The Role of Motivated Reasoning in Partisanship
The other day I got into an argument. Nothing new there except maybe that it happened
over Zoom instead of face-to-face. My opponent, a usually mild-mannered member of my
church book club, was insisting that only a minor fringe of society believed in disbanding the
police. I disagreed, and I was confident that I had enough evidence1 at my disposal to change his
mind. After all, I had just seen three pieces of confirming evidence
in the weeks running up to
the book club meeting.