circumstances where there are motivational forces leading the perceiver to prefer stereotypic interpretations (and thus to generate motivated reasoning strategies; Kunda, 1990).”
The affective costs of overconfidence (2004, background): “Expectations serve as reference points that arise from personal goals or desires (Kunda, 1990), counterfactual possibilities (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982; Roese & Olson, 1995), or the outcomes of relevant peers (Tesser, 1988).”
On the cognitive conflict as an instructional strategy for conceptual change: a critical appraisal (2001, background): “…Beattie & Baron, 1988; Kuhn et al., 1988; Koslowski & Maqueda, 1993) or the clear influence of motivational and emotional factors in reasoning (i.e. Kunda, 1990; Klaczynski, 1997; Zeidler, 1997) are good examples of how reasoning abilities are linked to individuals’ beliefs and theories and of…”
Motivational Bias in Criminal Investigators' Judgments of Witness Reliability (2007, background): “How would one expect investigators to treat the different types of information? The motivated social cognition framework (Kruglanski, 1996b; Kunda, 1990; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987) provides a straightforward prediction.”
Beyond Social Contagion: Associative Diffusion and the Emergence of Cultural Variation (2018, background): “…social psychology that people are motivated to adopt information that confirms, and to reject information that disconfirms, their prior beliefs (Kunda 1990).17 Experimental work shows that this process pushes individuals toward extreme opinions, gradually leading to polarization (Lord, Ross,…”
Flawed Self-Assessment (2004, unknown): “…all the tricks and techniques people use to construct and maintaindesirableimagesofthemselveswhileavoidingnegative ones (for reviews, see Baumeister & Newman, 1994; Dunning, 2001; Kunda, 1990)—and some echoes of these demonstrations are apparent in the material we discuss in the following sections.”
Self-Image Motives and Consumer Behavior: How Sacrosanct Self-Beliefs Sway Preferences in the Marketplace (2007, background): “Research on self-evaluation has also demonstrated the “moves” that people have at their disposal to create harmonious beliefs honoring a positive sense of self (for reviews, see Baumeister & Newman, 1994; Dunning, 2002; Kunda, 1990).”
Self-signaling and self-control. (2003, background): “We know that people manipulate personality self-reports (Sanitioso et al., 1990; Kunda, 1990; Dunning et al., 1995), problem solving strategies (Ginossar and Trope, 1987), and charitable pledges (Bodner, 1996) in a diagnostically favorable direction.”
Motivated Reasoning and Performance on the was on Selection Task (2002, background): “There is now a great deal of evidence that people are inclined to draw conclusions that suggest positive outcomes for themselves; provide support for pre-existing opinions; and confirm their status, success, and wellbeing (Kunda, 1990).”
Political Intolerance, Right and Left (2014, background): “756), and influential theories of motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987) do not make exceptions for those on one end of the ideological spectrum or the other.”
When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions (2010, unknown): “In particular, we draw on an extensive literature in psychology that shows humans are goal-directed information processors who tend to evaluate information with a directional bias toward reinforcing their pre-existing views (for reviews, see Kunda 1990 and Molden and Higgins 2005).”
Using advice from multiple sources to revise and improve judgments (2007, background): “In one study, coVee drinkers who were confronted with unfavorable evidence regarding coVee consumption tended to play down the information more than non-drinkers (Kunda, 1990).”
The hard-knock life? Whites claim hardships in response to racial inequity. (2015, background): “Being exposed to evidence of privilege is an aversive experience that elicits self-protective reactions (Branscombe, 1998; Leach, Iyer, & Pedersen, 2006; Lowery et al., 2007; Rosette & Tost, 2013; see also Kunda, 1990).”