...Barriers to Critical Thinking Natasha M. King Humanities 115 Heather Karberg Barriers to Critical Thinking The four w’s of life: who, what, when, and where, that make up your social and cultural self, will mold and develop how you view the world or think. It can determine whether you will see the glass half full or half empty. Most people will never questions why they believe what they do or why they think how they do, as it has been embedded into from birth by your environments. Unfortunately not questioning your perception or thinking can be limiting to your social and intellectual growth or create barriers in your critical thinking. There are many barriers in critical thinking, in this paper I will discuss how, projection and rationalization, have been barriers in my journey to critical thinking. Let’s first take a look at projection. Projection Projection is the defense mechanism by which we see in others a part of ourselves that we cannot accept and do not recognize. (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007). I have thought of myself as a person who can read people and a good judge of character. Perhaps instead of “reading” people, I was just able to recognize some of myself in others and adjust accordingly. Unfortunately, the adjusting may have come at the price of constantly having to formatting my thinking to fit other, which can hinder my ability to apply my thinking or decision making. The use of projection is a barrier that can be overcome by simply recognizing when you...
Words: 529 - Pages: 3
...Barriers to Critical Thinking When thinking critically, it is impossible to say that many of us have not come to some kind of barrier in our thought process. Not to say that we cannot overcome them though. All of us have opinions and ideas on just about everything and anything. And those opinions and thoughts could be something that is ingrained in your very being or something you picked up along your path. Those opinions and ideas could be holding you back from thinking critically, even though you may not be aware of it. Though there are more barriers that inhibit critical thinking then I can count on my fingers and toes, some familiar and popular barriers one may face are egotistical thinking, self-serving bias, and of course, emotional influences. The Ego Defense “Ego Defenses are psychological coping strategies that distort reality in order to protect ourselves from anxiety, guilt, and other bad feelings” (Goodpastor & Kirby, 2007, Chapter 2). In other words, refusing to accept that one has faults at all. Denial is the base of our egotistical thinking. We deny what we do not want to accept or feel. As a result, one can become close minded and arrogant in their opinions. This does not promote critical thinking. Instead, quite the opposite is occurring. Without an open mind and acceptance, how could anyone absorb any new information or even give other individuals views a chance? In order to overcome using the ego defense, one has to get past their own fears and learn...
Words: 955 - Pages: 4
...Enculturation, or the acquisition of traits and beliefs through family, friends, and geographical location, is a barrier to an individual’s ability to think critically. Enculturation occurs when an individual is influenced by their surroundings, and cannot critically think through situations that they disagree with. Examples of enculturation include cultural differences, such as polygamy; an individual who does not believe in polygamy may not be able to critically think about the topic. I would recommend that all individuals explore different cultures and perspectives. I have found that an open mind towards new and unfamiliar perspectives allows an individual to openly ingest new ideas. Self-concept, or the self-image that an individual holds of their self, is another barrier to critical thinking. Items related to self-concept are associations that an individual creates with a product or a cause. While associating with a product or cause is not a barrier, as examples of self-concept include individuals who buy a certain brand of vehicle, or an individual who associates themselves as an advocate of a particular dog breed. The barrier to critical thinking occurs when the individual cannot disassociate themselves from the associations they have made. A personal example of this is my association to Pit Bull advocacy groups; I own a Pit Bull, and I personally feel they receive an undeserved and uneducated negative stigma. While I associate myself as a Pit Bull owner, and believe they...
Words: 422 - Pages: 2
...Kimberly Thomas HUM/114 Barriers to Critical Thinking Belinda Moses 04/20/15 Barriers in critical thinking can be somewhat stressful. It can be difficult in certain situations for me to keep a level head. My biggest barrier is emotion. I generally try to keep my emotions under control when in a stressful situation. However, if I am angry or my feelings are hurt It just takes over and clouds my judgement. This also sometimes makes me think too hard about the situation over analyzing the wrong details trying to find an answer. It takes a while for me to begin becoming more rational and level headed again. Especially if it is something I feel strongly about. Another barrier that hinders my critical thinking skills is having ADHD. I have a very short attention span. If I am doing a homework assignment that I am not that interested in it is especially easy for my attention to quickly move to something else. This can be difficult but it is important for myself to stay on task and focus on what needs to be done. This barrier can be especially irritating when writing a long paper or reading a long chapter. I make myself take notes and quiz myself to make sure my attention is staying on track. Lastly, another barrier I have trouble with is procrastination. I am horrible about it. When dealing with information I don’t understand or looks hard I get intimidated easily making excuses as to why I need to wait to complete the assignment. Majority of the time when I finally work...
