Motivated tactician
We think carefully or lazily depending on our goals of the moment.
What it means
A model of the social thinker as a flexible, goal-driven strategist who shifts between effortful and shortcut-laden cognition depending on motives, accountability, and the stakes of the situation. It supersedes both the naïve-scientist model, which overstated rationality, and the cognitive-miser model, which overstated reflexive laziness, by making the choice of strategy itself contingent on goals. When accuracy matters, people can think deliberately; when impression, defense of a conclusion, or speed matters, they deploy heuristics or motivated reasoning. The model integrates accuracy, self-enhancement, and directional motives into a single picture of social cognition. It frames much modern work on when biases appear and when they can be reduced.
Examples
A juror skims evidence loosely until told they must justify their verdict aloud, at which point they reason far more carefully.
You grab your usual pasta without a glance, then spend two evenings comparing washing-machine specifications. Same shopper, two modes of thinking, picked according to what is at stake.
The report praising your department gets a nod and a skim. The one criticising it gets every figure checked twice. The goal, not the document, sets the effort.
First described in Fiske & Taylor (1991).