On November 23, 1951, a Saturday afternoon, the Dartmouth – Princeton Football Game took place at Princeton’s Palmer Stadium. This game was the last of the season for both teams, and Princeton was eager to keep its winning streak going. Princeton’s start player Dick Kazmaier was playing his last game, shortly after being mentioned as All-American. The game commenced, and everyone was aware that this game was not going to go over easy for either side. The referees never got a break and were penalizing both teams persistently. The game became so violent that Princeton’s star player left the game in the second quarter with a broken nose, whereas a Dartmouth player had to be carried off with a broken leg in the third, and so on. Luckily, for Princeton, they won the game and continued their winning streak, but this did not come without controversy. Fleetingly, accusations were being thrown out on both sides accusing either institution of foul play among the players, coaches, alumni even among the general public. The discussion carried on for weeks as local and campus newspapers covered the story (Hastorf and Cantril, 129). Needless to say, the Princetonian (Princeton’s student newspaper) shifted the blame primarily on Dartmouth and called the game “a disgusting exhibition of so-called sport” (Hastorf and Cantril, 129). Whereas the Dartmouth (Dartmouth’s undergraduate newspaper) shifted the blame to the Princeton team calling out their star player’s early fall out as the reason for the “dirty football” (Hastorf and Cantril, 129).
In conclusion, both teams were aware of the distraught nature of the game but agreed to disagree over what happened. Hence, Albert. H. Hastorf and Hadley Cantril decided to take this perceptual problem and design a study. They created a questionnaire which they administered to both institutions a week after the game to undergraduate students. The second step involved showcasing the movie of the game to a sample of undergraduates at each institution while filling out a questionnaire. They needed to determine if an infraction of the rule was deemed as “mild” or “flagrant” in their eyes. After analyzing the data, the researchers were able to conclude that most all Princeton students concluded that the game was “rough and dirty” and many believed that Dartmouth started the foul play. When the Princeton students viewed the movie, they determined that Dartmouth commit twice as many infractions as Dartmouth students, when viewed, picked up. Similarly, many Dartmouth students flagged the game as “rough and dirty,” and a third of the students flagged the game as “rough and fair,” making up their category. Furthermore, Dartmouth students felt as if both sides were responsible for the rough play and also, felt like Princeton made up these charges to protect their football star (Hastorf and Cantril, 130 – 132).
What we were able to view here is a perception problem because each person has created a particular experience of the game for themselves. From this experience, a person will select what is significant for his self-centered position. Therefore, we can determine that a football game or any other significant happening such as if someone likes Kale or not, to an individual is not the same for everyone since not everyone will react in a determined way instead each of us brings something unique forward, and this is what can create the problem of perception (Hastorf and Cantril, 133). This example is just part of the growing literature on motivated reasoning, but before we delve into it, we need to establish what motivated reasoning is and why it can occur.
Human beings, like all of us, have always been keen on understanding the way things work in this world, from the environment to history. We have a strong intrinsic motivation to do that and to find a correct or accurate explanation of a situation or an event with which face. Most of our motivation comes from finding the accurate explanation whereas other may push towards the idea that we would instead find an answer that we preferred (Patterson, Operskalski, Barbey). According to Kunda, this would be seen as people following their directional goals. This means that people feel as if they have the liberty to conclude whatever they want only because they can as long as they can justify the conclusion with the desired evidence. People’s directional goals will enforce their bias (485 – 486). The Princeton – Dartmouth game would be an example of how people use their directional goals to enforce their views of the game. In the simplest terms, possible motivated reasoning can be described as the idea that goals or motives can affect reasoning (Kunda, 480). Reasoning is what forms our impressions, determines beliefs, our attitudes, evaluates evidence and makes decisions hence it brings value to us but can result in a tradeoff between accuracy and desirability (Kunda 481; Béneabou & Tirole,142). This tradeoff can be tested and has been analyzed by multiple social scientists. Let’s look at an example