Words: 343 - Pages: 2
...Barriers to Critical Thinking One barrier to critical thinking is self-serving biases. Our actions do not need to be rationalized if the motives are good. But, even good motives can lead us into other thinking mentalities that can lead us to undesirable consequences and even pose a threat to our self-esteem. The characteristics of others even post a threat to our self-esteem. These ego threatening situations can cause us to form cognitive biases called self-serving biases. These biases reside in our thinking and perception, which help protect and enhance our self-esteem. Unfortunately, people lean towards seeing what they want to see and what they need to see to keep good positive feelings for themselves as people (Kirby, G. & Goodpaster, J., 2007). Another barrier to critical thinking is emotional influences. There are many aspects of emotional influences such as depression, anger and passion. Many studies of depression aid to the idea that irrational cognitions are correlated with depression. If an individual lets depression take over, the effect can alter their expectations and even cause a negative mentality to occur. Also, anger tends to alter emotional influences. Anger causes many negative relationships with others. It can show many irrational behaviors and thoughts. If anger leads to this we must lessen the impact it can cause. Having passion will aid if it is a positive impact of feeling. If the source of our passion is positive, then we...
Words: 433 - Pages: 2
...Critical Thinking Barriers Christian Kennemer April 13, 2915 Hum/114 Instructor Atkison There are many barriers that are known to distract you from Critical Thinking. Below you will read the three major barriers I personally experience when critical thinking and what I do to overcome them. Egotistic This barrier makes it very hard to Critical think. Individuals who have this barrier tend to be more self involved . I find it is hard to understand certain things that are unknown and gravitate to the ideas that are more familiar to me. In order for me to be able to open my mind to critical thinking I have to shut off any noise and think quietly to myself evaluate each and every option in order to establish the best and most educated option. I have tried many different methods over the years and this seems to work the best. Bias One of the main critical thinking barriers I have is Bias. Having a bias opinion towards something means that you have your own opinion and cant see past it. This does influence lots of my decisions and I wont see it any way but what is in my head. When I have to critical think I must remember to keep all bias opinions silent. With this being said I follow the same rules for critical thinking which is to sit in a quiet room with nothing to distract me. I write down all important information and and study the information for the best information Schedule Pressures The biggest barriers that I have when coming to critical thinking is scheduling...
Words: 373 - Pages: 2
...Barriers to Critical Thinking HUM/115 09-11-2015 Barriers to Critical Thinking The first barrier that influences my critical thinking would be stubbornness. I was raised by one parent in a Catholic family, which play a big part on in my beliefs and how I do my thinking and if the way I am doing things is working why change it. I recognize that my beliefs and opinions are very narrow when it comes to making critical changes or listening to people opinions. My strategy to overcome this barrier is to start taking into consideration other people opinions, points of view and relevant information. I will continue to work on being open mind because every day we are exposed to new ideas and when we must surround ourselves with different points of view to achieve critical thinking. The second barrier that impacts my critical thinking I would say is personal bias. Occasionally I will reject information if my mind perceives that the facts do not concur with the information just because of my vague way of thinking or an inclination of a different choice. If I do not believe a person possess the knowledge or intellectual capacity to think, my bias judgment will not allow the intake of any new ideas and relevant information. I am not always aware of my bias, but I know is there, and I know the several time when I am stuck in a learning situations, being bias is what is holding me back. I understand that I need to change my bias thinking, and I will do so by actually listen to the...
Words: 292 - Pages: 2
...Barriers to Critical Thinking The first barrier that influences my critical thinking is religion and enculturation. I grew up in the Baptist tradition and so did my family. A lot of what I learned and was taught was traditional to the Baptist denomination. Women were not allowed to preach and the way Sunday service was orchestrated was in a traditional and religious kind of way in all the Baptist churches in my home town. When I grew up and moved away, I joined a Baptist church, but got tired of the barriers towards women. So I switched to non-denomination. I looked at the Baptist denomination in a critical way that made me despise all Baptist churches. After doing some research, I learned that not all Baptist churches hold barriers against women and encourage and welcome the calling on a woman’s life to preach from behind the pulpit of their churches, which changed the way I thought and felt about the Baptist denomination as a whole. As this relates also to enculturation, people that belong to the Baptist denomination also have beliefs when it comes to marriage and raising children. It is a part of their culture as a whole. After doing research on Baptist marriages, the divorce rate is lower. According to author and Baptist pastor Glenn Stanton (2011), many people who seriously practice a traditional religious faith—be it Christian or other—have a divorce rate markedly lower than the general population. The second barrier that influences my critical thinking is self-serving...
