My current work is on the cognitive science and cultural evolution of beliefs. The project is intended to provide theoretical clarity to recent debates on the non-epistemic functions of human cognition and the social mechanisms involved in belief formation. In particular, it explores the ways in which our species epistemic and non-epistemic interests may interact over developmental and historical timescales to shape our individual and collective belief forming processes under different environmental conditions. I propose that motivated reasoning has become an increasingly important factor shaping on our belief forming processes in contemporary post-industrial societies, and that this is largely an indirect consequence of two factors. First, changes in the properties of culturally salient beliefs (particularly their complexity). Second, our increased reliance on environmental cognitive scaffolding and distributed cognition. However, I suggest that the epistemic effects of this seem to be mixed and may even be net beneficial.