What is a single word or short phrase that means the following: the human tendency to make a judgment from a perspective one considers false? Or perhaps to make a judgment with values one does not know one has?
For example, say that one half of the world has blue grass and the other has green. John is from the side with blue, but his culture falsely promotes the idea that the grass is greener on his half of the world and that the other side has yellow grass. One day, John discovers that the grass here is blue. He concludes that green grass does not exist because, as everyone knows, the other side has yellow grass.
I understand that this might be a strange question, but I have noticed the tendency of people to accept certain pieces of information promoted by a particular worldview as beyond dispute, so that even if the person rejects that worldview, he or she still judges various aspects of the world from the rejected perspective.
I am trying to come up with a word to describe that tendency on a psychological level and not a logical level. There are several logical fallacies that could describe this.
The following is to provide an example that will be more easily understandable to everyone. Please do not take it as an attack on any particular worldview...
Jane is reared in a certain religion tradition which teaches that the material world is evil and the immaterial, otherworld is good. When she is 18, Jane rejects this religion and consequentially stops believing in the existence of the 'otherworld', but subconsciously retains its judgments.
Her subconscious thought process is this:
- Heaven is good. Earth is bad.
- Heaven does not exist.
- Earth is bad.
Clearly, she maintained a premise (value judgment) she should not have even though she rejected the 'facts' of her religious tradition. Keep in mind, I see the logical fallacies that could apply but I am looking for a psychological description.