Motivational reasoning biases perception without requiring conscious wishful thinking

Evidence

39. The idea that religion offers solace in the face of adversity and suffering has been criticized as implausible because, the argument goes, we can’t satisfy a need for something by simply imagining that we have it. However, I am not claiming the far-fetched idea that religious belief arises from wishful thinking. It arises from ordinary cognitive operations and is intuitively compelling to begin with, even before our motivations shape their content. True, we don’t have brains that when hungry, imagine a refrigerator full of food. But neither do we have brains that see the world the way it is, undistorted by irrational hopes and wishful thinking. Indeed, hungry people see food-related words faster and more clearly than people who have just eaten (Radel and Clément-Guillotin, 2012). Studies show evidence for such unconscious wishful seeing (Dunning and Balcetis, 2013), and people are notoriously bad at separating reasoning from deeply held motivations, hope from expectation (see for example, Kunda, 1990). — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 898

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: People deploy selective perception and motivated reasoning routinely when faced with evidence — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 144; Motivated reasoning engages different brain circuitry than neutral reasoning. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 103; Illusory pattern perception signals control motivation rather than control restoration. — Dmitrij Agroskin and Eva Jonas, Controlling death by defending…, 50 (+10 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: People deploy selective perception and motivated reasoning routinely when faced with evidence — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 144; Motivated reasoning engages different brain circuitry than neutral reasoning. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 103; Illusory pattern perception signals control motivation rather than control restoration. — Dmitrij Agroskin and Eva Jonas, Controlling death by defending…, 50 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Unlearning bias works through vigilant, repeatable acts of catching automatic judgments #complicates (0.78) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 400
• Implicit biases can be consciously overridden through deliberate attention #complicates (0.75) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1362