Examples Of Conjugation Fallacy

According to the text, The Power of Critical Thinking, by Louis Vaughn, a fallacy is defined as, “An argument form that is both common and defective; a recurring mistake in reasoning (Vaughn, 561). Fallacies can be found in many places whether it is in the media, the workplace, or around your peers. Some fallacies contain the truth while others at a time can be false or misleading. It is essential to be able to identify fallacies because they can be used in many ways, some good some bad. Fallacies are used every day, whether it is to influence someone's opinion to agree with one side of an argument rather than the other or to draw in others by appealing to their emotions or authority. Today, I will be discussing three important fallacies and give examples of each. These fallacies include Genetic Fallacy, Ad Hominem, and Appeal to Tradition.

Throughout our lives, many of us are presented with difficulties and experiences that shape who we are and what we believe in. Eventually, these characteristics solidify, becoming the guiding force in our decision making. Many may argue that this conditioning to a certain behavior takes away the freedom of choice; all decisions are a direct cause of our habituation. This assumption is false; every choice we make with regard to the characteristics we take upon ourselves, or rather personal virtues, is a free choice. We choose our responses to stimuli, and eventually this habituation allows us to act within a set of bounds conforming to our identity and gives us even greater freedom by releasing us from the pain of indecision. By acting in accordance with our set of personal virtues, not only is one free through their choices, but they are also happy.

In reading "Mistakes were Made but Not by me," multiple accounts are given of traits exhibited by humans that are displayed subconsciously. The authors, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, begin by defining these traits and give readers the actual terminology to these characteristics. With various examples being provided to the reading audience they are then able to make a clear correlation between the behaviors displayed and how they may impact not only themselves but others around them. "Mistakes were Made but Not by me" has a theme which is centralized around the two key facets which are cognitive dissonance and self- justification.

People whose self-concept high incongruence makes their experience contradict with their self-perception. Relatively incongruent self-concept leads to recurrent anxiety. There for from this anxiety they display defensive behaviour in order to relate their experience with their self-concept so that it will seem quite accurate, i.e. they protect their self-concept by displaying defensive behaviour of ignoring, denying and twisting reality (Wieten, 2014).

In one experiment, involving various bad smells, it was noted that the participants that had been exposed to a mild-stink or strong-stink smell were more severe in their moral judgements than participants exposed to no bad smell. In all four experiments, the same results were obtained, participants that felt disgust were likely to be more severe in their judgments. This paper concludes that participants who believe in their intuitions were often tricked by outside forces, such as a bad smell. Noting this phenomenon, the paper suggests that self-awareness of these outside factors can help mitigate their effect. However, they also suggest it is not wise to completely remove somatic markers. In one study, the patients were not able to incorporate feelings and sensations into their decision making; as a result, the patients were unable to come to conclusions on any simple subject matter. The paper concludes that it is ok to rely on these intuitions even if they can be easily influenced, but it also says we must be aware of factors that can distort our intuitions. By following this methodology, one can mitigate making biased decisions due to his or her

Have you ever made a decision and later completely wonder why it is you made that decision? “Sway The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior” by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman examine moments of our lives where we could easily be swayed. The Brafmans discuss topics like commitment and value attribution. With examples of what attracts us into making a bad decision. The brilliant authors make it easy to understand the analyzations of the situations. Where there is a possibility of being swayed. With proper analyzation we can prevent these situations from taking place again. Almost everyone has made a decision we misunderstand and behind that decision is an irresistible pull of irrational behavior. No one is perfect, and no one can avoid being swayed into an irrational situation, not even me.

“The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions—especially the wrong ones—is an unpleasant feeling the Festinger called “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when ever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent, such as “Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me” and “I smoke two packs a day.” Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish.” (p.13)

The book Mistakes Were Made by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson is mainly about cognitive dissonance, responsibility, and self-justification. People will not listen to someone telling them they are wrong because then they would have to change their mindset. This is basically what cognitive dissonance is people cannot have two conflicting thoughts. This is why people can sometimes be so wrong and not realize it because they were self-justifying the wrong answer.

