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As we mentioned earlier, becoming a skilled critical thinker takes practice. To improve the level of your critical thinking, it is important to know where you are now.Review the stages of critical thinkers on pp. 28-37 in Ch. 2, Critical Thinking (Paul & Elder, 2012).Complete the Self-Analysis worksheet, based on observation and readings.———————————————————————————————————————————————————PAGES ARE BELOWChapter 2 The First Four Stages of Development: At What Level of Thinking Would You Place Yourself?Most of us are not what we could be. We are less. We have great capacity, but most of it is dormant and undeveloped. Improvement in thinking is like improvement in basketball, ballet, or playing the saxophone. It is unlikely to take place in the absence of a conscious commitment to learn. As long as we take our thinking for granted, we don’t do the work required for improvement.Development in thinking is a gradual process requiring plateaus of learning and just plain hard work. It is not possible to become an excellent thinker simply by taking a beginning course in thinking. Changing one’s habits of thought is a process that occurs over years, not weeks or months. The essential traits of a critical thinker, which we examined briefly in Chapter 1, will develop only through long-term commitment.Exhibit 2.1Most people have lived their entire lives as unreflective thinkers. To develop as thinkers requires commitment to daily practice.If we aspire to develop as thinkers, the stages all of us go through are:Stage 1  The Unreflective Thinker (we are unaware of significant problems in our thinking)Stage 2  The Challenged Thinker (we become aware of problems in our thinking)Stage 3  The Beginning Thinker (we try to improve but without regular practice)Stage 4  The Practicing Thinker (we recognize the necessity of regular practice)Stage 5  The Advanced Thinker (we advance in accordance with our practice)Stage 6  The Accomplished Thinker (skilled and insightful thinking become second nature to us)Stage 1: The Unreflective ThinkerAre you an unreflective thinker?We all are born—and most of us die—as largely unreflective thinkers, fundamentally unaware of the role that thinking is playing in our lives. At this Unreflective Thinker stage, we have no useful conception of what thinking entails. For example, as unreflective thinkers, we don’t notice that we are continually making assumptions, forming concepts, drawing inferences, and thinking within points of view. At this stage, we don’t know how to analyze and assess our thinking. We don’t know how to determine whether our purposes are clearly formulated, our assumptions justified, our conclusions logically drawn. We are unaware of intellectual traits and so are not striving to embody them.At this stage, many problems in our lives are caused by poor thinking, but we are unaware of this. We don’t question our beliefs or our decisions. We lack intellectual standards and have no idea what such standards might be. We lack the intellectual traits but are not aware that we lack them. We unconsciously deceive ourselves in many ways. We create and maintain pleasant illusions. Because our beliefs seem reasonable to us, we believe them with confidence. We walk about the world with confidence that things really are the way they appear to us. We judge some people to be “good” and some to be “bad.” We approve of some actions and disapprove of others. We make decisions, react to people, go our way in life, and do not seriously question our thinking or its implications.Although we don’t realize it, our egocentric tendencies at this stage play a dominant role in our thinking. We lack the skills and the motivation to notice how self-centered and prejudiced we are, how often we stereotype others, how frequently we dismiss ideas irrationally simply because we don’t want to change our behavior or our comfortable way of looking at things.Think for Yourself 2.1Reflecting on Your Knowledge of ThinkingMight you be at the Unreflective Thinker stage of development? Test yourself by writing your answers to the following:Describe the role that thinking is playing in your life. (Be as clear and as detailed as you can.)What was a recent assumption you made that you should not have made?What is a concept you recently formed that you previously lacked?List five inferences you made in the past hour.Name and explain a point of view you sometimes use to guide your thinking.Briefly describe how you analyze and assess thinking.Name some intellectual standards you use. Explain how you apply them.Explain the role of egocentric thinking in your life.Explain what you are doing to try to embody one or two of the intellectual traits.If you had trouble with your responses in the Think for Yourself exercise, you may well be at the Unreflective Thinker stage. If so, you do not need to apologize or feel badly about it; most people are at this stage and don’t know it. Traditional schooling and the way children typically are reared do not help people to become skilled thinkers. Often, parents and teachers themselves are unreflective thinkers. This is the product of a vicious circle. Unreflective persons raise unreflective persons. Once you explicitly recognize that you are at this stage, however, you are ready to move to the next stage. And when you move to the next stage, you may be close to breaking out of the vicious cycle of unreflectiveness. To do so requires that we become honestly reflective—that we begin to notice some problems in our thinking, that we begin to recognize that our thinking is often egocentric and irrational, that changes in our own thinking are essential.Honest reflectiveness leads to healthy motivation to change. It is functional and productive. You must not only see problems in your thinking but also have some sense of how you might address those problems. You