Mood affiliation is a form of motivated reasoning where you first choose a mood or attitude, then find confirming evidence that matches the mood.

This seems to have been happening in the "we are stagnating" pessimism in late 2010s, as well as "we are no longer stagnating" optimism in early 2020s, and once again with recession fears of 2022.

Other examples from Tyler Cowen:

• People who see a lot of net environmental progress (air and water are cleaner, for instance) and thus dismiss or downgrade well-grounded accounts of particular environmental problems. There’s simply an urgent feeling that any “pessimistic” view needs to be countered.
• People who see a political war against the interests of the poor and thus who are reluctant to present or digest analyses which blame some of the problems of the poor on…the poor themselves. (Try bringing up “predatory borrowing” in any discussion of “predatory lending” and see what happens.)

#mentalmodel