Motivated reasoning makes work annoying

Unconscious motivations driving information-processing, eh? This will end well with most managers.

Motivated reasoning -- which is sometimes called motivated cognition -- is a scientific term for how your unconscious motivations shape how you interpret information. Here's a quick example. If you're watching a basketball game and the ref calls a foul on your team, you go nuts. That was a bad call! If the exact same call happened on the opposing team, …