biased thinking
Bias Influenced Thinking
I am constantly arguing with my sister Bobbi about her poor judgments in life. Recently she had her three kids removed from her care by child protective services and when she asked me for my help and opinion she was shocked to hear what I had to say. I argued that her bad choices in life were what lead to the removal of her children, but she just kept on arguing that someone just wanted to hurt her and that this was the way for them to hurt her. At the time her children were removed from her care she was living in a mobile home that had lost utilities due to nonpayment, she did not have a vehicle, the father of her kids had just gone to jail on drug related charges, and she was dating another man who she was putting before her kids. She was not taking care of her kids at all in my opinion. Her kids had head lice, they wore dirty clothes because she sold her washer and dryer for reasons I can’t understand, and she never had money to visit the coin laundry facility. She got government food assistance, but she was selling part of them for cash yet she never had money. I did what I could for her, but there comes a time when a person has to stop helping people who choose not to help themselves. I did talk to her at great length with my argument being that poor choices in life would always have negative consequences. I used all of her negative behavior to back up my argument to her. I believe that this could be labeled as negativity bias which is the tendency people have to weight negative information more heavily than positive information when evaluating things (Moore & Parker, 2012). I was letting all the negative decisions that she made influence my argument, but I honestly believe that everyone should understand that our negative actions in life will have negative reactions. Perhaps this could also be labeled as a belief bias involving availability heuristic. Availability heuristic involves unconsciously assigning a
I am constantly arguing with my sister Bobbi about her poor judgments in life. Recently she had her three kids removed from her care by child protective services and when she asked me for my help and opinion she was shocked to hear what I had to say. I argued that her bad choices in life were what lead to the removal of her children, but she just kept on arguing that someone just wanted to hurt her and that this was the way for them to hurt her. At the time her children were removed from her care she was living in a mobile home that had lost utilities due to nonpayment, she did not have a vehicle, the father of her kids had just gone to jail on drug related charges, and she was dating another man who she was putting before her kids. She was not taking care of her kids at all in my opinion. Her kids had head lice, they wore dirty clothes because she sold her washer and dryer for reasons I can’t understand, and she never had money to visit the coin laundry facility. She got government food assistance, but she was selling part of them for cash yet she never had money. I did what I could for her, but there comes a time when a person has to stop helping people who choose not to help themselves. I did talk to her at great length with my argument being that poor choices in life would always have negative consequences. I used all of her negative behavior to back up my argument to her. I believe that this could be labeled as negativity bias which is the tendency people have to weight negative information more heavily than positive information when evaluating things (Moore & Parker, 2012). I was letting all the negative decisions that she made influence my argument, but I honestly believe that everyone should understand that our negative actions in life will have negative reactions. Perhaps this could also be labeled as a belief bias involving availability heuristic. Availability heuristic involves unconsciously assigning a