Compare and contrast dualistic thinking with relativistic thinking and commitment within relativistic thinking, referring to William Perry's Harvard University study
What will be an ideal response?
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.
You might also like to view...
Because of the adolescent's development of __________, the balance of power in the relationship between parents and adolescent becomes more __________ toward the end of adolescence.
A. metacognitive skills; in favor of the adolescent B. cognitive skills; in favor of the adolescent C. autonomy; egalitarian D. prefrontal cortex; in favor of the parents
What do Karen Horney, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler all have in common?
a. ?They all emphasized the idea of a collective unconscious. b. ?They all disagreed with Freud’s idea of operant conditioning. c. ?They all disagreed with Freud’s emphasis on instinctual sexual drives. d. ?They all emphasized the importance of birth order in personality development.
Skinner believed that personality involves a systematic study of the unique ______________ history and unique genetic background of the individual
Fill in the blank(s) with correct word
Which of these beliefs were popular in the Victorian era?
a. pleasurable aspects of sex should be denied b. women should be viewed as asexual c. wives engage in sex only to perform their "wifely duties" d. all of the above