Nice post Garrick, It’s interesting to see how our thought motive our emotions and behaviors to react as a response in a good or bad way. When reading and learning about Cognitive therapy I discovered that there’s various disorder that comes along with cognitive distortion which may ignite or cause fuel by a person beliefs of the world causing an individual’s to respond in q erratic state. If there are signs of weakness, distortion, and biasedness the individual has a greater chance to have a disorder. In addition, a person with maladaptive responses may change by modifying their cognitive process. Although, an individual underlying may be cognitive schema or the common ground, and their beliefs pertains to themselves those beliefs may cause

Cognitive dissonance theory is based on several fundamental assumptions. One is that humans are sensitive to the inconsistencies between actions and beliefs. Accordingly, we all recognize when we are acting in a manner that is consistent with our attitudes. Secondly, the recognition will definitely lead to dissonance that will drive the persons involved to resolve the situation (Gladwell, 2005). This dissonance can be solved through change beliefs, change actions and change perception of action. The individual in this case has to be

The first approach to self-schema development we will evaluate is Self-Discrepancy Theory (SDT) (Higgins, 1987). In this theory self-schemas develop to drive the actual self (who somebody is now) towards the ideal self (who somebody wants to be) and the ought self (who somebody should be according to others). Reflected appraisals build a network of the actual self, and this knowledge is used to move towards the ideal and ought selves. Discrepancies between actual and ideal result in dejection, and discrepancies between actual and ought result in agitation (Higgins, Bond, Klein, &

Moreover, the second prediction of the study hypothesized that omission bias would not exist for positive outcomes, and omitted actions with positive outcomes would not be rated as good. Analyses of the scenarios found support for this finding, as both adults and children rated committed actions as good, but did not do so regarding omitted actions, in a positive outcome context. Although these findings are in line with the prediction, an intriguing trend can be observed in the adult responses to the omission-positive outcome (Graph 4). Specifically, it was expected that this action would not be rated as good, which was the observable trend; however, the same number of adults that rated the action as neither-good-nor-bad, also rated it as bad. This is surprising since the outcome had a positive ending, yet a portion of adults still deemed the preceding action as a negative one. The overall finding is still supportive of the prediction, as no adults rated the action as good; however, there could be two reasons as to why certain adults deemed the action as solely bad. Firstly, the design of the judgment choices could have caused certain adults to choose the action as bad, due to a lack of other choices, since there were only three categories to choose from. Secondly, certain

The difference between condition one and three is that condition three allowed the participants to self-affirm after finding out their verdict was in disagreement with the other group members. Festinger argues that the lack of choice adds consonant cognitions which reduce the overall amount of dissonance that otherwise would be experienced (Festinger, 1957, 1958; as cited in Matz & Woods, 2005). Additionally, the opportunity to self-affirm strengthens self-worth and thereby reduces the dissonance created when people’s actions threaten their personal integrity (Simon, Greenberg, & Brehm, 1995; as cited in Matz & Woods, 2005). Thus, Matz and Woods hypothesize that dissonance will be reduced by the lack of choice and the opportunity to self-affirm. The results show low levels of discomfort in the lack of choice and self-affirmation conditions, providing an explanation of the kinds of strategies people use to reduce dissonance.

The principal assumption of the theory regarding to Hogg and Vaughan (2011, p.214) “is that cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions (bits of information) that are inconsistent or do not fit together. So if people at the same time hold those two cognitions (thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, states of awareness of behaviour), which are psychologically inconsistent, then we experience dissonance. The theory also accounts for discrepancies between behaviour and attitudes. For instance, when people act in a manner that is inconsistent with their attitudes, then they experience tension. And how people can reduce this tension? Festinger (1957) suggested people have to do it by changing their attitudes so that they are in line with their behavior. The main way of reducing dissonance is attitude change. The theory propose that when we are dealing with two conflicting beliefs then we experience tension or an aversive state and a good example is military training. The military teaches and telling soldiers that when they kill the enemy its nothing wrong and killing them is a good thing but those same soldiers have a deeply natural and inborn belief that “thou shalt not kill”(Sturman, 2012) . Another example is about person who smokes cigarettes. Regarding to Stone and Cooper (2001) most people

Uttich and Lombrozo also studied the side-effect effect, but explained it differently than Knobe did. They said that the side-effect effect, the differences in ascribed mental states and traits pertaining to intentionality of an action, is due to the side effect’s norm status as opposed to moral status. They named this view the Rational Scientist view. While Knobe suggested the moral status of a side-effect influenced judgments on intentionality, Uttich and Lombrozo suggested that norm status is sufficient alone in producing the side-effect effect. Specifically, they said that norm-violating behavior that outweighs the reason to observe the norm is more informative in explaining intentionality of side effects compared to norm-conforming behavior. By default, people usually follow the norms, unless some sufficiently strong reason compels them to violate them. The Rational Scientist view is consistent with the Theory of Mind, in that internal states support explanation and prediction of behavior, but adds the vital role of norms in those predictions and explanations; moral norms affect Theory of Mind ascriptions by influencing mental state ascriptions.