must become reasonably articulate about what you have to do to improve. Motivation is crucial. Without a drive to change, nothing much of significance will happen.Stage 2: The Challenged ThinkerAre you ready to accept the challenge?We cannot solve a problem we do not own or deal with a condition we deny. Without knowledge of our ignorance, we cannot seek the knowledge we lack. Without knowledge of the skills we need to develop, we will not develop them.As we become aware that “normal” thinkers often think poorly, we move into the second stage of critical thinking development, the Challenged Thinker. We begin to notice that we oftenmake questionable assumptions;use false, incomplete, or misleading information;make inferences that do not follow from the evidence we have;fail to recognize important implications in our thought;fail to recognize problems we have;form faulty concepts;reason within prejudiced points of view; andthink egocentrically and irrationally.We move to the Challenged Thinker stage when we become aware of the way our thinking is shaping our lives, including the recognition that problems in our thinking are causing problems in our lives. We begin to recognize that poor thinking can be life-threatening, that it can lead literally to death or permanent injury, that it can hurt others as well as ourselves. For example, we might reflect upon the thinking ofthe teenager who thinks that smoking is sexy;the woman who thinks that Pap smears are not important;the motorcyclist who reasons that helmets obstruct vision and, therefore, riding without one is safer;the person who thinks he can drive safely while drunk;the person who decides to marry a self-centered person with the thought that he or she will “change” after marriage.We also recognize the difficulty involved in “improving” our thinking. If you are at this stage in your own thinking, you recognize that the problem of changing your habits of thought is an important challenge requiring extensive and difficult changes in your normal routines.Some signs of emerging reflectiveness are thatyou find yourself striving to analyze and assess your thinking;you find yourself working with the structures of mind that create, or make possible, thinking (for example: concepts, assumptions, inferences, implications, points of view);you find yourself thinking about the qualities that make thinking sound—clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, logicalness—even though you may have only an initial grasp of how to achieve these qualities;you find yourself becoming interested in the role of self-deception in thinking, even though your understanding is relatively “abstract,” and you may not be able to offer many examples from your own life.At this point in your development self-deception is a distinct danger. Many resist accepting the true nature of the challenge: that their own thinking is a real and significant problem in their life. If you do as many do, you will revert to the Unreflective Thinker stage. Your experience of thinking about your thinking will fade, and your usual habits of thought will remain as they are. For example, you may find yourself rationalizing in the following way: “My thinking is not that bad. Actually, I’ve been thinking well for quite a while. I question a lot of things. I’m not prejudiced. Besides that, I’m very critical. And I’m not nearly as self-deceived as lots of people I know.”If you reason in this way, you are not alone; you’re in the majority. This view—“If everyone were to think like me, this would be a fine world”—is the dominant one. Those who share this view range from the poorly schooled to the highly schooled. There is no evidence to suggest that schooling correlates with self-reflectiveness. Indeed, many college graduates are intellectually arrogant because of their schooling. Unreflective people are found in all socioeconomic classes and include psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, mathematicians, doctors, senators, judges, governors, district attorneys, lawyers, and, indeed, people of all professions.In short, absence of intellectual humility is common among all classes of people in all walks of life at all ages. It follows that active or passive resistance to the challenge of critical thinking is the common rather than the rare case. Whether in the form of a careless shrug or outright hostility, most people reject the challenge of critical thinking. That is why some soul-searching is important at this point in the process.Think for Yourself 2.2, 2.3Discuss the Challenged Thinker StageWork in groups of three. The person whose first name is earliest in the alphabet will explain the second stage, that of the Challenged Thinker, to the other two, answering any questions they might have. Then the other two in the group will add any features the first student missed and elaborate on the points they think are most important.Begin To Identify Problems in Your ThinkingSee whether you can identify any problems in your thinking. The best way to do this is to analyze a behavior of yours that somehow is creating problems, either for you or for others. Look at your personal relationships, your study habits, your interaction patterns. How do you behave when you are upset? How do you act when you don’t get your way? Do you expect more of others than you expect of yourself? Consider these questions as starting points for challenging yourself as a thinker. If you cannot identify any problems in your thinking, think again.Stage 3: The Beginning ThinkerAre you willing to begin?When a person actively decides to take up the challenge to grow and develop as a thinker, he or she enters the stage we call the Beginning Thinker. In this stage of thinking, we begin to take thinking seriously. This stage prepares us for the next stages, with the ultimate goal of explicit command of thinking. It is a stage of dawning