Contemporary economics resists admitting the human tendency to rationalize.

Evidence

The thesis that humans are more rationalizing than rational has spawned a huge literature, but one that gets little respect in economics. Cognitive dissonance and the responses it provokes venture well beyond the literature in the philosophy of science that travels under the rubric of Duhem’s Thesis, in that the former plumbs response mechanisms to emotional chagrin, whereas the latter sketches the myriad ways in which auxiliary hypotheses may be evoked in order to blunt the threat of disconfirmation. Duhem’s Thesis states that there are an infinite number of auxiliary hypotheses that may be invoked to explain why an empirical event did not actually impugn the target doctrine at risk: instead, uncontrolled factors intervened. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 98

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes cognitive dissonance theory from Duhem’s Thesis as two distinct accounts of resilient belief.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 98
• XREF: connects to: People resist the view that the economy manipulates their beliefs and actions — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 390

Broader Connections

• People resist the view that the economy manipulates their beliefs and actions #responds-to (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 390