Convincing ourselves: accuracy motives and rationalization

Accuracy motives are motives for forming true beliefs. Research on motivated reasoning most commonly presents them as correctives to cognitive distortions. Some authors argue that they can also amplify cognitive distortions, attributing this amplification to indirect side effects. I argue for a third possibility. Focusing on rationalizations, I demonstrate that accuracy motives, despite their epistemically virtuous aim, can directly contribute to distortions by prompting us to construct particularly thorough and convincing rationalizations. In this way, they can stabilize and expand distortions, facilitating their social dissemination. Studying the distorting effects of accuracy motives is therefore not just epistemically but morally and politically relevant.