think about your thinking

© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau1

Think About Your Thinking

Mental Models


Do you agree?

• Pretty girls are often dumb.

• Students in the leading universities are more intelligent.

• Students with good grades are also well-behaved.

• Good grades guarantee big money in the future.

• Wealthy people live luxuriously.


Warm-up Activity

Draw a scientist on a piece of paper.


Is This How You Would Picture a Scientist?

Is it like him?


You are Not Alone!

The majority of people (be it a child, a teen or an adult), when asked to draw a scientist, they would include the following features in their paintings:

Male

Wearing a white laboratory coat

Wearing a pair of glasses

Messy hair and thick eyebrows

Alone


What are Mental Models?

Mental models are concepts that are unconscious and have become “automatic”.

We hardly ever stop to think over our “thinking methods”.

When examining our thinking processes, we must pay attention to the following three aspects:

Assumptions

Beliefs

Biases


Why Do We Need to Think About Our Thinking?This is because we may:

Not be aware we are making assumptions

Not be aware of our beliefs

Hold negative view towards others

The above may lead to mistakes/unsound judgements.

Take drawing a scientist as an example, we all tend to have a set of rigid ideas about the features of a scientist. These ideas are what we call mental models.


Other Examples of Mental Models

• Pretty girls are often dumb.

• Students in the leading universities are more intelligent.

• Students with good grades are also well-behaved.

• Good grades guarantee big money in the future.

• Wealthy people live luxuriously.


Is it Easy to Change One’s Mental Models?

People tend to seek information that confirm their prior beliefs.

In other words, we do not want to evaluate information that runs counter to what we believe

is true!

This is called Confirmation Bias.

No!


Superstition: Does Putting a Curse on Someone Actually

Work?

Suppose that we know we are cursed, we will pay special attention to our surroundings to see if something unfortunate will happen.

Thus, the happening of such events will confirm our belief that the “curse works.”

This is an example of confirmation bias.


Stereotypes

We often have impressions about a group of people based on the image of what the people in that group are like. These impressions are deep-rooted and can be:

Wrong;

Unreasonable;

Or based on wrong thinking.


Practise & Use Critical Thinking More Often

Examine your own mental modelAvoid confirmation biasUse critical thinking in your

daily life

think about your thinking

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