Liking/Loving Tendency is one of Charlie Munger’s 25 psychological tendencies: once we like or love a person, brand, or idea, we become blind to its faults and eager to agree with it.
The idea
Munger argued that we are wired to favor people we like and love to the point of irrationality; in social psychology, the group-level version of this is known as in-group bias. To keep liking and loving them, we tend to:
- Distort facts to fit that affection
- Ignore faults we would otherwise notice
- Comply with the wishes of whoever or whatever we like or love
- Favor people, products, and actions merely associated with the object of our affection
We also go to some lengths to keep being liked and loved by others, even people we don’t personally know.
When to use it
Not something to “apply” so much as a bias to recognize, especially when:
- Evaluating advice from someone you admire
- Assessing a company or brand you are loyal to
- Reviewing work produced by a friend or mentor
How to apply it
- Notice when your assessment of a fact tracks how much you like the source, rather than the evidence itself
- Separate “do I like this person” from “is this argument correct”
- Seek a disinterested second opinion when the stakes are high and the source is someone you like
Watch out for
- The mirror-image tendency, disliking or hating, distorts judgment the opposite way and is just as easy to miss in yourself
- Combined with authority or social proof, it can compound into an outsized, hard-to-reverse commitment
Related models
- Disliking/Hating — the opposite-direction tendency
- Lollapalooza — what happens when this tendency stacks with others
- Cognitive Biases — the broader category
Sources
Charlie Munger, “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment” (1995 speech), collected in “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”; Michael Simmons and Ian Chew’s writing summarizing Munger’s psychological tendencies.