Thinking Barriers Paper

Essay by csyoung4 August 2006

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Critical thinking helps us to make sense of the overwhelming amount of information we must absorb and process on a daily basis. However, in order to think critically we have to overcome many of the barriers that make it difficult to identify and understand problems and their potential solutions. In this paper we will look at those barriers, try to understand why one might overcome them, and through examples discover how prominent they are to us and how it could affect our work.

There are common thinking errors that can skew your judgment and make it hard to appraise your situation realistically. When we distort our thinking it affects are ability to make wise decisions and solve problems. These are barriers that make it difficult to identify and understand problems and their potential solutions.

The first one in sharing is someone who looks at things as all or nothing, they don't see middle ground.

An example in a work situation would be that one would assume if they don't get the promotion, the company wants to ease them out the door. Now a way to over come this barrier would be that they've had two promotions in the last five years -- more than anyone else in the department therefore their doing fine.

Then we look at an individual who is over-generalizing in which they project the future based on a single event. A work example would be an individual figuring that if they failed the bar exam on the first try, their just not cut out to be a lawyer. Now a way to over come this barrier would be that many people take the bar exam more than once. If they convince themselves their going to fail, they'll have no motivation to study.

When an individual has a...