Errors In Thinking

In this world, it is important for us to think correctly and to avoid any errors in thinking. This is important no matter who you are because if you don't think correctly, you will end up doing mistakes and that mistakes may cause something. Here I put some of the common errors in thinking and hopefully you'll always aware of it and avoid it from happening at all cost.

1. Partialism. This is the major error in thinking where the thinker, only thinks about one part of the problem/things. Usually happens because inadequacy/insufficiency of perception. May be intentional or unintentional.



2. Time scale: This is another type of partialism in which the thinker only include a narrow slice of time. For example, an IT undergraduate students see that his friend whose works in a small business and get RM2000++ without even diploma certificate decides to leave his study and join the business. He didn't think that in the next 5 years after he graduate, he will not only get a degree certificate, but even a higher starting salary than his friend and even a faster promotion.



3. Egocentricity: The thinker only think about how the problem's gonna affect his own self personally. Example, you are an important person in your company and everyone in the company loves and respects you. But out of the blue you receive an offer from the other company with a higher salary and decide to leave. The error is unable to trace the effect of his action to the others



4. Arrogance and Conseit: Arises when there is a logic explanation for something and that logic explanation is taken to be the right explaination. For example, government said that sciences and mathematics should be teached in English but the standard of science and math is a little bit drop. So the logic explanation is science and math should not be teached in English as it drops the standard of the subject and thus academic performance.



5. Initial Judgement: When an idea arises, the thinker quickly judge the idea as good or bad. This error in thinking may happen due to like/dislike/position or based on social/emotion/belief. As an example, when you see a group of people with scary faces, have muscle and look like a bunch of criminals walking their way towards you,who is sitting on a bench alone at that time, you may think that the group want to rob or bullying you. And you have start running away before the group reached you. In fact, the group is actually want to ask for direction to the mosque but since your error in thinking happened, they have to find someone else to ask for.



6. Adversary thinking: In this process, rather than think together, the thinker always try to prove others wrong. He doesn't need to prove that his right to show that others is wrong. Example, if A claims that B is wrong, automatically people will think that A is right although he is not actually right.


7. Ego-involvement: In this thinking, the thinker usually think just to protect his own ego or pride. Usually is practised by someone who is smart and famous such as politician, a teacher,professor and some other people. Usually they do this because they don't want to admit that they have make mistakes. For example, a teacher is solving a math equation using completing the square method but there is some error in the solution. A student raise their hand to say that the teacher's wrong but instead of admit his/her own mistake they say "who's the teacher here? Me or you?."


8. Magnitude error: This type of error happen when the thinker can't or forgot to include the problem on the larger scale. For example, since many of the "Mat Rempit" are male, preventing male from going outside at night might be logic as an answer. But on the larger scale, not all male is Mat Rempit. So the answer although it is logic, it can't be used as an answer to this problem.
9. Extreme thinking: This error happen when the thinker is pessimistic all the time. The pessimistic person always think of something bad although the thing is good. For example, if there is suggestion that weapon system should be introduce as one of a course in university, extreme thinker will say that if people take that course, the student will think like a terrorist and thus the next future leader is also terrorist and also cause the nation to approve terrorism.

I hope that all of us may avoid this error. Use your rational when dealing with any kind of situations and do not let anything affect your mind so that the errors in thinking may take place. That's all from me for this time. Thank you for reading.

Further reading:

http://www.psychology4all.com/Thinking-Errors.htm


http://www.educ.uvic.ca/epls/faculty/rowles/typesoferrors.htm


Abby Marks-Beale, “Study Skills, The Tools for Active Learning,”Chapter 13 Developing Critical Thinking Skills – Some Common Mistakes In Thinking,Delmar Publishers Inc.,1994