alt Hacker NewsI think there's a real deficit in research on and understanding motivated cognition, and a lot of blurriness about attitudes versus belief versus perception. I don't just mean anything political, I mean things including physical pain and all sorts of things. When someone states something, it's very difficult to distinguish between "this is honestly what I saw or felt" versus "this is what I wanted to see or feel". When you get into the fact that consensus can be wrong, it leads to all sorts of issues.
It would be nice to have some kind of way to discriminate at what point in the percept -> attitude -> construal chain (which is probably more of a feedback loop) we are.
Before getting to research, I think a more honest attitude towards admitting motivated cognition in oneself and others is appropriate. I may give a spur-of-the-moment remark on a political situation, but at least if someone presses me, I will readily provide more insight on my biases and values. When I take the time to contemplate, I usually try to modify my eventual response to avoid undue bias altogether. Being reminded that motivated cognition is pervasive in all of us should reduce the unintentional-but-convenient faults in our cognition.