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The Funny Thing About Adversity By David Desteno

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The Funny Thing About Adversity Recently, I was reading an article that is called “The Funny Thing About Adversity” which is written by David DeSteno who is a psychology professor at Northeastern University. DeSteno’s purpose is to convince the reader that experiencing hardship makes a person sympathetic or unsympathetic depending on the case of hardship that person has experienced, and being a compassionate does not occur by chance. DeSteno makes two primary claims: one is by illustrating that if an individual has lived through unpleasant events, that person will be familiar with the difficult situations involved, which would lead a person to be sympathetic. The second claim is that it is incorrect to believe if someone has experienced the same struggle that you experienced, he might not lend a hand due to the fact that there is a glitch in the human’s mind that makes people forget about their own past hardships. Initially, DeSteno begins his argument by providing the opposite of his claim, which is an excellent method to persuade his readers. Since, he uses scientific studies that demonstrate adversity is linked to many types of negative mental outcomes as nervousness and unhappiness. Then DeSteno smartly shifts to support his claim by trying his best to argue the scientific studies’ outcomes, by referring to the result of past real event, as the collapse of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-powered plant within Japan, where people even in the middle of their individual

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