To what extent does scientific information shape attention and support for universal basic income? Related literature depicts two very different set of predictions. The field on welfare preferences portrays individuals as rational calculators, while motivated reasoning scholarship rather presents public opinion as being emotionally-driven, striving to confirm beliefs. I reconcile these two strands of work by proposing that while individuals seek out to confirm their beliefs most of the time, they may sometimes face larger incentives to update these and reach accurate conclusions. Such incentives are likely to be present if individuals are directly affected by an issue or/and care strongly about it. I employ comparative online experimental data to test this argument. Findings show that scientific information does not increase attention or shape to policy proposals, and neither does belief-congruent information. Rather, prior beliefs per se, have a direct impact on attention and support. This is the case even when they face significant incentives to update their beliefs, in order to translate their interests to relevant policy preferences. The findings presented in this paper have far reaching implications to the study of preferences, motivated reasoning and the politics of UBI.