Confirmation bias
Etymology
"Confirmation" is from Latin confirmare, "to make firm"; "bias," via Old French, a slant. The phrase names a slant toward whatever firms up your current view. The psychologist Peter Wason coined it in the 1960s after experiments showed people testing ideas only in ways that could confirm them.
noun · /kon-fur-MAY-shun BY-us/
The tendency to seek, notice, and remember information that fits what you already believe.
What it names
Why smart people stay wrong — the mind quietly filters evidence to protect its existing conclusions.
Example
He read five articles and somehow every one confirmed what he already thought — confirmation bias doing quiet work.
Related idea
Motivated reasoning is the broader drive; confirmation bias is the filtering it does to incoming evidence.