OUR CONSCIOUS MINDS are not chumps. So if our unconscious minds distorted reality in some clumsy and obvious way, we would notice and we wouldn’t buy into it. Motivated reasoning won’t work if it stretches credulity too far, for then our conscious minds start to doubt and the self-delusion game is over. That there are limits to motivated reasoning is critically important, for it is one thing to have an inflated view of your expertise at making lasagna and it is quite another to believe you can leap tall buildings in a single bound. In order for your inflated self-image to serve you well, to have survival benefits, it must be inflated to just the right degree and no further. Psychologists describe this balance by saying that the resulting distortion must maintain the “illusion of objectivity.” The talent we are blessed with in this regard is the ability to justify our rosy images of ourselves through credible arguments, in a way that does not fly in the face of obvious facts. What tools do our unconscious minds use to shape our cloudy, ambiguous experience into the clear and distinctly positive vision of the self that we wish to see?
One method is reminiscent of an old joke about a Catholic and a Jew—both white—and a black man, all of whom die and approach the gates of heaven. The Catholic says, “I was a good man all my life, but I suffered a lot of discrimination. What do I have to do to get into heaven?”
“That’s easy,” says God. “All you have to do to enter heaven is spell one word.”
“What’s that?” the Catholic asks.
“God,” answers the Lord.
The Catholic spells it out, G-O-D, and is let in. Then the Jew approaches. He, too, says, “I was a good man.” And then he adds, “And it wasn’t easy—I had to deal with discrimination all my life. What do I have to do to get into heaven?”
God says, “That’s easy. All you have to do is spell one word.”
“What’s that?” the Jew asks.
“God,” answers the Lord.
The Jew says, “G-O-D,” and he, too, is let in. Then the black man approaches and says that he was kind to everyone, although he faced nasty discrimination because of the color of his skin.
God says, “Don’t worry, there is no discrimination here.”
“Thank you,” says the black man. “So how do I get into heaven?”
“That’s easy,” says God. “All you have to do is spell one word!”
“What’s that?” the black man asks.
“Czechoslovakia,” answers the Lord.
The Lord’s method of discrimination is classic, and our brains employ it often: when information favorable to the way we’d like to see the world tries to enter the gateway of our mind we ask that it spell “God,” but when unfavorable information comes knocking, we make it spell “Czechoslovakia.”
For example, in one study volunteers were given a strip of paper to test whether they had a serious deficiency of an enzyme called TAA, which would make them susceptible to a variety of serious pancreas disorders.31 The researchers told them to dip the strip of paper in a bit of their saliva and wait ten to twenty seconds to see if the paper turned green. Half the subjects were told that if the strip turned green it meant they had no enzyme deficiency, while the other half were told that if it turned green it meant they had the dangerous deficiency. In reality, no such enzyme exists, and the strip was ordinary yellow construction paper, so none of the subjects were destined to see it change color. The researchers watched as their subjects performed the test. Those who were motivated to see no change dipped the paper, and when nothing happened, they quickly accepted the happy answer and decided the test was complete. But those motivated to see the paper turn green stared at the strip for an extra thirty seconds, on average, before accepting the verdict. What’s more, over half of these subjects engaged in some sort of retesting behavior. One subject redipped the paper twelve times, like a child nagging its parents. Can you turn green? Can you? Please? Please?
Those subjects may seem silly, but we all dip and redip in an effort to bolster our preferred views. People find reasons to continue supporting their preferred political candidates in the face of serious and credible accusations of wrongdoing or ignorance but take thirdhand hearsay about an illegal left turn as evidence that the candidate of the other party ought to be banned from politics for life. Similarly, when people want to believe in a scientific conclusion, they’ll accept a vague news report of an experiment somewhere as convincing evidence. And when people don’t want to accept something, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, and a thousand unanimous scientific studies can all converge on a single conclusion, and people will still find a reason to disbelieve.
That’s exactly what happened in the case of the inconvenient and costly issue of global climate change. The organizations I named above, plus a thousand academic articles on the topic, were unanimous in concluding that human activity is responsible, yet in the United States more than half the people have managed to convince themselves that the science of global warming is not yet settled.32 Actually, it would be difficult to get all those organizations and scientists to agree on anything short of a declaration stating that Albert Einstein was a smart fellow, so their consensus reflects the fact that the science of global warming is very much settled. It’s just not good news. To a lot of people, the idea that we are descended from apes is also not good news. So they have found ways not to accept that fact, either.
When someone with a political bias or vested interest sees a situation differently than we do, we tend to think that person is deliberately misinterpreting the obvious to justify their politics or to bring about some personal gain. But through motivated reasoning each side finds ways to justify its favored conclusion and discredit the other, while maintaining a belief in its own objectivity. And so those on both sides of important issues may sincerely think that theirs is the only rational interpretation. Consider the following research on the death penalty. People who either supported or opposed capital punishment on the theory that it deterred crime (or didn’t) were shown two phony studies. Each study employed a different statistical method to prove its point. Let’s call them method A and method B. For half the subjects, the study that used method A concluded that capital punishment works as a deterrent, and the study that used method B concluded that it doesn’t. The other subjects saw studies in which the conclusions were reversed. If people were objective, those on both sides would agree that either method A or method B was the best approach regardless of whether it supported or undermined their prior belief (or they’d agree that it was a tie). But that’s not what happened. Subjects readily offered criticisms such as “There were too many variables,” “I don’t think they have complete enough collection of data,” and “The evidence given is relatively meaningless.” But both sides lauded whatever method supported their belief and trashed whatever method did not. Clearly, it was the reports’ conclusions, not their methods, that inspired these analyses.33