The Japanese holdouts.
I seem to recall that Japanese soldiers were especially trained to fight to the bitter end because failure against the Americans was the worst thing imaginable, etc. Can anyone point me to decent historical documentation of this, if this is indeed what happened?
Many of them committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner or surrender there are many articles and such on the war in the pacific theatre and almost all of them mention that. Although the ones with veterans interviews would be most helpful.
I'm looking for historical examples of "flinching away," so I can illustrate the concept to others and talk about motivated cognition and leaving a line of retreat and so on.
The ideal example would be one of motivated skepticism with grave consequences. Like, a military commander who shied away from believing certain reports because they implied something huge and scary was about to happen, and then the huge and scary thing happened and caused great damage. Something like that.
What examples can you think of?