People often hold certain beliefs because they satisfy psychological and functional needs. Unlike the standard Bayesian account of belief updating in Economics, a growing literature on the topic of motivated beliefs assumes instead that people form and maintain inflated views about their preferred states of the world because they derive hedonic (self-esteem, ego, identity) or functional values (motivation, signaling, persuasion) from them.

Theoretical and experimental evidence suggests that people use (implicitly or not) behavioral strategies to form and maintain beliefs that deviate from the Bayesian benchmark - even when presented with objective information. 

A series of theoretical contributions have suggested an abundance of mechanisms that explain (in some combination) such deviations from the normative account. Such mechanisms include information-avoidance, biased sampling, asymmetric updating, and selective recall of information. However, there is a gap between the supply of theories and empirical evidence which renders discerning among competing hypotheses a challenge. 

We were delighted to bring together researchers from a diverse background such as: Economics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Psychology in order to discuss recent developments on the topic of motivated beliefs and brainstorm towards developing experimental tests that will inform and reconcile existing theory.