Thinking About Social Issues: Three Easy Strategies Anyone Can Use
This guide describes three simple strategies that anyone can apply to their own thinking or to anyone else’s thinking.
The reality of social life is complicated. Sure, people do make carefully considered choices. Social institutions really are affected by dishonesty and discrimination. Biology does influence behavior. However, a scan of a basic textbook on psychology or sociology reveals a multidimensional picture of how society works. Economic considerations, cultural norms, politics, peer pressure, religious institutions, and education shape our attitudes, behaviors, perceptions, and values.
Evaluating One’s Own Thinking:
The easiest step in evaluating our own thinking is to simply test it against that list of common logical fallacies. Doing this effectively has to be based on a desire to be objective about one’s own thinking. It is easy to skim through a mental checklist of fallacies and conclude that there are no such weaknesses in one’s own thinking.
Human thinking almost always contains some logical flaws. Psychologists have identified many flaws in human perception and in thinking. Three of those flaws seem particularly relevant to thinking about the quality of our thinking. First, people tend to look for evidence that supports their views while ignoring or discounting contrary evidence. People sometimes base conclusions on whatever recent event leaps readily to mind. Time constraints, energy, social pressure, reasoning ability, and emotion all limit a person’s efforts to think effectively and comprehensively.
Check the quality of your own thinking. Have you been deliberately ignoring evidence in favor of some other view of the issue in question? Do you hold your opinion on a given issue because of analytical thinking or because of the psychological impact of a recent event.What conclusions have you reached solely because of what a trusted source told you?
Concluding Comments:
Learn how to conduct a PMI and do so the next time a politician or activist proposes some means for dealing with a social issue. Run through a quick list of potential problems with the quality of thinking on the issue in question. Apply that same checklist to your own thinking.
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