Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do We Understand Ourselves and Other People?
Track how a desired conclusion could change the search for and evaluation of evidence, keeping alternative informational explanations in view.
Why you’re reading it. Connect self-protection and interpersonal interpretation with testable reasoning processes.
A question to consider. What result would distinguish a person's wish to defend a friend from having different evidence about the friend's behavior?
Why this reading
Wanting an answer can affect how evidence is retrieved and evaluated. Kunda connects motivation with ordinary reasoning processes while asking what constrains the conclusions people can justify.
Before you read
An accuracy goal favors reaching a correct conclusion; a directional goal favors a particular conclusion. Confirmation through selective search is not, by itself, proof of a directional motive. Existing knowledge and expectations can also guide what people consider.
Read for
- Trace how a goal could affect access to memories, construction of an explanation, or evaluation of evidence.
- Distinguish evidence for a motivational effect from evidence for its proposed mechanism.
- Examine why wanting to be accurate may fail when a person lacks a better reasoning strategy.
Consider afterwards
- Two colleagues assess the same criticism differently. What evidence would distinguish a desired conclusion from different prior information?
Editorial context
This influential 1990 argument organizes diverse findings rather than providing a current systematic effect estimate. Kunda acknowledges indirect evidence and alternative explanations for the proposed processes. Disagreement alone cannot diagnose motivated reasoning in another person, and a desired conclusion is not necessarily false. The framework is most useful when it generates comparisons that could distinguish motives from informational differences.