The motivation to maintain favorable identities

Findings from research on self-enhancement and self-protection are generally understood to provide evidence for “motivated bias.” Despite their ubiquity, the meaning of “motivation,” “bias,” and “motivated bias” are usually left to intuition. In this article, we clarify the meaning of these terms as they apply to constructing and maintaining desired self-views. We argue that preserving psychological homeostasis (i.e., emotional equilibrium) is as important as preserving biological homeostasis, and indeed, that psychological and biological homeostasis are two aspects of one overarching balancing principle. We argue further that, although maintaining a favorable identity can sometimes lead to errors from normative models, the bias toward sustaining psychological homeostasis is just as adaptive as the bias toward sustaining a properly functioning physiology.