We have narratives and beliefs that serve our basic psychological needs, such as the need for a sense of control. When those beliefs are challenged, we don’t take a rational and detached approach. We dig in our heels and engage in what is called motivated reasoning. We defend the core beliefs at all costs, shredding logic, discarding inconvenient facts, making up facts as necessary, cherry-picking only the facts we like, engaging in magical thinking, and using subjective judgments as necessary without any consideration for internal consistency.