realizations and of developing will power. It is not a stage of self-condemnation but, rather, of emerging consciousness. It is analogous to the stage in which people who are alcoholics recognize and fully accept the fact that they are alcoholics. Imagine an alcoholic saying, “I am an alcoholic, and only I can do something about it.” Now imagine yourself saying, “I am a weak, undisciplined thinker, and only I can do something about it.”Once people recognize that they are “addicted” to poor thinking, they must begin to recognize the depth and nature of the problem. If we are at the Beginning Thinker stage, we should recognize that our thinking is sometimes egocentric. For example, we may notice how little we consider the needs of others and how much we focus on getting what we personally want. We may notice how little we enter the point of view of others and how much we assume the “correctness” of our own. We may even sometimes catch ourselves trying to dominate others to get what we want or, alternatively, acting out the role of submitting to others (for the gains that submissive behavior brings). We may begin to notice the extent to which we conform uncritically to the thinking of others.As thinkers thinking about thinking, we are merely beginning toanalyze the logic of situations and problems;express clear and precise questions;check information for accuracy and relevance;distinguish between raw information and someone’s interpretation of it;recognize assumptions guiding inferences;identify prejudicial and biased beliefs, unjustifiable conclusions, misused words, and missed implications;notice when our viewpoint is biased by our selfish interests.Thus, as Beginning Thinkers, we are becoming aware of how to deal with the structures at work in thought (purposes, questions, information, interpretations, etc.). We are beginning to appreciate the value of examining our thinking in terms of its clarity, accuracy, relevance, precision, logicalness, justifiability, breadth, depth, and fairness, but we are still at a low level of proficiency in these abilities. They feel awkward to us. We have to force ourselves to think in disciplined ways. We are like beginners in ballet. We feel foolish adopting the basic positions. We don’t feel graceful; we stumble and make mistakes. No one would pay money to watch us perform. We ourselves don’t like what we see in the mirror of our minds.To reach this Beginning Thinker stage, our values must begin to shift. We must explore the foundation of our thinking and discover how we have come to think and believe as we do. Let us consider this goal in a little more detail. Reflect now on some of the major influences that have shaped your thinking (and ours):You were born into a culture (e.g., European, American, African, Asian).You were born at some point in time (in some century in some year).You were born in some place (in the country, in the city, in the North or South, East or West).You were raised by parents with particular beliefs (about the family, about personal relationships, about marriage, about childhood, about obedience, about religion, about politics, about schooling).You formed various associations (largely based on who was around you—associations with people with a viewpoint, values, and taboos).If you were to change any one of these influences, your belief system would be different. Suppose you had been born in the Middle Ages as a serf in the fields of France. Can you see that if you were, virtually all your beliefs would be altered? See whether you can perform similar reflective experiments of your own. For example, imagine other changes in these influences and then imaginatively compare some of the beliefs you likely would have with the beliefs you actually do have. You will begin to appreciate how much you, and every other human, are a product of influences over which you, and they, had little or no control. Neither you nor they directed these influences. Their effects, clearly, were both good and bad.For example, assume that many of these influences engendered false beliefs in us. It follows that our minds right now harbor false beliefs, and we are acting on them. Yet, notice that the mind has no mechanism for screening out false beliefs. We all carry around in our minds prejudices from our culture, from where we were born and raised, from our parents, and from our friends and associates. Finding ways to locate those flawed beliefs and replace them with more reasonable beliefs is part of the agenda of critical thinking. Another way to look at the forces, rational and irrational, that have shaped our minds is in terms of “modes of influence.”Think for Yourself 2.4Putting Yourself in Another Place in TimeImagine yourself in another place in time. Choose a different century, perhaps a different country, a different gender, a different socioeconomic group—in any case, an altogether different set of circumstances in which you might have lived. Complete the following:The time within which I am imagining that I live is . . .The details of the situation are (be specific) . . . If I had lived in this place in time, I most likely would hold the following beliefs (about religion, my country, sexual conventions and taboos, gender issues, relationships, people of different races, etc. Again, be specific) . . . For example, we think within a variety of domains: sociological, philosophical, ethical, intellectual, anthropological, ideological, political, economic, historical, biological, theological, and psychological. We ended up with our particular beliefs because we were influenced to do so in the following ways:Sociological: Our minds are influenced by the social groups to which we belong.Philosophical: Our minds are influenced by our personal philosophy.Ethical: Our minds are influenced by the extent to which we behave in accordance with our obligations and the way we define our