Rolf Degen summarizing... Love is half blind: Long term romantic relationships are cemented by willful ignorance of the the better half's unflattering sides

Murray, Samuel, Ph.D., and Peter Finocchiaro. 2020. “These Confabulations Are Guaranteed to Save Your Marriage! Toward a Teleological Theory of Confabulation.” PsyArXiv. May 25. doi:10.31234/osf.io/huywk

Abstract: Confabulation is typically understood to be dysfunctional. But this understanding neglects the phenomenon's potential benefits. In fact, we think that the benefits of non-clinical confabulation provide a better foundation for a general account of confabulation. In this paper, we start from these benefits to develop a social teleological account of confabulation. Central to our account is the idea that confabulation manifests a kind of willful ignorance. By understanding confabulation in this way, we can provide principled explanations for the difference between clinical and non-clinical cases of confabulation and the extent to which confabulation is rational.