Critical Thinking
...umer education. In chapter 2, consumer education is often not easily understood as it means different things to different people. The business of living in this modern world is complex and can be bewildering. We must learn to obtain information of goods and services, discriminate between different sources of information, understand the psychology of selling and advertising and also learn to shop wisely. Sometimes there are situations that make it difficult for us to understand where we should stand as consumers. Therefore, we should know and understand the rules of the game. We should know terms such as average, correlation, ranks and percentage. It is therefore important to articulate and understand both our responsibilities and rights as consumers. This chapter implies that we should use practical psychology and avoid being easily influence by others. Critical Thinking is thinking in pursuit of relevant and reliable knowledge and values about the world. It is reasonable, reflective, responsible, and skillful thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do. When we use applied psychology we then includes the entire process of obtaining, comprehending, analyzing, evaluating, internalizing, and acting upon knowledge. Applied Psychology Applied Psychology is concerned with enhancing the developmental processes and preventing developmental disorders in individuals. Over a period of time we use the knowledge-base and methods to aid the development of self or others in areas such as economics, social opportunities, physical, emotional, spiritual, and even in our cognitive abilities. We use it when dealing with our families, neighborhoods, and in our communities. In other words applied psychology also has to do with our behavior and mental processes. For example, listening to my ten year old son one day when he asked me what “crack” was almost blew my mind. I had learned in an earlier class how to talk and listen to a child. I learned that listening carefully also helps better understand what he really wanted to know as well as what he already understands. And it kept me from talking above his heads and confusing him even further. Before I answered him, I asked him what he thinks it is. He says, "I think it's something you smoke that makes you act funny," I then had a sense of his level of understanding and adjusted my explanations to fit. I gave him a straight forward answer. I believe when we don't provide a straight forward answer, kids make up their own fantasy explanations, which I think can be more frightening than any real, honest response we can offer later. We apply psychology to our everyday life and in extra curricular activities such as perception, learning, memory, and thinking. It heightens our sense of awareness, and helps us to evaluate the world of information in which we live. This is what applied psychology means to me. Automatic Thoughts and Deliberate Thoughts An experience of automatic thinking occurred one Saturday morning when I loaded a bunch of decorated flowers into the back of my truck to transport them to a wedding hall. The reception was to start at 12.00 pm that afternoon and the location was ten minuets away from my regular route to work. But after driving for 20 minutes and pulling into my parking space I realized that I was at work and not at the wedding reception. On the way back to the hall there was a traffic accident that took 15 minuets to clear the lane. It was very difficult and embarrassing to explain to the groom why the decorations were late. Because of repetitive thinking, going to work in the same route every day and thinking of all the tasks I had to do I missed my turn. I realize that I need to be more aware and deliberate in my thinking and not rely so much on habit...