Realizing the Errors in Our Thinking

Critical thinking starts from realizing that we can also be wrong. Critical action also starts from making a question on our behavior. Some people are often regarded that the truth believed is absolute. They forget to consider some possibilities that can make their mind wrong. In some ways, we may be right or wrong, but not completely. There is a point of error in every truth, and of course there is a truth in every mistake. Like Yin and Yang, in the white side there is a black dot and in the black side there is a white dot. So, for those of us who want to think more critical, let’s realize that we can also be wrong.

Generally, the way a person thinks is involving an intuition, experience, and knowledge. Intuition is a reflex from the sub consciousness that comes from experiences and knowledge. Experience is something in which we got from direct experience. Afterward, knowledge is an effort taken by someone to understand something new. It can be reached from reading books, taking a course, studying in schools, and so on.

These factors influence our behavior and attitude to some phenomena we look in real life. If we have experienced on one event, then we will be able to tell what we felt at that time. Experiencing certain event in our life makes us able to narrate deeply about the dynamics of it by psychological approach. As well as people who have the capability of determining of an event, they will be able to explain the dynamics of the event by scientific approach. Then Intuition, an automatic system of human mind, will be active when it relates to their experiences and knowledge.

Knowledge, experience, and intuition are formed because of several reasons. Those are social interaction, social identity, religion, group norms, and emotions. Social interaction enriches someone’s information in the way of many things. With whom he interacts, righteously it affects one’s perspective.

Social identity, as well as proven by several studies, is one of the biggest factors forming intuition, knowledge, and experience. Joining in a social group, it also relates to his activities and sense of ownership to that group itself. This social identity can take many forms, including religion. Social identity can also be felt by everyone in a country without having to know each other before. It happens because of people in a country have similar values, religions, norms, and nationalism. So, it is easy for them to feel connected to each other.

According to Benedict Anderson (2001), people in a state do not know each other. But they believed that people out there are similar to them. Because they regarded that people in other districts is believing something common about their belief. Then, that’s why the man called the father of nationalism and internationalism said that the State is an imagined community. Yet, they have the same spirit of national identity in their heart that has been constructed for a long time. That is the reason why many people are willing to die to defend their State. It can also encourage a number of violence in the name of their values, although not everyone in their group feels represented.

Besides, emotions also become an important factor in behavior and thought. Emotions are an impression of what they see and feel which will influence lots of behavior. For example, propaganda in the movie entitled “Pengkhianatan G30/S PKI” was very playful with the emotions of audiences.

The film describes the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia) was a cruel and creepy figure, who killed the Generals without mercy. Who is not afraid to see its scene? Especially, Children at that time also watched the movie. The fact that the deaths of the generals were only with bullet casings could not be rejected. It means that the party doing propaganda has an intention to reach out some emotions of the audience. After mixing emotions of audience, propaganda maker would create an anger of audiences. So, he constructed society to demonize PKI, and make a high wall between in-group and out-group in their perspective (Herlambang, 2013).

In conclusion, we often fail to think clearly. Several factors causing this error of thinking have been mentioned above. We call them as biases of cognition. There are many types of biases, but the six biases below are the most relevant to describe current condition in our society this day.

1. Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency of us to look for evidence believed without looking for other evidences which opposes our argument. Confirmation bias, the error of thinking, happens to us unconsciously in everyday life. For example, if we love one of the presidential candidates, we will only look for his goodness, but not for his badness. So, seeking information based on what we only believe is one of the cognition biases that would not be good for our mind, because we may reject any information might be the truth.

2. In-group Bias

In-group bias is person’s perspective regarding of his group as the best one. This perspective can be dangerous because it make the member of a group blaming other groups. The formation of this bias can emerge from various formations, like religion or organization belief. A group will be difficult to dissolve if both groups have a high level of in-group bias. This bias has been influenced by his social interactions with group members. The lack of knowledge about other groups highly increases this error. Moreover, the indoctrination carried out by a group strengthens prejudice and in-group favoritism. It is difficult to deny, in-group bias has been happened in Indonesia since presidential election in 2014. This bias steadily becomes a social practice to win the election. This problem culminates in the 2016 Jakarta Election when a number of citizenship demonstrates their opinion in Monas. If this problem continues, there will be a problem with the unity of our nation in future.

3. Neglecting probability bias

Neglecting probability bias is our inability to understand the dangers and risks existed. For example, we are more afraid of boarding a plane than a motorbike or car. Even though statistically, the chance of an accident while riding a motorbike or car is significantly greater than the plane. Yet, our minds cannot accept that because flying is an unnatural thing, rather due to an altitude of 35,000 feet. Another example is like our fear to terrorism. Sometimes we felt more afraid of being killed because of terrorism rather than chronic diseases caused by unhealthy behaviors. We see that terrorism is a very terrible action but ignores simple behavior that is not less deadly.

4. Status-quo Bias

This bias is usually used in social-economic-political terms. Status-quo bias is an opinion which regards that our condition today is more profitable rather than trying some changes. For example, we assume that our job this day is better than making an own business.

5. Negativity Bias

Negativity bias is our tendency to focus more on negative information than positive one. When we experienced good and bad experiences in one day, we will tend to tell about the bad news we experienced. For example, once we get special gift from our couple, but on the way to go home, we met a pickpocket who take our pocket. So, we will tend to focus and sad on the items taken by the thief, we ignored that on that day our partner also gives a special gift.

In conclusion, be aware of some weaknesses which might make our interpretations be wrong. Realize that we can also do some mistakes. Realizing mistakes in every single mind will make us think critically and not judge easily to someone else by only looking on his cover.

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