Exposing people to well-reasoned arguments both pro– and anti–death penalty did not engender understanding for the other point of view. Rather, because we poke holes in evidence we dislike and plug holes in evidence we like, the net effect in these studies was to amplify the intensity of the disagreement. A similar study found that, after viewing identical samples of major network television coverage of the 1982 massacre in Beirut, both pro-Israeli and pro-Arab partisans rated the programs, and the networks, as being biased against their side.34 There are critical lessons in this research. First, we should keep in mind that those who disagree with us are not necessarily duplicitous or dishonest in their refusal to acknowledge the obvious errors in their thinking. More important, it would be enlightening for all of us to face the fact that our own reasoning is often not so perfectly objective, either.
ADJUSTING OUR STANDARDS for accepting evidence to favor our preferred conclusions is but one instrument in the subliminal mind’s motivated reasoning tool kit. Other ways we find support for our worldviews (including our view of ourselves) include adjusting the importance we assign to various pieces of evidence and, sometimes, ignoring unfavorable evidence altogether. For example, ever notice how, after a win, sports fans crow about their team’s great play, but after a loss they often ignore the quality of play and focus on Lady Luck or the referees?35 Similarly, executives in public companies pat themselves on the back for good outcomes but suddenly recognize the importance of random environmental factors when performance is poor.36 It can be hard to tell whether those attempts to put a spin on a bad outcome are sincere, and the result of unconscious motivated reasoning, or are conscious and self-serving.
One situation in which that ambiguity is not an issue is scheduling. There is no good reason to offer unrealistic promises with regard to deadlines, because in the end you’ll be required to back up those promises by delivering the goods. Yet contractors and businesses often miss their deadlines even when there are financial penalties for doing so, and studies show that motivated reasoning is a major cause of those miscalculations. It turns out that when we calculate a completion date, the method we think we follow in arriving at it is to break the project down into the necessary steps, estimate the time required for each step, and put it all together. But research shows that, instead, our minds often work backward. That is, the desired target date exerts a great and unconscious influence on our estimate of the time required to complete each of the intermediate steps. In fact, studies show that our estimates of how long it will take to finish a task depend directly on how invested we are in the project’s early completion.37
If it’s important for a producer to get the new PlayStation game done in the next two months, her mind will find reasons to believe that the programming and quality-assurance testing will be more problem-free than ever before. Likewise, if we need to get three hundred popcorn balls made in time for Halloween, we manage to convince ourselves that having the kids help on our kitchen assembly line will go smoothly for the first time in the history of our family. It is because we make these decisions, and sincerely believe they are realistic, that all of us, whether we are throwing a dinner party for ten people or building a new jet fighter, regularly create overly optimistic estimates of when we can finish the project.38 In fact, the U.S. General Accounting Office estimated that when the military purchased equipment involving new technology, it was delivered on schedule and within budget just 1 percent of the time.39
In the last chapter I mentioned that research shows that employers often aren’t in touch with the real reasons they hire someone. An interviewer may like or dislike an applicant because of factors that have little to do with the applicant’s objective qualifications. They may both have attended the same school or both be bird-watchers. Or perhaps the applicant reminds the interviewer of a favorite uncle. For whatever reason, once the interviewer makes a gut-level decision, her unconscious often employs motivated reasoning to back that intuitive inclination. If she likes the applicant, without realizing her motivation she will tend to assign high importance to areas in which the applicant excels and take less seriously those in which the applicant falls short.
In one study, participants considered applications from a male and a female candidate for the job of police chief. That’s a stereotypically male position, so the researchers postulated that the participants would favor the male applicant and then unwittingly narrow the criteria by which they judged the applicants to those that would support that decision. Here is how the study worked: There were two types of résumés. The experimenters designed one to portray a streetwise individual who was poorly educated and lacking in administrative skills. They designed the other to reflect a well-educated and politically connected sophisticate who had little street smarts. Some participants were given a pair of résumés in which the male applicant had the streetwise résumé and the female was the sophisticate. Others were given a pair of résumés in which the man’s and the woman’s strong points were reversed. The participants were asked not just to make a choice but to explain it.
The results showed that when the male applicant had the streetwise résumé, the participants decided street smarts were important for the job and selected him, but when the male applicant had the sophisticate’s résumé, they decided that street smarts were overrated and also chose the male. They were clearly making their decisions on the basis of gender, and not on the streetwise-versus-sophisticated distinction, but they were just as clearly unaware of doing so. In fact, when asked, none of the subjects mentioned gender as having influenced them.40
Our culture likes to portray situations in black and white. Antagonists are dishonest, insincere, greedy, evil. They are opposed by heroes who are the opposite in terms of those qualities. But the truth is, from criminals to greedy executives to the “nasty” guy down the street, people who act in ways we abhor are usually convinced that they are right.
The power of vested interest in determining how we weigh the evidence in social situations was nicely illustrated in a series of experiments in which researchers randomly assigned volunteers to the role of plaintiff or defendant in a mock lawsuit based on a real trial that occurred in Texas.41 In one of those experiments, the researchers gave both sides documents regarding the case, which involved an injured motorcyclist who was suing the driver of an automobile that had collided with him. The subjects were told that in the actual case, the judge awarded the plaintiff an amount between $0 and $100,000. They were then assigned to represent one side or the other in mock negotiations in which they were given a half hour to fashion their own version of a settlement. The researchers told the subjects they’d be paid based on their success in those negotiations. But the most interesting part of the study came next: the subjects were also told they could earn a cash bonus if they could guess—within $5,000—what the judge actually awarded the plaintiff.
In making their guesses, it was obviously in the subjects’ interest to ignore whether they were playing the role of plaintiff’s or defendant’s advocate. They’d have the greatest chance at winning the cash bonus if they assessed the payout that would be fair, based solely on the law and the evidence. The question was whether they could maintain their objectivity.