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Jessie Levering Cary Home for Children

Jessie Levering Cary Home for Children. Houses up to 25 boys and girls aged 9 to 18 Children are delinquent and often victims of abuse and neglect Many in alternative schools or simply expelled. Thinking Errors. Therapeutic teaching tool Shows how thinking goes wrong

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Jessie Levering Cary Home for Children

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  1. Jessie Levering Cary Home for Children • Houses up to 25 boys and girls aged 9 to 18 • Children are delinquent and often victims of abuse and neglect • Many in alternative schools or simply expelled

  2. Thinking Errors • Therapeutic teaching tool • Shows how thinking goes wrong • Errors applied to self-image and interpersonal relationships • Each is based on a common bias or fallacy • Thinking Errors provide a context in which to teach critical thinking

  3. Minimization • Shrinking a thing’s significance • E.g. downplaying a parent’s abuse • Involves dismissing contrary evidence • Is an example of confirmation bias • “Cerealogists” minimize the evidence that crop circles are manmade

  4. Magnification/Catastrophization • Exaggerating a thing’s importance • Catastrophization: extreme negative version • Magnification: Covering for a neglectful parent • Catastrophization: fear of flight

  5. Catastrophization • Extremely negative Magnification • Making one negative thing into a catastrophe • Hasty generalization and confirmation bias • Poor grasp of probability • Exploding the chances of an airplane crash based on the disasters on the news • Black holes and strangelets

  6. Emotional Reasoning • Claiming emotions justify a conclusion • Just a non sequitur • Feelings do not determine reality • Appeal to emotion fallacy

  7. Disqualifying the Positive • Ignoring positive experiences and dwelling on negative experiences • Ignore good grades to dwell on bad ones • Like Minimization • Cherry-picking the evidence • Ad hoc reasoning

  8. Mental Filter • Dwelling on a negative detail until it colors the entire view of reality • Prom night on sitcoms • Confirmation bias • The fallacy of composition • True of a part, true of the whole • Seen in mind-body dualism

  9. All-or-Nothing Thinking • The world is black and white • Any non-perfect success is a total failure • A false dichotomy • No other options considered, no grey area • Creationists love it

  10. Mind Reading • Claiming to know what someone else is thinking about you • Just an assertion with no evidence at all • All too common across the world

  11. Labeling and Overgeneralization • Two related Thinking Errors • Labeling: drawing a conclusion about a person based on a single occurrence • Overgeneralization: drawing a conclusion about a situation based on a single datum • Both are hasty generalizations • “All you skeptics are mean!”

  12. The Lesson • Interactive rather than lecture format • One hour long, taught to groups of children as they cycle through • Uses examples from the culture at large • Ideologically neutral • Important to teach fallacies without bias

  13. The Fun Part! • Welcome to class, boys and girls! • Please raise your hands • There will be candy involved if you behave • Don’t be like this guy

  14. Who Feels Psychic Today?

  15. The Experiment • Can be used as an example of: • Minimization • Maximization/Catastrophization • All-or-Nothing Thinking • A poor grasp of probability • Can you think of how all of these errors could be committed?

  16. A Boy and His (Dad’s) Bike • My dad engaged in lots of the Thinking Errors we just mentioned • I am still bikeless • What other error did my dad commit? • The evening news effect

  17. Ignoring the Evidence • That’s what it’s all about • People do not look at all of the evidence • Confirmation bias! • What evidence is ignored when one commits the Thinking Errors we’ve covered so far?

  18. Nessie Probably Does Not Exist

  19. Blatantly stolen from “Secrets of the Psychics” Who’s seen it? The watershed moment The kids see the Errors in action The Amazing Rip-Off

  20. The Big Thing • Thinking Errors can affect your own thoughts or state of mind • BUT…They can also have effects on what you do outside your head • Don’t misrepresent reality to yourself! • Is anyone feeling under the weather?

  21. Perception is Fallible! • Question your perceptions and judgments! • Don’t take anything as a given • You can always admit you were wrong or say “I don’t know.”

  22. Limitations • One hour is not enough time • Must, perforce, be somewhat cursory • The kids seem to get a lot out of it anyway • Some Thinking Errors don’t really fit • A number of important ideas and fallacies do not fit into this framework

  23. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. --Phillip K. Dick

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