knee-jerking

English

Noun

knee-jerking (uncountable)

  1. Reacting instantaneously and without thought.
    • 1974 April 6, Linda Thurston, “U.S. Civil Rights Conference―Heterosexuals Only”, in Gay Community News, page 5:
      How much of the positive response was liberal knee-jerking to be forgotten the next day?
    • 2020 June 24, *Hemidactylus*, “absolute morality”, in talk.origins‎ (Usenet):
      I think it was Haidt who used Kahneman’s two systems view to say that we quickly rise to judgments based on unconscious gut reads and then “reason” to concoct or confabulate an after the fact justification for our “moral” kneejerking.
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