Compare and contrast dualistic thinking with relativistic thinking and commitment within relativistic thinking, referring to William Perry's Harvard University study

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In William Perry's study on the development of epistemic cognition—our reflections on how we arrived at facts, beliefs, and ideas—younger Harvard undergraduate students regarded knowledge as made up of separate units (beliefs and propositions), whose truth could be determined by comparing them to objective standards—standards that exist apart from the thinking person and his or her situation. As a result, they engaged in dualistic thinking, dividing information, values, and authority into right and wrong, good and bad, we and they. Older students, in contrast, had moved toward relativistic thinking, viewing all knowledge as embedded in a framework of thought. Aware of a diversity of opinions on many topics, they gave up the possibility of absolute truth in favor of multiple truths, each relative to its context. As a result, their thinking became more flexible and tolerant. Eventually, the most mature individuals progress to commitment within relativistic thinking. Instead of choosing between opposing views, they try to formulate a more personally satisfying perspective that synthesizes contradictions. When considering which of two theories studied in a college course is better, or which of several movies most deserves an Oscar, the individual moves beyond the stance that everything is a matter of opinion and generates rational criteria against which options can be evaluated. By the end of the college years, some students reach this extension of relativism. Adults who attain it generally display a more sophisticated approach to learning, in which they actively seek differing perspectives to deepen their knowledge and understanding and to clarify the basis for their own perspective.