obligations.Intellectual: Our minds are influenced by the ideas we hold, by the manner in which we reason and deal with abstractions and abstract systems.Anthropological: Our minds are influenced by cultural practices, mores, and taboos.Ideological and political: Our minds are influenced by the structure of power and its use by interest groups around us.Economic: Our minds are influenced by the economic conditions under which we live.Historical: Our minds are influenced by our history and by the way we tell our history.Biological: Our minds are influenced by our biology and neurology.Theological: Our minds are influenced by our religious beliefs and attitudes.Psychological: Our minds are influenced by our personality and personal psychology.Reflections such as these should awaken in us a sense of how little we really know about our own minds. Within each of our minds is a largely unexplored world, an inner world that has been taking shape for the whole of our lives. This inner world is the most important fact about us because it is where we live. It determines our joy and frustration. It limits what we can see and imagine. It highlights what we do see. It can drive us crazy. It can provide us with solace, peace, and tranquility. If we can appreciate these facts about us, we will find the motivation to take charge of our thinking, to be something more than clay in the hands of others, to become, in fact, the ruling force in our own lives.Think for Yourself 2.5Discuss the Beginning Thinker StageWork in groups of three. The person whose first name is last in the alphabet will explain the third stage, that of the Beginning Thinker, to the other two, answering any questions they might have. Then the other two in the group will add any features the first student missed and elaborate on the points they think are most important.Let’s now consider two lurking traps that can derail the beginning thinker:Trap # 1: The temptation of dogmatic absolutism—believing that truth is acquired not through reasoning and inquiry but, rather, through some predetermined, nonintellectual faith.Trap # 2: The temptation of subjective relativism—believing that there are no intellectual standards by which to judge anything as true or false.Both traps promise us easy answers. To advance as a beginning thinker and not fall into one or the other of these traps requires developing confidence in reason as a way of acquiring sound knowledge and insight. The two traps are mirror images of each other. If we become either a dogmatic absolutist or a subjective relativist, we lose our motivation to develop as a critical thinker. As a dogmatic absolutist, we end up following wherever our “faith ” leads us. As a subjective relativist, we will come to believe that everyone automatically acquires “his or her own truth” in some inexplicable subjective way. In both cases, there is no real place for the intellectual work and discipline of critical thinking. Both render critical thinking superfluous and free us from any intellectual responsibility.If we avoid these traps, if we recognize how we have been shaped by forces beyond our control, if we discover that skills are available to help us take charge of our minds, if we develop some initial confidence in reason, if we develop some intellectual humility and perseverance, we are ready to begin creating a genuine foundation on which we can rebuild our identity and character as thinkers and persons of integrity.The key question is how? How exactly can we do this? We shall focus on this question for the rest of this chapter. In a sense, it is the most vital goal of the entire book.Think for Yourself 2.6, 2.7Discuss Absolutism and Subjective RelativismWork in groups of three. The person whose first name is second in the alphabet will explain the distinction between absolutism and subjective relativism to the other two, answering any questions they might have. Then the other two in the group will add any features the first student missed and elaborate on the points they think are most important.Beginning To Develop as a ThinkerMake a list of some things you can do to begin your development as a disciplined thinker. Review Chapter 1 for ideas. Then answer this question: What do you think the benefits would be if you were to take this list seriously?Stage 4: The Practicing ThinkerGood thinking can be practiced like basketball, tennis, or ballet.The only way to move from Beginning Thinker to Practicing Thinker is to commit yourself to daily practice in thinking well and design your own plan for practice. When you do so, you become what we call a Practicing Thinker.There are many ways to design practice regimens, some better than others for you. For example, you might glance through some of the other chapters of this book. Each provides suggestions for improving your thinking. You can use any of these suggestions as a starting point.You might review the Think for Yourself activities. You might study the elements of thought, the standards for thought, and the traits of mind. You might analyze Chapter 10, on problem-solving, and Chapter 17, on strategic thinking. Think of it this way: Everything you read in this book represents a resource for you to use in devising a systematic plan for improving your thinking. As you move through the book, routinely ask yourself: What am I learning in this section or chapter that I can actively incorporate into daily practice?If you are like most people, you can discover some practical starting points. The challenge will be in following through on any that you find. This is the challenge in most areas of skill development: People do not usually follow through. They do not establish habits of regular practice. They are discouraged by the strain and awkwardness of early attempts to perform well.To develop as a thinker, you must work out a plan that will work for you, one you can live with, one that