Microsoft Word Chapter 1 done doc

 
 

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4.3.4 Thought Suppression : 
Human beings can manage to keep some thought out of 
their consciousness. This is called as thought suppression. If 
certain thoughts are disturbing, we can stay mentally healthy by 
keeping them out of mind. Thought suppression can be achieved in 
two stages: (i) Monitoring Process: this is an automatic monitoring 
process, which identifies an unwanted interrupting thought.
(ii) Operating Process: this is an effortful, controlled process to find 
other important thought to distract from the disturbing thought. 
Individuals engage in thought suppression by influencing their 
feeling or behaviors.
4.3.5 Magical Thinking : 
 
Suppose your friend offers you chocolates that have shape 
of insect, or cockroach. Will you eat that chocolate..? Most probably 
no. if you think rationally, the shape of the chocolate does not 
decide the contents. But still you will not, this is because of magical 
thinking. Magical thinking involves assumption that does not hold 
under rational scrutiny, but still individuals believe in them. One of 
the examples of it is, if two things resemble in external appearance, 
then they share similar fundamental properties. The plastic or 
rubber model of snakes or lizard can also create panic among the 
people.
Magical thinking involves assumption that does not hold 
under rational scrutiny 
 
Positive view of Social Cognition : 
From the earlier discussion it appears that we are making 
only errors in thinking. Look at various kinds of heuristics that 
human beings use and various kinds of errors we make in social 
thinking. This provides a vey grim view of social cognition. As if we 
are making all judgments and decision irrationally. But in reality, we 
are processing huge amount of social information. And still, most of 
the time, in our social interactions, we are making useful and 
efficient judgments. It is also true that we are cognitive misers, and 
lazy about using rationality, but these rules of thumb often give us 
useful judgments. So we need not feel that this is making our life 
worse. It is certainly bringing some limitation to human thinking, and 
hence we are not becoming machines that process information, 
computers. This is what gives humanness to human thinking.