Comment by rossant
2 years ago
> We're specifically talking about resistance to accepting the idea because accepting it would mean reclassifying actions you yourself had taken from "very good" to "very bad".
That's exactly it. I'd love to discover scientific literature about this phenomenon, and I'd also be surprised if it doesn't already have a name and an extensive literature. But if that's the case: I think there are research carriers in psychology to make here...
Edit: ChatGPT found "belief perseverance" [1] but, again, that's not exactly what we're talking about, which also relates to a personal sense of morality and "being one of the good guys".
You could call it "moral self-image maintenance bias": A bias towards maintaining your self-image as an upright, moral person.
I think it's probably just a kind of "avoidance" or "denial."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiential_avoidance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_(Freud)
HN and software engineers have bias to over-focus on the cognitive, but I think the key experience here is emotional distress.
I agree. It's kind of ironic you mention "denial". It turns out this is one of the favorite attacks by "SBS proponents" against those who challenge the scientific reliability of the diagnosis. We are called "denialists" and we're accused of "denying the existence of child abuse" (?). Parents in my organization (Adikia) who face false allegations of abuse are said to be in "denial" of their own abusive behavior. This story line appears to be quite credible and powerful within the medical and judicial communities.
Here's one among thousands of examples, from a really terrible paper by one such powerful SBS proponent here in France [1] (another of his papers was actually retracted this year [2]).
"Fake news 11: the caretakers’ denial is sincere
Clinicians and defenders can become intoxicated by the denials of parents suffering the agony of having their child in dire condition, and at the same time being grilled for their possible responsibility. The mental mechanisms of self-denial are well-known to psychiatrists. A perpetrator, after a violent burst, and faced with its terrible consequences, can experience a dissociation mechanism similar to witnesses of catastrophes, dissociation being understood as “a break between the memory, the perception, the consciousness and the identity…when faced with unbearable feelings”. Sincere denial easily elicits compassion from the medical staff as well as defenders, a natural response which is enhanced by professional training. Some authors have documented with functional imaging the sincerity of denial in a case of convicted child abuse and concluded that the sincerity of denial is not a criterion for innocence."
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00381-021-05357-8
[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00381-023-05889-1
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I phrased it that way because I think this kind of influence on our judgement is pervasive: we all have our "thumbs on the scale" when evaluating our own behavior. That's bias. But at some point it's not a "thumb on the scale" anymore -- you've just thrown the scale away; that's denial.
Still, there are different types and sources of denial, just as there are different sources of emotional bias. "Self-image maintenance bias" and "self-image maintenance denial" can both be about general ways in which we try to maintain our self image (as strong, talented, attractive, whatever). "Moral self-image maintenance bias" or "moral self-image maintenance denial" can be about ways in which we try to maintain our self-image as good, decent people.