Preferences for Psychological Enhancements: The Reluctance to Enhance Fundamental Traits:
We found that people were much more reluctant to enhance traits believed to be highly fundamental to the self (e.g., social comfort) than traits considered less fundamental (e.g., concentration ability).
From the study:
Hat tip and more thoughts at Overcoming Bias where Robin Hanson writes,
Its main result was that the more people considered a feature to be a key part of their identity, the less they wanted to improve it. Few folks want to improve their empathy, self-confidence, or self-control, while more folks want to enhance their rote memory, math ability, and wakefulness. I suspect something similar holds for beliefs: the more important a belief is to our identity, the less eager we are to improve that belief via evidence or analysis.