Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial

One of Charlie Munger’s named human-misjudgment tendencies in Charlie Munger — The Psychology of Human Misjudgment: when reality is too painful to bear, the mind distorts the facts until they become bearable. Munger illustrates it with a mother who refused to believe her son had died in World War II.

Context: In Munger’s standard list of psychological tendencies, “Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial” describes how grief, loss, or threat can drive a person to deny facts rather than accept an intolerable truth — a defense Munger warns is especially destructive around chemical dependency and personal tragedy.

Where this appears

• Charlie Munger — The Psychology of Human Misjudgment — Munger introduces the tendency with the example of a “very sane” mother who refused to believe her son, lost flying over the Atlantic in WWII, was dead.