People tend to ignore information that does not fit with their beliefs while they weigh agreeable information more heavily. This is the Confirmation Bias, and it can cause a lot of trouble. Think of it is as the counterpart to the self-fulfilling prophecy. People can often make decisions that fit with their beliefs, and ignore important information or behavior that they just don’t want to see.
-- Darcy Jacobsen
This pattern of thinking is sometimes referred to as confirmation bias, or the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions. The official psychological term for this behavior is “motivated cognition” — a tendency to bias our interpretation of facts to fit a version of the world we wish to believe is true.
-- Pat Heffernan
