Question

1. Compare and contrast automatic and controlled thinking. Discuss the interaction of automatic and controlled thinking.

Answer 1

1.Automatic thinking is the spontaneous thinking that is unintentional, immediate, reflexive and effortless.

Whereas,

Controlled thinking is a deliberate process, that is intentional and requires effort

2. Automatic thinking doesn't require planning, information and is not a thinking process that requires awareness . It's the way that we think about ourselves and the world around us.

Whereas,

Controlled thinking is a planned, organized,fully conscious thinking process.It enables us to suspend information and give consideration to a variety of potential actions and their outcomes.

Interaction.

Most of the time we are we are engaged with automatic thinking,but when we face a novel situation we engage our controlled thinking for the solution of this novel situation in a planned manner with deliberate and intentional thinking. Once we successfully execute the planned process of controlled thinking we get familiar with it and it becomes the part of automatic thinking.

Example for this is our typing speed at the computer keyboard.We type spontaneously or automatically ,that seems to require no effort and awareness . But at the beginning when we were not familiarized with the keyboard,the effort was conscious and controlled,we looked for every single letter and character in the keyboard before typing it . Thus,it required an intentional and controlled thinking.