Motivated reasoning can lead us to scrutinize unwanted evidence while accepting preferred evidence.

Greater intelligence may provide more sophisticated tools for rationalizing preferred conclusions.

Self-deception often preserves a coherent sense of identity.

Intellectual humility requires examining what we may emotionally gain from reaching them.

I was a solid debater in high school. In college, I studied philosophy (with an emphasis on logic and argument) and neuropsychology (to better understand the human mind and persuasion). I then went to law school, followed by 17 years of high-stakes litigation (that means I got paid a good amount of money to win arguments). When I retired, I wanted to specialize in persuasion, connection, and negotiation, combining ancient philosophy with modern neuroscience.

I’m really good at navigating an argument and evaluating research data, evidence, and precedent. But I still fall for lies every once in a while.

Sure, we’d like to imagine intelligence and sophisticated reasoning as a kind of cognitive armor. The smarter we are, the better we can evaluate the situation and various arguments; the better we should be at spotting bad arguments, resisting manipulation, and separating what’s true from what we wish were true. And sure, with intelligence we can better distinguish fact from fiction. But plenty of times, it just makes us better lawyers for what we want to believe. Alas. The human mind can be profoundly disappointing sometimes.

Psychology has a name for our uncanny ability to talk ourselves into the version of reality we prefer: motivated reasoning, which results from the cognitive dissonance between the truth and what........

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