Question

Your readings discuss heuristics and cognitive biases which affect our thinking, reasoning, and decision-making processes.

Develop one or two paragraphs that presents a one-sided, simplified argument about some psychological issue. Examples might be a) low self esteem causes bullying, b) parenting/nurture is more important than nature, c) repressed memory/ memory recall claims, d) low self esteem is the cause of low academic success, etc.    

How did you use language, wording, and terminology to frame your one-sided argument?

What biases or mental short cuts were used in your explanations?

If you were presented with this argument, how could you refute the biases and suggest a more balanced explanation?

Answer 1

Self esteem is very essential for an individual’s psychological health and overall well-being. For an individual to excel in academics, there are multiple factors that come into play. Low self valuation of oneself may lead to failure or bad performance in many aspects of life, academics being one of them. Self esteem determines your life and everything you do. It also affects your mental health. A person who has low self esteem constantly discourages himself which lowers his belief in himself. It is hard for a person with low self esteem to excel in his studies because excelling in academics is not a one-step process. It requires goal setting and hard work by the individual and if he has low self esteem, then it becomes difficult for him to excel in academics because he will not have the necessary self confidence that is important to achieve these goals.

In most of the cases, external factors affect self esteem. If a student gets a low grade in his exams, then he loses confidence and that in turn, has an impact on his academics since it becomes difficult for him to believe that he has the capacity to do well. Eventually low self esteem makes the individual incapable of facing challenges.

In order to maintain self esteem, self serving bias comes into picture that helps the individual maintain a good image of himself. In the same manner, cognitive optimism also helps an individual to achieve his goals.

I used academic terms while writing this, such as goals and goal setting. Whatever I knew about self esteem, and my personal beliefs about this topic, attributed in forming the language and style of my written work. The observations I made about people whose low self esteem caused them to perform poorly in academics, served as biases in my explanation. If I was presented with this argument, I would lay more emphasis on the role of positive thinking and high regard of oneself in the improvement of one’s self esteem. In my opinion, that would make the argument much more balanced.