Disliking and hating tendency
The mirror of liking. We distort against what we dislike, ignoring virtues and inventing faults.
The opposite half of the previous bias. We're systematically harsher on people, ideas, and products we dislike. We notice their faults, miss their virtues, attribute their successes to luck or cheating, and rationalise our resistance to their good ideas.
In organisations this shows up as people refusing to listen to good suggestions from rivals, refusing to hire excellent candidates from disliked previous employers, and rejecting strategies associated with disliked colleagues.
The fix is the same as for liking: when judging anything important about a person, idea, or competitor you dislike, force yourself to argue the opposite side (see [steelmanning]). If you can't make a strong case for their virtues, you probably haven't tried.
Examples in the wild
Internal politics: a good idea from a rival department gets killed not on merit but because the rival proposed it. Common, expensive, hard to spot in yourself.
Investors who hate a CEO often miss obvious upside in their company. Conversely, investors who hate a sector consistently miss profitable opportunities within it.
Strong dislike of a colleague, neighbour, or relative typically blinds you to their occasional genuinely good observations. Worth noticing.
Disliking and hating tendency is one of the mental models we apply through real cases inside the Pareto MBA — a part-time program for professionals who want to think clearly about business.