In an article first published in Science and Religion, then again in Discover Magazine, author Dan Kahan, a professor at Yale, claims that people have a tendency to see the things in life that back up their views, while missing those things that contradict them. He calls this motivated reasoning.In his view, motivated reasoning is the mechanical process that goes on in the brain when people see and respond to their environment in ways that conform to how they believe it should, rather than out of the reality of the given situation. One very clear example of this is political ideology; people from one party (or side) see those on the other as wrong, stupid or even evil, no matter what it is being said. They skew the facts in their own mind to conform with previously held beliefs.
Kahan cites a different example, where he writes about a study done in the fifties where two groups of college students from different rival schools were asked to judge penalty calls on a football game; to the surprise of no one, both sides felt the officiating was biased in favor of the other team.

Most people intuitively know that people see things the way they do based on prior history and how they feel about things; what may not be so apparent though, is how such bias can cause social problems when it is applied to people sitting on a jury perhaps, or when it's about an eyewitness account of a crime; or, how people see others that are of a different race.
Kahan points out that motivated reasoning is actually based on logic; how can one suddenly believe a new piece of information when all others up to that point have caused them to believe something else? It's almost a matter of self-preservation, or perhaps a refuge from the vagaries of an uncertain world. If we changed our way of thinking every time a new piece of evidence came to light, might we not all go mad trying to figure out what to believe?

He concludes that taken at face value, we as a people using motivated reasoning, might make us come across as a collective bunch of idiots, but because it's based on reasonable motivations, it's actually not; it's more of a means to get by, which when you think about it, is generally the reason we all do most of what we do as we meander through life.For more info visit  satire essay .