Words: 483 - Pages: 2
...Barriers to Critical Thinking Ghazaleh Almassi HUM/115 April 20, 2015 Kimberly Long Growing up wasn’t the happy, bubby experience that my fellow friends were having. As an immigrant family, moving here from Iran when I was the age of 2, my parents had no experience in parenting but all the fear in the world. They left Iran in the peak of the Iran Iraq war and had no idea what they were doing, where they were going, or how they were going to do it. Their state of mind was simply survival. This didn’t set the best foundation for a functional, healthy family. Out of fear and terror, they tried to protect me by keeping me out of harms way. They whole motto was to protect me and keep me sheltered and this would keep me safe. This did not allow for me to make mistakes and learn on my own. Because of this, one of the external barriers I had was the both of my parents. It wasn’t until I turned 18 and I decided to rebel and revolt and learn and break through to make my own mistakes and experience the things that a teenager does, that things started to shift. This caused a huge uproar and constant battle in the family and then we started working with a therapist. The therapist explained to them that they had to cut the umbilical chord and let me fly. This postponed some of my critical thinking evolution and I made some mistakes that I should have learned at a younger age, but it was better late than never. An internal, emotional barrier I had was stubbornness. As far as the internal...
Words: 462 - Pages: 2
...Barriers to Critical Thinking Identify two barriers that influence your critical thinking. Write 100 words for each barrier, describing them and how you can overcome them. Two barriers that influence my thinking, in particular, are media and biases. Media serves as an external barrier and is very influence as well as serving as a hindrance. I must first admit that growing up media did not have an effect on me because it was not as developed. Now it has a negative effect on me because everything is displayed on there. The Internet, for example, is a great source to find information, but it also serves as a source for us to become ignorant. I find myself using a search engine to find out everything instead of using my natural resources like finding information in a book or getting lost on a road and using a map to find directions. Social media is also another negative impact. I use social media to keep in contact with my family and friends but often there is so much information on there it would be hard not to believe. Media serves as a hindrance, and most importantly it steals from using my brain and critically thinking. Before taking this class, I noticed that I should simply limit my time on media and use other resources for the information I need. The next barrier is biases, which serves as an internal barrier. A bias is a barrier that I feel I developed when I was young. It is something that you see family, friends, and everyone else around you doing. A bias is basically...
Words: 428 - Pages: 2
...External Barrier: Friends The external barrier that influenced my critical thinking skill is friends. Friends are considered to be one of the shaping agents in my life. They have become a factor of how I think based on times when making a decision or solving a problem in life. When I rationally think from past experiences, I’ve realized that my friends have the tendency to give their opinions and suggestions to hinder the way I handle certain situations. For example, the decision of whom I choose to date. Friends share bad or good stories of what they hear about this man, and I question if I should date him or not base on information given to me. It’s important the need to teach friends about thinking critically to overcome barriers. To help promote others to be critical thinkers, the need to participate critical thinking conversation helps sharpen critical thinking skills. For instance, when around friends, the conversation will be replaced with critical thinking activity such as puzzle-like games or talking points of debates. In addition, one way to overcome the external barrier of friends is to surround with new friends or mentors who are advanced critical thinkers (Ridel, 2015, pg. 54). Internal Barrier: Emotions The internal barrier that hinders my critical thinking skill is emotion. Ridel (2015) defines emotions to barriers of critical thinking as the act to “promote people ‘s impulsive actions that yield unwelcomed and counterproductive results (pg. 62).” It’s...
