The potential impact of hope on motivated reasoning is
supported by research that describes the seductive power of
hope in judgment processes. Chaiken, Lieberman, and
Eagly (1989) suggest that motivated reasoning is likely
when people are ego-involved with an issue, as might be the
case when an outcome is not only goal congruent but also
associated with strong yearning (i.e., desired, important,
and entailing deficiency). In a related vein, Alcock (1995)
notes that people are most vulnerable to believing what they
want to believe when they strongly yearn for a goalcongruent
outcome. The third column of Table 3 summarizes
how hope-induced motivated reasoning produces outcomes
that differ from the ones expected under conditions
of high-involvement objective processing.