I've been working for 3.5 years. Until two months ago, I did independent-ish research where I thought about stuff and tried to publicly write true things. For the last two months, I've been researching donation opportunities. This is different in several ways. Relevant here: I'm working with a team, and there's a circle of people around me with some beliefs and preferences related to my work.
I have some new concepts related to these changes. (Not claiming novelty.)
First is "flinching away": when I don't think about something because it's awkward/scary/stressful. I haven't noticed my object-level beliefs skewed by flinching away, but I've noticed that certain actions should be priorities but come to mind less than they should. In particular: doing something about a disagreement with the consensus or status quo or something an ally is doing. I maybe fixed this by writing the things I'm flinching away from in a google doc when I notice them so I don't forget (and now having the muscle of noticing similar things). It would still be easier if it wasn't the case that (it's salient to me that) certain conclusions and actions are more popular than others.
Second is convenience. Convenience is orthogonal to truth. Examples of convenient things are: considerations in favor of conclusions my circle agrees with; considerations that make the answer look more clear/overdetermined. I might flinch away from inconvenient upshots for my actions. (I think I'm not biased by convenience—i.e., not doing motivated reasoning—when forming object-level beliefs within the scope of my day-to-day work; possibly I'm unusually good at this.) I've noticed myself saying stuff like "conveniently, X" and "Y, that's inconvenient" a lot recently. Noticing feelings about considerations has felt helpful but I don't know/recall why. Possibly this is mostly when thinking about stuff with others: saying "that's convenient" is a flag to check whether it's suspiciously convenient; saying "that's inconvenient" is a flag to make sure to take it seriously.
I've noticed myself saying stuff like "conveniently, X" and "Y, that's inconvenient" a lot recently. Noticing feelings about considerations has felt helpful but I don't know/recall why. Possibly this is mostly when thinking about stuff with others: saying "that's convenient" is a flag to check whether it's suspiciously convenient; saying "that's inconvenient" is a flag to make sure to take it seriously.
Thanks -- over the last month, I've been mentally noting "convenient" or "inconvenient" in my inner monologue which has been very helpful for me. I think the reason it works (at least for me) is primarily because it changes my headspace back into scout mindset.
I think noticing stuff like this is important for rationality, and reporting/thinking about it is important for rationalism as a project. So nice job.
I think the flinching away you're noticing is the source of motivated reasoning. If you flinch away from lines of thought that obviously lead to an emotionally uncomfortable conclusion, but don't flinch away from thoughts/evidence that lead to more comfortable conclusions, you'll wind up believing comrtable stuff more than the evidence and logic really indicate.
More in my brief blurt about the science of motivated reasoning. I should improve it to a proper post but I'm just too slow at writing to get that deep in the stack.