Thinking About Thinking
Discipline: Psychology
Type of service: Essay
Spacing: Double spacing
Paper format: APA
Number of pages: 1 page
Number of sources: 2 sources
Paper details:
Main Discussion: Thinking About Thinking
As the introduction to this week explains, and as the reading in your course text elaborates, recognizing bias and errors in thinking is vital to the study of cross-cultural psychology. Awareness of your thought processes is fundamental to gaining insight into how you think about culture and to expanding your capacity to think more broadly and objectively about people you meet and human activities you observe. The ability to think about thinking, or metathinking, also develops the critical inquiry and problem-solving skills that are valued in many careers.
Keep in mind that bias and errors in thinking are very human. The root cause is often the mind’s effort to save time and take shortcuts in understanding and responding to situations, which may impact accurate decision making. That is why developing critical thinking skills involves evaluating your own thinking in order to know your vulnerabilities and how to enhance your decision-making skills.
For this Discussion, you will consider seven biases and errors in thinking and how at least one applies to you. Be honest in your self-assessment and remember that you are focusing on how you think—not people in general.
To prepare:
- Review the Week 1 Learning Resources. In particular, review the information in Chapter 2 of your course text on the following biases or errors in thinking, including the exercise and/or antidote feature for each:
o Barnum effect
o Assimilation bias
o Representativeness bias
o Availability bias
o Fundamental attribution error
o Self-fulfilling prophecy
o Naturalistic fallacy
- Choose at least one of those seven biases or errors in thinking that is an issue for you when interacting with other people who are different from you in some way, such as in appearance, behavior, language, and/or ideas. Focus on situations from your personal experience that involve traveling to places where people are different or meeting visitors to your community who are different from you. Recall a particular situation involving other people in which you exhibited the specific bias or thinking error that you have identified. Then consider how the antidotes provided in the text in the sections titled “Antidotes” can help you address this bias/error, think more critically, and apply more accurate decision making ).
Post responses to the following:
- Briefly describe the bias or thinking error that is an issue for you when interacting with people who are different from you and explain how and why the bias or thinking error influenced your interactions with other people.
- Explain how the antidotes for your type of bias or thinking error can help you to overcome it. Provide your reasoning.
- Based on this activity, speculate about the way(s) that bias and thinking errors may affect relationships between people of different races, ethnicities, religions, genders, or other types of differences.
- Assess the impact of metathinking on cross-cultural understanding.
Shiraev, E. B., & Levy, D. A. (2017). Cross-cultural psychology: Critical thinking and contemporary applications (6th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis.
- Chapter 1, “Understanding Cross-Cultural Psychology” (pp. 1–26)
- Chapter 2, “Critical Thinking in Cross-Cultural Psychology” (pp. 30–71)
