1st Assignment
Discussion prompt: Parking Garage and Biases
Biases affect all of us, and we are all prone to committing fallacious reasoning at times. This discussion allows us to investigate some of our own sources of biases and ways in which we may be prone to fall for fallacious reasoning.
Prepare: Prior to answering this question, make sure that you have completed the “Parking Garage” and “Buying a Car” scenarios. Make sure to read Chapters 7 and 8 of our book, paying special attention to ways in which people are affected by biases (including the sections “Stereotypes” and “Purpose and Potential Bias” in Chapter 8).
Reflect: Think about why you made the choices you made in each scenario. Do those choices tell you anything about yourself and the way that you think? Would you do anything different if you were to do it again?
Write:
Address your experiences in each scenario in the following posts:
Part 1: Answer the following questions: Why did you take the route you did in the parking garage scenario? Did you notice that you had preconceptions about different types of people and situations? Could those types of preconceptions ever lead to problematic inferences?
Part 2: In the Buying a Car scenario, did you feel that the salesman had ulterior motives? Did they lead him to have any biases in terms of he wanted you to purchase? Point out some of the biases that you have in real life. Are you am interested party when it comes to certain types of questions? How does that potentially cloud your judgment? Relate your answer to the content about biases in Chapter 8.
2nd assignment
Car Salesman/The Graduate/Bias in media or life source.
Prepare: Prior to answering this week’s discussion, make sure you have completed the readings and Complete this week’s “The Graduate” and “Buying a Car” scenarios.
Reflect: As you worked through the scenarios, it probably occurred to you that the arguments you were presented with were likely to be biased. You may have noticed the use of rhetorical devices or even fallacies. On your own, find an example of an argument from a media source and evaluate it on the basis on this week’s readings. Remember that the goal of this discussion is not to agree or disagree with the argument, but to examine ways in which the argument is affected by fallacies, biases, and other potential problems. Simply being false is not a bias or fallacy. It will be helpful for you to use the specific concepts from your textbook in completing this discussion. In other words, if you think that an argument has a bias, fallacy, or other defect, it’s up to you to say which bias or fallacy it is.
Write: Complete all of the following with reference to specific concepts from this week’s assigned readings:
- Include a link or bibliographical information for the source in your discussion post.
- Determine the issue that is being discussed and the conclusion that is drawn on that issue.
- Explain any biases or fallacies you find in the source and discuss the source of those biases with specific reference to the textbook or other sources on cognitive biases.
- Identify any rhetorical devices that may be used to influence your perception of the argument.
- Discuss the credibility of the source of the argument.
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