Motivated skepticism is the mistake of applying more skepticism to claims that you don't like (or intuitively disbelieve), than to claims that you do like. Because emotional disposition towards a claim isn't generally evidence about its truth, including it in the process of arriving at a belief means holding the belief partly for reasons other than because it's true.

Blog posts

External Links

From Skepticism to Technical Rationality by lukeprog

See also

Motivated cognition
Least convenient possible world
Filtered evidence, Conservation of expected evidence
Color politics
Positive bias
Rationalization, Oops
Dangerous knowledge