Overcoming Obstacles to Critical Thinking - Business Decision Making - ثاني ثانوي

Lesson 2 Chapter 3 www.ien.edu.sa Overcoming Obstacles to Critical Thinking You develop critical thinking as a skill over time through practice and repeated application. Learn to recognize typical obstacles to critical thinking so you can anticipate and work through them. Table 3-1 lists the do's and don'ts for over- coming obstacles to critical thinking. case Omar is not convinced that the travel company you're both working at needs to promote the Dammam tours more aggressively. When he checked the advertising expenses, he found the Dammam tours are already being promoted heavily. He asks you to help him find the root of the problem, which will require additional critical thinking. You prepare to overcome typical obstacles so you can help Omar find a solution. TABLE 3-1: Overcoming obstacles do's and don'ts Guidelines Avoid egocentric thinking Recognize social conditioning Understand outliers Avoid normalization Respect emotions Do • Be aware of your own point of view . Challenge yourself to move beyond your social conditioning and consider alternative ways of thinking and interpreting • Understand that past extreme experiences can bias future behavior • Look past the tendency to normalize ideas • Question and challenge thoughts and beliefs when appropriate • Respect your emotional reactions to arguments Don't • Don't assume your point of view is the norm or exclusively right • Don't let social conditioning prevent you from considering unpopular alternatives • Don't let past experience necessarily determine your reactions to similar experiences in the future • Don't keep critical thinking separate from creative thinking • Don't give emotion more weight than logic and reason QUICK TIP Being flexible, adaptable, and open minded when working with others helps you avoid egocentric thinking. Essential Elements 1. Avoid egocentric thinking Being egocentric means seeing the world from your own point of view, assuming you are the norm or center. This thinking limits your ability to appreciate other points of view or see past your limitations. 2. Be aware of your social conditioning Social conditioning encourages you to accept the beliefs, traditions, and values of your social group. Social conditioning helps you feel part of the greater whole, but it can also prevent you from considering unpopular alter- 78 3 Chapter رة ا Ministry of Education 2024-1446 95198_book_PP1.indb 78 07/05/2024 10:57

natives. Challenge yourself to move beyond your social conditioning and consider other ways of thinking and interpreting. DEFINITION Social conditioning: Conditioning that encourages you to accept the traditions and values of your social group. Social conditioning helps you feel part of the greater whole, but it can also prevent you from considering unpopular alternatives. 3. Identify outliers Past experiences with other people, places, and situations that are extremely good or bad are outliers. They can bias your expectations in the future. For example, if your first experience flying in a commercial jet involved stormy weather, turbulence, and rough landings, you might not want to fly again. However, that flight was an outlier, so you should not expect future flights to be similar. DEFINITION Outlier: A piece of data in a set that is much larger or smaller than the other values in the data set, or an experience that is extremely good or bad. QUICK TIP If you notice yourself accepting a common idea without much consideration, you have likely normalized it in your mind. 4. Avoid normalization People who assume that their ideas are normal because they have been exposed to them repeatedly are normalizing the ideas. Critical thinking looks past the tendency to normalize and requires you to question your own thoughts and beliefs. Critical thinking, like creative thinking, demands that you see problems with a fresh perspective. In fact, keeping critical thinking separate from creative thinking can be an obstacle to solving problems. See Figure 3-3. FIGURE 3-3: Creative and critical thinking Creative thinking Critical thinking وزارة التعليم Ministry of Education 2024-1446 Business Decision Making S1 S2 S3.indb 79 Openness Evaluation to innovation Curiosity Description Classifying Invention Synthesis Imagination Comparisons Reasoning through logic Reasoning through analogy Analysis Thinking Critically 79 30/06/2023 14:28

5. Respect your emotions Respect your emotions, but consider their logic and appropriateness for the decisions that you are trying to make. Avoid emotional thinking, which makes it difficult to distinguish between emotions and thoughts. Critical thinking and feeling Pioneering research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is using 3D visualization to help provide a better understanding of how brains function. Interest in the field of neuroscience has soared in Saudi Arabia in recent years, with facilities including KAUST's Visualization Core Lab leading the way in new research and scientific. publications. These research projects are part of a wider international effort to understand the human mind. Rational thoughts and emotional feelings are usually considered as separate mental processes, perhaps even occurring in opposite sides of the brain. In early brain. studies, scientists said that the rational mind is like a computer, and computers do not have feelings. Recently, however, researchers have discovered that we cannot understand how we think without understanding how we feel. Neuroscientists studying people with brain injuries that prevent them from perceiving their emotions have found that they cannot make effective decisions. Researchers, using sophisticated imaging techniques to monitor brain. activities, find that decisions involve emotional reactions as well as logical thought. YOU TRY IT Practice overcoming obstacles to critical thinking by reacting to a scenario. Complete the following steps. 1. Get ready Read the following statement and the reactions to it. Each reaction includes an obstacle to critical thinking. Statement: The travel company you're working at can increase tour sales by promoting Dammam tours more aggressively. Reactions: 1. I really think promoting Dammam tours is the right solution to the com- pany's problem. And I am usually right. 2. Everyone in the travel business believes that increasing promotion results in increased sales. 2. Now you try it Identify the obstacle in each reaction. 80 Chapter 3 Ministry of Education 2024-1446 Business Decision Making S1 S2 S3.indb 80 30/06/2023 14:28

| REVIEW QUESTIONS 1. Which of the following is not an obstacle to critical thinking? a. Normalization b. Creative thinking c. Social conditioning d. Being egocentric 2. What is an outlier? a. An extreme experience in the past b. Someone far outside the norm c. An emotional reaction to a logical problem d. A goal in critical thinking وزارة التعليم Ministry of Education 2024-1446 Business Decision Making S1 S2 S3.indb 81 Thinking Critically 81 30/06/2023 14:28