Define your disqualifiers in advance

Before evaluating options, decide what would automatically rule one out.

Why it works

Once we are attached to an option, motivated reasoning rationalizes away its red flags. Inverting the order — naming dealbreakers before you fall for any choice — locks in a standard while you are still neutral, so the disqualifier survives contact with desire. You are pre-committing your judgment before the bias arrives.

How to do it

1. Before comparing options, write the conditions that would make any option an automatic no.
2. Make them specific and binary so they can’t be argued around later.
3. Screen every option against the disqualifiers first, then evaluate what survives.

Evidence

Rests on well-documented motivated reasoning and the value of setting criteria before exposure to options. The specific "define disqualifiers first" framing is a decision heuristic rather than a directly trialed technique. (mechanistic)

Motivated reasoning is well studied; this particular ordering trick is a reasoning discipline, not a tested protocol.

Common mistake

Setting dealbreakers after you’ve already fallen in love with an option, so you quietly relax them to keep your favorite alive.