We treat internal consistency as a mark of intellectual integrity. The research on belief formation says otherwise: the drive for coherence is one of the primary mechanisms by which humans avoid updating toward truth. The people who appear most principled are often the people most entrenched.
We're told to trust our gut. The research says intuition works reliably in domains with rapid, accurate feedback — and fails systematically in exactly the high-stakes domains where people invoke it most confidently. You've been trusting your gut in the wrong places.
Discipline is treated as a character virtue — something the successful have and the struggling lack. The research says otherwise: willpower depletes, environment dominates, and the people who appear most self-controlled are usually the people who've designed their lives to require the least of it.