Motivated Reasoning

“They saw a game”

Near the end of the 1951 college football season, Princeton faced Dartmouth. Princeton, the favorite, was playing at home, riding a twenty-two-game winning streak and on the verge of a second consecutive undefeated season. The emotional highlight would be the reception for Dick Kazmaier, the offensive star who had graced the cover of Time and was a Heisman contender. Dartmouth, the visitor, had only an average record but a reputation for playing hard. An upset would be an unexpected treat.

The game that followed—Princeton won, 13–0—became the subject of a study of how supporters of opposing teams perceived the same events. It was a dirty, violent, penalty-laden contest. Dartmouth received seventy yards in penalties, Princeton twenty-five. A fallen Princeton player was kicked in the ribs. One Dartmouth player broke a leg, another suffered a leg injury. Kazmaier himself left the game in the second quarter with a concussion and a broken nose, returning only for the final play.

The schools’ newspapers published sharply conflicting accounts of the game. The Daily Princetonian laid the blame “primarily on Dartmouth’s doorstep.” The Princeton Alumni Weekly condemned Dartmouth for a late hit that ended Kazmaier’s college career and for kicking a prone Princeton player. Meanwhile, the Dartmouth pointed the finger at Princeton coach Charley Caldwell, claiming that after Kazmaier’s injury, “Caldwell instilled the old see-what-they-did-go-get-them attitude into his players,” resulting in the leg injuries Dartmouth sustained in the third quarter. The newspaper went so far as to list Princeton stars that had been stopped by a similar “concentrated effort.”

Intrigued, psychology professors Albert Hastorf of Dartmouth and Hadley Cantril of Princeton saw an opportunity. They collected the newspaper stories, obtained a copy of the game film, showed it to students from each school, and had them complete questionnaires counting and characterizing infractions. Their 1954 paper, “They Saw a Game,” might as well have been called “They Saw Two Games.” Princeton students saw Dartmouth commit twice as many flagrant penalties and three times the mild penalties as Princeton. Dartmouth students saw each team commit an equal number of infractions. Hastorf and Cantril concluded: “We do not simply ‘react to’ a happening. . . . We behave according to what we bring to the occasion.” Our beliefs shape how we process everything, “whether the ‘thing’ is a football game, a presidential candidate, Communism, or spinach.”

How Motivated Reasoning Works

This phenomenon—our unconscious motives steering the conclusions we draw—is known as directionally motivated reasoning, or simply motivated reasoning. Psychologist Tom Gilovich captured its essence with a pair of diagnostic questions. When we want something to be true, we ask ourselves, “Can I believe this?,” searching for any excuse to accept it. When we don’t want something to be true, we ask instead, “Must I believe this?,” hunting for a reason to reject it.

The Dreyfus affair offers a textbook example. In Galef’s account of the initial investigation of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for espionage, the officers believed they were following the evidence. But their motives—pressure to find the spy quickly, an existing distrust of Dreyfus—colored their reasoning. They evaluated rumors and circumstantial evidence through the lens of “Can I accept this as evidence of guilt?” When a handwriting expert told them Dreyfus’s writing didn’t match the incriminating memo, they asked themselves, “Must I believe it?” and found a reason not to: the expert was Jewish, creating a supposed conflict of interest. After searching Dreyfus’s home and finding nothing incriminating, they didn’t conclude he was innocent; they asked, “Can we still believe Dreyfus is guilty?” and reasoned that he had probably destroyed the evidence before they arrived.

Motivated reasoning is so pervasive that it might as well be called just reasoning. It appears in the way we eagerly share news stories that confirm our narratives about society while ignoring those that don’t. We rationalize red flags in an exciting new relationship. When a coworker screws up, it’s incompetence; when we screw up, it’s because we were under pressure. A rival politician’s misdeed proves systemic corruption, but our own politician’s misdeed is the act of a lone bad apple. Two thousand years ago, Thucydides described this very habit among cities that believed they could overthrow Athens: “[Their] judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound prediction; for it is a habit of mankind . . . to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.”

A modern study reinforced the same lesson. In the 2012 Stanford Law Review paper “They Saw a Protest”—a homage to the original Hastorf and Cantril experiment—Yale professor Dan Kahan and colleagues showed two groups of subjects a video of police stopping a political demonstration. One group was told the protest was outside an abortion clinic targeting legalized abortion; the other group was told it took place at a college career-placement facility where the military was interviewing, and the demonstrators were protesting the ban on openly gay and lesbian soldiers. The video was identical, carefully edited to obscure the actual issue. When asked about what they saw, subjects’ conclusions depended on whether the protestors’ position aligned with their own cultural values. Participants’ cultural values affected whether they judged the conduct as legitimate dissent or physical intimidation. As Hastorf and Cantril had found nearly sixty years earlier, pre-existing beliefs shaped how people experienced the very same event.

Keeping Clear-Eyed

Motivated reasoning can feel like objective analysis, making it difficult to recognize in our own judgments. In a life-or-death emergency, denial, wishful thinking, and rationalization offer a temporary shield from despair—but they blind us to reality. Steven Callahan, who survived seventy-six days adrift in the Atlantic after his boat sank, confronted this truth directly. In the aftermath of the shipwreck, he recognized that he could not afford to self-deceive. “I have often hidden things from myself. I have sometimes fooled other people. But Nature is not such a dolt,” he told himself. “I may be lucky enough to be forgiven some mistakes, the ones that don’t matter, but I can’t count on luck.”

Callahan describes trying to keep despair at bay without distorting his assessment of reality. He counted his blessings—the foresight to upgrade his life raft before the voyage, for example. He reminded himself that he was doing everything possible. And he came to terms with death, not by denying it, but by resolving to write a guide for future sailors that might live on even if he did not.

Check whether you use “Can I believe it?” for conclusions you favor and “Must I believe it?” for those you dislike. Ask what standard of evidence you would apply if the conclusion were reversed, and whether you can meet that standard in both cases.