Disliking/Hating Tendency

Munger's mirror of liking/loving tendency: the tendency to distort reality in negative directions when you dislike someone. When you dislike a person, you ignore their virtues, distort ambiguous evidence against them, reject their ideas regardless of merit, and extend your dislike to their associates and recommendations. The bias is as systematic as liking tendency and equally corrosive to good judgment. In organizations: interpersonal dislike produces blocked information flows, unfair evaluations, and rejected ideas that would have been accepted from a liked colleague. The most damaging feature: disliking tendency is SELF-REINFORCING—negative interactions confirm the dislike, which produces more negative interactions.

When to use it

When interpersonal dislike is contaminating evaluation of work or ideas; when information flow is blocked because the source is disliked; when self-reinforcing negative dynamics need to be interrupted; when fair assessment requires separating personal reactions from objective evaluation.

How it can help

When evaluating someone you dislike: apply the same discipline you'd apply to liking tendency—separate the PERSON from their IDEAS and WORK. The practice: 'would I evaluate this proposal differently if it came from someone I liked?' In organizations: blind evaluation processes prevent disliking tendency from contaminating assessment. For personal development: examine your dislikes honestly—is the dislike based on legitimate character assessment or on superficial triggers (they remind you of someone, their style clashes with yours, they challenged you)? The most productive correction: actively seek evidence that contradicts your negative assessment.