Human weaknesses in investing: liking, loving, and worshiping tendencies

Charlie Munger said that living beings are genetically predisposed to "liking and loving." This liking/love is not always a rational choice but rather a biological program that can be triggered: whoever treats you well and provides you with a sense of security at critical moments, you are likely to bond your affection to them.
A classic example is "gosling imprinting": a newly hatched gosling will love and follow the first living being that is kind to it—usually the mother goose. But if the mother goose is absent when the gosling hatches and a human is standing nearby, the gosling will also love and follow that person.
The problem is: liking and love make us less objective.
Once you develop a liking, a series of "automatic programs" kick in:
• Favoritism and compliance: easier to overlook flaws, more willing to align with the other party's wishes;
• Love me, love my dog: extending affection to people, products, or ideas associated with the object of affection;
• Distorting facts: unconsciously altering evidence or cherry-picking information to maintain the liking;
• Forming a closed loop: liking/love often leads to admiration, which further reinforces the liking/love, creating a feedback loop that pushes people toward emotional or even irrational behavior.
In investing, this tendency makes it harder to make objective decisions.
For example, once you like a stock, a subtle change occurs: you start interpreting negative news as "market mispricing," high valuations as "it deserves it," slowing performance as "short-term fluctuations," and management's promises as "long-term strategy." Gradually, you replace "objective analysis" with "emotional maintenance."
You repeatedly review and share data that supports your view; opposing evidence is either ignored or dismissed. Eventually, you construct a self-consistent world: the stock must win, and you must profit.
Investment logic, originally based on facts, quietly shifts to reliance on emotions.
More commonly, "love me, love my dog" comes into play: liking a company leads to liking all companies in its supply chain, even if you don’t truly understand what these companies do, how they make money, or whether they are worth their current price.
The "admiration-liking" closed loop can push position sizes to extremes:
Starting as "I’m quite bullish on it," then becoming "it’s my faith," and eventually "I tolerate all its problems." Positions grow larger, and skepticism dwindles—this isn’t investing; it’s "religious holding."
Therefore, in investing, we must install guardrails for ourselves, using rules to counter human nature. I no longer rely much on "self-control" because self-control is fragile in the face of market movements. A more reliable approach is: binding yourself with processes and discipline.
I strongly agree with Mencius’s saying, "I examine myself three times a day." Applied to investing, this means asking yourself three questions daily:
1) Could my current judgment be wrong? Where is it most likely to be wrong?
2) Which signals are "red lights" (requiring immediate position reduction/exit) rather than "wait-and-see"?
3) Am I actively seeking contradictory evidence, or only listening to confirming evidence?
Peter Lynch also said: Don’t get emotionally attached to a stock. The stock doesn’t know you own it. If fundamentals deteriorate, sell it.
You can like a stock, but you must allow it to be disproven; you can be bullish, but you cannot lose skepticism.
This is the foundational skill for surviving in the market long-term.