Words: 344 - Pages: 2
...Barriers to Critical Thinking Elissa Nava HUM/115 10/5/2015 Anthony De Vito Barriers to Critical Thinking I have recently been learning about Barriers that hinder Critical Thinking Skills. I believe that it is important to learn what might be impeding my ability to think critically if my goal is to improve those abilities. Two barriers that are keeping me from effective thinking critically are family and emotions. My family have been critical thinking barriers in my life. I grew up in with a very conservative family that went to church several times a week. As a matter of fact, my father was the music pastor in church. I even went to school at the church. People did not seem to ask many questions about the lessons we learned in church. My entire family would nod in agreement with the Pastor. We would go home and discuss what we learned in the service. The messages became common knowledge to me because I was fed them throughout the week. We were taught that questions the Word of God was wrong, that doubt was wrong. It was not until I grew older and lived on my own that I began to questions some of the things I was taught. It is important for me now to research on my own whatever I hear at church and not just accept it as truth because the pastor said it. I still ask my parents and family members for the opinion on issues and messages I her at church, but I couple that with my own reasoning and research. My emotions are definitely critical thinking...
Words: 510 - Pages: 3
...Barriers to Critical Thinking HUM/114 ~Chad Weeks~ Barriers to Critical Thinking One barrier to critical thinking is self-serving biases. Our actions do not need to be rationalized if the motives are good. But, even good motives can lead us into other thinking mentalities that can lead us to undesirable consequences and even pose a threat to our self-esteem. The characteristics of others even post a threat to our self-esteem. These ego threatening situations can cause us to form cognitive biases called self-serving biases. These biases reside in our thinking and perception, which help protect and enhance our self-esteem. Unfortunately, people lean towards seeing what they want to see and what they need to see to keep good positive feelings for themselves as people (Kirby, G. & Goodpaster, J., 2007). Another barrier to critical thinking is emotional influences. There are many aspects of emotional influences such as depression, anger and passion. Many studies of depression aid to the idea that irrational cognitions are correlated with depression. If an individual lets depression take over, the effect can alter their expectations and even cause a negative mentality to occur. Also, anger tends to alter emotional influences. Anger causes many negative relationships with others. It can show many irrational behaviors and thoughts. If anger leads to this we must lessen the impact it can cause. Having passion will aid if it is a positive impact of feeling. If...
Words: 420 - Pages: 2
...Barriers of Critical Thinking Barriers are objectives that one faces that hinders progress to one’s goal. With any goal one has a barriers one must overcome. Critical thinking is not an exception to this rule one must first recognize that there are barriers to overcome. One of the biggest external Barriers, and one which has the most impact, is the Media. Media is what you watch on television, what you read in newspapers, journals and magazines, and what you hear on the radio. Media has the most influence, because one cannot escape media; it is everywhere. At a young age, one is thought to rely on media; we simply absorb the information and not question it. Media is not a promoter of critical thinking; when one relies on media influence one loses the ability to think for one self. To modify this external barrier, one must limit the amount of media one chooses to view. One will seek out different media and question the source of the information being shared. Friends are another large external barrier. One tends to choose friends who share their same ideas and values; although these are great qualities for friendship, this is a horrible recipe for developing one’s critical thinking skills. Friends are the main factor in one’s social environment; which means, what one’s friends do or don’t do, one will also do. This is to say, modifying the external barrier means modifying ones friends. Encourage them to become critical thinkers and show them the necessary skills. One can...
Words: 334 - Pages: 2
...Barriers to Critical Thinking HUM/115 One external barrier that was evident in my home was the lack was the inability to even think I could ask my father a question. My father was the adult there for it was what he said and that was it. This was crippling for me, I did not get to grow up and be that child that asked so many questions and receive answers. What I did to cope with this void and barrier in my life was dive into gaming, though it was a temporary get away from reality; it was just what I needed, so I thought. Gaming bought me deeper into a place of emotional instability. To deal with and confront this barrier I used the “Self-Directed Replacement” (Ridel, 2015) method. As time went on in life I met new people who would begin to challenge my way of thinking. I met a man who gave me advice and shared wisdom with me on how to raise my children. I have a pastor who is finishing up his masters in family counseling (children, teens, marriages, young adults). These are the men who I have chosen to look at as role models and even impart some wisdom. My father, today, speaks to me more now than ever before. I love him, he took care of my three other brothers when my mom decided to walk out on us. One internal barrier was my emotions. It was easier for me to fill a void with gaming then begin to peel back the layers of my life and hurt. Gaming became my crutch and comfort; I allowed it to keep me in a state of quick fix. I was never really willing to critically think...
Words: 482 - Pages: 2
