scout mindset: the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.
our judgment isn’t limited by knowledge nearly as much as it’s limited by attitude.
The best description of motivated reasoning I’ve ever seen comes from psychologist Tom Gilovich. When we want something to be true, he said, we ask ourselves, “Can I believe this?,” searching for an excuse to accept it. When we don’t want something to be true, we instead ask ourselves, “Must I believe this?,” searching for an excuse to reject it.4
Knowing that you should test your assumptions doesn’t automatically improve your judgment, any more than knowing you should exercise automatically improves your health.
The investigation of Dreyfus is an example of an aspect of human psychology called directionally motivated reasoning—or, more often, just motivated reasoning—in which our unconscious motives affect the conclusions we draw.
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