While I try to stay as objective as I possibly can on various topics of discussion, my personal experiences and influences are major factors in the attitudes that I automatically have. This semester we have been discussing a lot of things about President Trump, as we rightfully should. It is important for citizens to be critical and analyze the words and actions of a new president, especially one like Trump.
To be honest, I recognize that I don't have a positive attitudinal response towards Trump. I see Trump as the rough business man who was the host of the Apprentice, not really the President of the United States. My responses for the On The Media posts reflect how I think there are some negative aspects that are coming from the current President and his fellow government members. In my post for the Smoke and Handcuffs post, I expressed a great deal of concern (and fear) with how Trump handles Fox News and the effects that it has on his presidency. I back my concerns with information as to how I reach those conclusions, but they are still information that is catered to my personal views and biases. I could have posted more on the fact that it is admirable that Trump is attempting to accomplish various things during his time as President, which is true. However, I decide to focus more on the negative aspects about Trump's actions.
I'm not necessarily saying that my attitudinal response about Trump is automatically a logical fallacy, but rather that it is my primary and first response. There are many people, myself included, who sometimes don't take the time to look past the automatic attitudinal response and take all primary impressions as absolute facts. This is the real fallacy. Finding credible sources and using that credible information to back up claims aroused from the automatic attitudinal response is what individuals need to strive for. In my posts during this semester, I have tried backing up my claims and assertions with information that is found from other sources.
Instead of focusing on the information that conforms with my attitudinal response, I think that I need to also find information that goes against that attitudinal response that produces information that favors Trump. If I research both sides of the information, then I can come up with a more accurate and concise opinion about a wide range of topics. This is something that I know I could do better at to improve the validity and accuracy of my automatic attitudinal responses.
Luckily for me I haven't watched any shows of the Apprentice, I didn't even know that was a television show. So the odds are in favor of me who doesn't watch TV. However, like you mentioned it is hard to separate our experiences and our opinions from giving non-biases opinions. We will always be influenced by our automatic bias. Yet, as we search the news and other sources for more unbiases sources and more information we will be able to have a more well-rounded opinion. I think that if we want to prove our opinion right, or what we hope to be right if we look in the right places we will find all sorts of information to prove our way of thinking. With the internet there are 'facts' about everything, so if we search for it we will always be right. Maybe, we should try proving ourselves wrong so we can search for more sources to prove us wrong and then look at it as objectively as we can. If I wanted to love Trump or love Hillary I could look for sources to validate it. If I wanted to hate either of the two I could easily find sources to validate that.
ReplyDelete"There are many people, myself included, who sometimes don't take the time to look past the automatic attitudinal response and take all primary impressions as absolute facts. This is the real fallacy." Couldn't have said it better.
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