Analysis of Poor Thinking in Daily Life: Examples and Implications

This essay provides an analysis of poor thinking as it manifests in daily life. It explores various cognitive biases, including unfalsifiability, confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, representative heuristics, and ego depletion, using real-world examples to illustrate each. The essay examines how people are often swayed by advertisements with unfalsifiable claims, how confirmation bias leads to selective interpretation of information, and how representative heuristics cause misjudgments based on superficial similarities. Additionally, it discusses how ego depletion affects willpower and how motivated reasoning shapes biased conclusions. The author uses examples such as beauty cream advertisements, social media interactions, misconceptions about global warming, dieting, and smoking to highlight the detrimental effects of poor thinking on individuals' decision-making processes and overall well-being. The essay emphasizes the importance of critical thinking skills to avoid falling prey to these cognitive biases.

Running head: ANALYSIS OF POOR THINKING IN DAILY LIFE
ANALYSIS OF POOR THINKING IN DAILY LIFE
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1ANALYSIS OF POOR THINKING IN DAILY LIFE
Poor thinking is a result of many stressful situations that occur in the daily lives of
people. They fail to critically and logically analyze a particular situation. As a result of poor
thinking, individuals create unnecessary stressful situations in their daily lives that affect their
mindset and emotions negatively. Poor thinking involves unfalsifiability, confirmation bias,
motivated reasoning, representative heuristics, and many more. Various daily life examples can
be found where there are instances of people exhibiting poor thinking. This paper aims to
examine such daily life examples that illustrate poor thinking of people.
People often believe what they see on their television screens. The advertisements that
they come across are often the best examples of unfalsifiable claims. They believe in claims that
are not true (Herley, 2016). One such example is the advertisement regarding beauty creams that
claim to reduce wrinkles and rejuvenate the skin within weeks. Females watching the
advertisement are lured by the advertisements. These advertisements often use the popularity of
actors to send their message. Popular female actors are hired as brand ambassadors of the
product, and they too agree to advertise the product for the money. The way the advertisements
are portrayed attracts the females in such a way that they fall prey to the false claims made by
them. The advertisements show that they have new technology that would reduce the pimples
and wrinkles on the skin, giving a feeling of a younger version of self. The people watching the
advertisement believe in the claims and go forward and buy the product. It is a wastage of money
and a clear example of how people because of their poor thinking affect not only their minds but
also their health too. Such unfalsifiability is the result of the absence of critical thinking skills on
the part of those watching such advertisements. They blindly believe what is shown on their
screens and are lured by the thought of looking beautiful as those Hollywood actors.

2ANALYSIS OF POOR THINKING IN DAILY LIFE
Confirmation bias is another result of poor thinking. This occurs when people are fixed
upon a particular belief and interpret the situation according to those set belief patterns. They
ignore information that threatens to invalidate their opinions (Allahverdyan & Galstyan, 2014).
Any new evidence is used to prove the thought processes and beliefs that the person already
believes in that reinforces their personal biases and stereotypes. An example of confirmation bias
that can be seen in daily life is in social interactions. This is an age of science and technology
where people have become active more in the virtual world than in the real world. They spend
most of their time in social media applications where they reach out to people from across the
globe. As such, various texting applications help connect individuals online. It has been seen that
when people text somebody, and they do not receive a reply from the other party, they indulge in
many kinds of assumptions that may not necessarily be true. Any person may believe that the
person is not replying because they must be busy. However, some others may believe that they
did not reply because they do not like them. They are confirmed of this interpretation and cannot
seem to take any other explanation. This is because one had already made a confirmation that the
person did not like him or her, and therefore the lack of response seemed to confirm their
preconceived idea. This damages many relationships because of a lack of communication.
Representative heuristics is another bias that occurs when people get confused about the
outcome due to the similarity of the objects. They make the mistake of believing that two similar
objects are more closely related than they are (Dale, 2015). In daily life, various examples of
representative bias are found. For instance, some believe that a cold winter is an indicator of the
absence of global warming. Because the winter was harsh, it made it difficult to lead in their
daily lives; it does not mean that there is no presence of global warming. Winter that is harsher
than it usually is becomes an indicator of global warming itself. It is the resultant of the change

3ANALYSIS OF POOR THINKING IN DAILY LIFE
in climate patterns that led to such cold winter conditions. The sea level is rising, and the glaciers
are melting. These are evidence that global warming is real that threatens the existence of all
living beings on earth. People believing in such claims show patterns of poor thinking that
ultimately becomes a threat to their families and the community at large. Therefore,
representative bias is also another excellent example of poor thinking by people.
Ego depletion occurs when individuals are unable to exert the same level of willpower on
any task. It is a theory that states that willpower is like a muscle that can both be strengthened
and fatigued (Yam, Chen & Reynolds, 2014). People do not find the willpower to do any work
when they exhaust themselves from doing a similar kind of task. For example, dieting is a perfect
example of ego depletion sabotaging willpower of the person. Many people are seen to follow
their diet diligently to maintain a healthy body. They have a healthy breakfast and lunch and
even refrain from snacking during their office hours. However, when they return home after
hours of toiling in the office, they lose their willpower to follow their diet and can no longer have
self-control. As a result, they indulge themselves in snacking and having their favorite food that
they were missing out on. This is a classic example of ego depletion where the individual
expended such a considerable amount of mental energy during the day that he or she could not
resist the urge during dinner. This is poor thinking because it ultimately affects the health of the
individual negatively. This may even create feelings of guilt in the person.
Motivated reasoning is a type of reasoning where people construct and evaluate
arguments that ultimately serves their biased conclusion or opinion about a matter. They use
such strategies of reasoning that help them draw conclusions that they want to draw (Baekgaard
& Serritzlew, 2016). The best example of motivated reasoning that is seen in daily life is
smoking. People know that smoking is bad for health, and it is a cause of many deadly diseases

4ANALYSIS OF POOR THINKING IN DAILY LIFE
like cancer. Nevertheless, they still indulge in smoking and drinking because they may believe
that life is worthless without such pleasures. They may believe that there is no meaning to life if
they do not enjoy it according to their terms. Death is inevitable; people will eventually die;
therefore, there is no harm in smoking and drinking as long as they enjoy it. This kind of
reasoning serves as a basis for poor reasoning that makes individuals make bad decisions. This
hurts their health and even their family members to a certain extent. People access such
motivated reasoning when they feel that their self-worth or their understanding of the world is at
stake. Therefore, they use motivated reasoning to bolster their self-esteem.
Thus, from the above analysis, it can be concluded that there are various examples of
poor thinking that can be seen in the daily lives of people. Unfalsifiability, confirmation bias,
representative heuristics, ego depletion, and motivated reasoning are only a certain few examples
of poor thinking that people exhibit in their daily lives. It is essential that people use their critical
thinking skills so that they do not fall prey to false claims simply to boost their self-esteem.

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References
Allahverdyan, A. E., & Galstyan, A. (2014). Opinion dynamics with confirmation bias. PloS
one, 9(7).
Baekgaard, M., & Serritzlew, S. (2016). Interpreting performance information: Motivated
reasoning or unbiased comprehension. Public Administration Review, 76(1), 73-82.
Dale, S. (2015). Heuristics and biases: The science of decision-making. Business Information
Review, 32(2), 93-99.
Herley, C. (2016). Unfalsifiability of security claims. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 113(23), 6415-6420.
Yam, K. C., Chen, X. P., & Reynolds, S. J. (2014). Ego depletion and its paradoxical effects on
ethical decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision
Processes, 124(2), 204-214.