Shankur Vendantem on Motivated Cognition

Author and NPR Social Science Correspondent Shankur Vendantem has an interesting perspective on the cognitive neurological basis for “motivated reasoning.” This process the brain uses to filter and order information efficiently could also be driving less constructive cultural phenomena like climate change denial and resistance to social welfare programs with known benefits. He summarized this cognitive process brilliantly in a recent talk:

This morning, Vendantem aired a story about how newly available data provided an unexpected randomized control trial of “welfare” and showed that payments to mothers resulted in longer life and higher income.

Conveniently, the comments underneath the article illustrated Vendantem’s points about motivated reasoning very clearly, and other researchers like Yale’s Dan Kahan have observed similar processes at work in many other public policy debates. As Mr. Vendantem points out, government policy often lacks rigorous feedback to guide its development, and there is huge near term opportunity to cut costs and increase effectiveness with targeted research and evaluation.

Originally published at impactprogramdesign.com on November 11, 2014.