How They Know What Isn't So
Today The New York Times has a very interesting article about reasoning. It includes a discussion of what is called motivated reasoning which is "processing and responding to information defensively, accepting and seeking out confirming information, while ignoring, discrediting the source of, or arguing against the substance of contrary information".
Here the authors of a paper linked to in The Times' article examined a particular mental shortcut, the situational heuristic, in which cues as to how to judge a contention are drawn from the nature of the actions in question. Their hypothesis is that because going to war is an important decision people believed there had to have been important reasons for having done so and went so far as to assume the existence of reasons that didn't exist or weren't suggested.
More evidence that the typical juror is similarly likely to believe, unless disabused of the notion, that lawsuits aren't filed unless there are strong grounds for doing so.
