Motivated Reasoning
Motivated reasoning is a term coined by the late social psychologist Ziva Kunda to describe how the way we process information can be affected by our goals and desires. A core interest of the HCL is to examine the ways that affect and intuition influence, and often bias, judgment. The key challenge to such models is to account for how people “walk the line” between passion and reason, that is, how people can be generally sensitive to data and logic, but adroitly bend (but not break) that logic in ways that often allow them to believe what they want to believe. We are interested in exploring both the process of motivated reasoning and the consequences of motivated reasoning processes for important real-world judgments, such as those involved in health, morality, politics, and the law.
Selected papers:
Ditto, P. H., & Lopez, D. F. (1992). Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 568-584. (pdf)
Ditto, P. H., Pizarro, D. A., Epstein, E. B., Jacobson, J. A., & MacDonald, T. K. (2006). Visceral influences on risk-taking behavior. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 19, 99-113. (pdf)
Clark, C. J., Luguri, J., Ditto, P. H., Knobe, J., Shariff, A. F., & Baumeister, R. F. (2014). Free to punish: A motivated account of free will belief. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 501-513. (pdf)
Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2014). Motivated happiness: Self-enhancement inflates self-reported subjective well-being. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5, 825-834. (pdf)
Moral Reasoning
Humans care deeply about right and wrong and will go to extraordinary lengths to protect and promote their moral beliefs. The intimate connection between morality and emotion makes moral judgment fertile ground for motivated reasoning. Our group is interested in exploring the “hot” side of moral reasoning — how moral judgments flow from gut intuitions and how our beliefs about right and wrong are shaped by motivational factors such as our desire to see our moral and political views as true and objective and ourselves as good moral actors.
Selected papers:
Ditto, P. H., Pizarro, D. A., Tannenbaum, D. (2009). Motivated moral reasoning. In B. H. Ross (Series Ed.) & D. M. Bartels, C. W. Bauman, L. J. Skitka, & D. L. Medin (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 50: Moral Judgment and Decision Making (pp. 307-338). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. (pdf)
Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M. Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral Foundations Theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 55-130. (pdf)
Uhlmann, E. L., Pizarro, D.A., Tannenbaum, D., & Ditto, P. H. (2009). The motivated use of moral principles. Judgment and Decision Making, 4, 476-491. (pdf)
Liu, B., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). What dilemma? Moral evaluation shapes factual belief. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 316-323. (pdf)
Political Reasoning
American politics has become hyper-polarized and hyper-moralized. Relations between Republicans and Democrats have steadily deteriorated over the last two decades, with each side perceiving the other in increasingly distrustful ways, and developing views on national and world affairs that differ more fundamentally every day. The HCL is interested in the many ways in which political partisanship biases the perception and interpretation of policy-relevant information. We are interested in the differing moral intuitions of liberals and conservatives, and the ways that moral intuitions bias thinking about policies and their effectiveness, with facts, logic, and the potential for compromise as collateral damage.
Selected papers:
Ditto, P. H., Liu, B. S., Clark, C. J., Wojcik, S. P., Chen, E. E., Grady, R. H., Celniker, J. B., & Zinger, J. F. (2018). At least bias is bipartisan: A meta-analytic comparison of partisan bias in liberals and conservatives. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1-19. (pdf)
Ditto, P. H., & Koleva, S. P. (2011). Moral empathy gaps and the American culture war. Emotion Review, 3, 331-332. (pdf)
Iyer, R., Koleva, S., Graham, J., Ditto, P. H., & Haidt, J. (2012). Understanding libertarian morality: The psychological dispositions of self-identified libertarians. PLoS ONE, 7(8): e42366. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0042366. (pdf)
Koleva, S. P., Graham, J., Iyer, R., Ditto, P. H., & Haidt, J. (2012). Tracing the threads: How five moral concerns (especially Purity) help explain political attitudes. Journal of Research in Personality, 46, 184-194. (pdf)
Ditto P. H., & Mastronarde, A. J. (2009). The paradox of the political maverick. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 295-298. (pdf)