dialectical thinking

Examples of dialectical thinking in the following topics:

• Cultural Influences on Perception

  • In Eastern cultures, the dominant cultural script is grounded in "dialectical thinking" and seeking to find a middle way by experiencing a balance between positive and negative emotions.
  • For example, ethnographic accounts suggest that American mothers think that it is important to focus on their children's successes while Chinese mothers think it is more important to provide discipline for their children.
  • The Egocentric bias causes individuals to think more positively about themselves than others think of them.
  • The Halo effect causes individuals to think favorably or disfavorably on an individual due to general traits.

• Cognitive Development in Adulthood

  • Unlike earlier concrete thinking, this kind of thinking is characterized by the ability to think in abstract ways, engage in deductive reasoning, and create hypothetical ideas to explain various concepts.
  • This kind of thinking includes the ability to think in dialectics, and differentiates between the ways in which adults and adolescents are able to cognitively handle emotionally charged situations.
  • Early adulthood is a time of relativistic thinking, in which young people begin to become aware of more than simplistic views of right vs. wrong.
  • The need for specialization results in pragmatic thinking—using logic to solve real-world problems while accepting contradiction, imperfection, and other issues.
  • Cognitive ability changes over the course of a person's lifespan, but keeping the mind engaged and active is the best way to keep thinking sharp.

• Cognitive and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies

  • The category refers to behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and therapies based on a combination of basic behavioral and cognitive principles and research, including dialectical behavior therapy.
  • Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) works to solve current problems and change unhelpful thinking and behavior.
  • CBT assumes that changing maladaptive thinking leads to change in affect and behavior.
  • Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a form of psychotherapy that was originally developed to treat people with borderline personality disorder (BPD).
  • The example in this image depicts a common cognitive bias known as black-and-white thinking, in which someone may think in terms of false dichotomies of always/never or right/wrong with no room for grey areas in between.

• Dialect and Vocal Variety

  • Some of the more common dialects are as follows:
  • What dialect do you speak?
  • Are you currently living in your native dialect area?
  • Since there are so many dialects of English, it is difficult to say that one dialect is better than another.
  • All dialects have communicative value within the particular dialect community; it is when the person moves out of their home dialect community that they may encounter negative evaluation.

• Theory

  • This process involves setting goals, thinking, planning, experimentation, reflection, observation, and review.
  • However, these dialectical entities must be integrated in order for learning to occur.
  • Perhaps critical thinking and reflection may refine ideas or lead the individual to consider alternate possibilities.

• The Conflict Perspective

  • Based on a dialectical materialist account of history, Marxism posited that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, would inevitably produce internal tensions leading to its own destruction.
  • Marx rejected this type of thinking and termed it false consciousness, which involves explanations of social problems as the shortcomings of individuals rather than the flaws of society.
  • Marx wanted to replace this kind of thinking with something Engels termed class consciousness, which is when workers recognize themselves as a class unified in opposition to capitalists and ultimately to the capitalist system itself.

• Perceptual Constancy

  • In speech perception, vowels and consonants are perceived as constant even if they sound very different due to the speaker's age, sex, or dialect.
  • This famous optical illusion uses size constancy to trick us into thinking the top yellow line is longer than the bottom; they are actually the exact same length.

• Classical Greek Philosophy

  • When he was on trial, he used his method of elenchos, a dialectic method of inquiry that resembles the scientific method, to demonstrate to the jurors that their moral values are wrong-headed.
  • While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real.

• Bibliography

  • A common focus of the work is Vygotsky's fascination with and study of the development of higher-ordered thinking in human beings.
  • He sees humans as distinct from animals because we engage in a dialectical, adaptive form of development, thus rejecting a behaviorist or Piagetian view of human intellectual development.
  • In Thought and Language, (also known as Thinking and Speaking), originally published in 1934, Vygotsky presents his belief that although the development of thought and language are similar processes, they are independent of one another and develop separately.
  • According to Vygotsky, egocentric speech among young children is basically thinking out loud because children have not learned to internalize their thoughts.

• Kongo

  • The group is identified largely by speaking a cluster of mutually intelligible dialects rather than by large continuities in their history or even in culture.
  • Nkondi (plural minkondi, zinkondi or nkondi with mi-concords, according to dialect) religious objects , frequently called "nail fetishes" because users often hammered nails into them, were made by the Kongo people of West Central Africa.
  • Nkondi, like other minkisi, are constructed by religious specialists, called nganga (plural nganga, also zinganga and banganga according to dialect).