CronoDAS comments on That other kind of status - Less Wrong

71 Post author: Yvain 29 December 2009 02:45AM

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Comment author: Unnamed 29 December 2009 10:44:09PM *  1 point [-]

Parts of this post that deal with positive illusions could apply to any goal that people have, not just the goal to seek status. A classic social psychology article on that topic is Ziva Kunda's The Case for Motivated Reasoning (pdf). Several aspects of this post are present in her (zir?) paper, including:

  • the existence of "accuracy goals" which benefit from reaching a correct conclusion and "directional" goals which benefit from reaching a particular conclusion (typically one that casts oneself in a pleasing light)
  • "reality constraints" which prevent a person from reaching conclusions that are too divergent from reality, or the need to maintain an "illusion of objectivity"