Disliking and Hating Tendency
The inverse of the Liking and Loving Tendency: the tendency to ignore the virtues of people and things we dislike, to distort facts to justify the dislike, and to avoid anything merely associated with them. One of Charlie Munger’s 25 causes of human misjudgment.
Examples
- Dismissing a good idea because it came from a political opponent
- Refusing to credit a competitor’s genuine strengths
- Attributing bad motives to a disliked colleague’s neutral actions
Why It Happens
Hatred and dislike, like their positive counterparts, distort cognition to maintain emotional consistency. The mind reshapes facts so that the disliked target stays unambiguously bad.
How to Counteract
- Steelman the position of people you dislike before rejecting it
- Judge the argument on its merits, divorced from its source
- Notice when emotional aversion, not evidence, is driving your conclusion