won’t burn you out or overwhelm you. Ultimately, success comes to those who are persistent and who figure out strategies for themselves.Still, at this stage, you probably don’t know for sure what will work for you, only what seems like it might. You have to field-test your ideas. To be realistic, you should expect to experiment with a variety of plans before you find one that moves you forward as a thinker.Guard against discouragement. You can best avoid discouragement by recognizing from the outset that you are engaged in a process of trial and error. Prepare yourself for temporary failure. Understand success as the willingness to work through a variety of relative failures. The logic is analogous to trying on clothes. Many that you try might not fit or look good on you, but you plod on anyway with the confidence that eventually you will find something that fits and looks good on you.Consider another analogy: If you want to become skilled at tennis, you improve not by expecting yourself to begin as an expert player, to win every game you play, or by mastering new strokes with little practice. Rather, you improve when you develop a plan you can modify as you see what improves your game. Today, you might decide to work on keeping your eye on the ball. Tomorrow, you might coordinate watching the ball with following through as you swing. Every day, you rethink your strategies for improvement. Development of the human mind is parallel to the development of the human body. Good theory, good practice, and good feedback are essential.A “Game Plan” for ImprovementAs you begin to take your thinking seriously, think about what you can do consistently to improve your thinking. Because excellence in thinking requires a variety of independent skills and traits that work together, you can choose to work on a range of critical thinking skills at any given point in time. The key is to focus on fundamentals and make sure you don’t try to do too much. Choose your point of attack, but limit it. If you overdo it, you probably will give up entirely, but if you don’t focus on fundamentals, you will never have them as a foundation in your thought.Start slowly and emphasize fundamentals. The race is won by the tortoise, not by the hare. Be a wise turtle. The solid, steady steps you take every day will determine where you ultimately end up.A Game Plan for Devising a Game PlanWe have put together a few ideas to stimulate your thought about a game plan. There is nothing magical about our ideas; no one of them is essential. Nevertheless, each represents a plausible point of attack, one way to begin to do something plausible to improve thinking in a regular way. Although you probably can’t do all of these at the same time, we recommend an approach in which you experiment with all of them. You can add any others you find in this book or come up with yourself. After you familiarize yourself with some of the options, we explain how this game plan works.Use “wasted” time. All humans waste some time. No one uses all of his or her time productively or even pleasurably. Sometimes we jump from one diversion to another without enjoying any of them or become irritated about matters beyond our control. Sometimes we fail to plan well, causing negative consequences that we easily could have avoided such as spending time unnecessarily trapped in traffic although we could have left a half hour earlier and avoided the rush. Sometimes we worry unproductively, spend time regretting what is past, or just stare blankly into space.The key is that the time is “spent,” and if we had thought about it and considered our options, we would not have deliberately spent our time in that way. So our idea is this: Take advantage of the time you normally waste by practicing good thinking during that interval. For example, instead of sitting in front of the TV at the end of the day, flicking from channel to channel in a vain search for a program worth watching, spend that time, or at least part of it, thinking back over your day and evaluating your strengths and weaknesses. You might ask yourself questions like these:When did I do my worst thinking today?When did I do my best thinking?What did I actually think about today?Did I figure out anything?Did I allow any negative thinking to frustrate me unnecessarily?If I had to repeat today, what would I do differently? Why?Did I do anything today to further my long-term goals?Did I act in accordance with my own expressed values?If I were to spend every day this way for 10 years, would I, at the end, have accomplished something worthy of that time?Taking a little time with each question is important. It would be useful to review these questions periodically, perhaps weekly, to write your answers in a journal and, in so doing, keep a record of how your thinking is developing.Handle a problem a day. At the beginning of each day (perhaps driving to work or going to school), choose a problem to work on when you have free moments. Figure out the logic of the problem by identifying its elements. Systematically think through the questions: What exactly is the problem? How can I put it into the form of a question? (See Chapter 10 for a template you might use.)Internalize intellectual standards. Each week, study and actively bring into your thinking one of the universal intellectual standards presented in Chapter 5. Focus one week on clarity, the next on accuracy, and so on. For example, if you are focusing on clarity for the week, try to notice when you are being unclear in communicating with others. Notice when others are unclear in what they are saying. When you read, notice whether you are clear about what you are reading. When you write a paragraph for class, ask yourself whether you are clear about what you are trying to say and in conveying your thoughts in writing.In doing this, you will practice four techniques of clarification: (1) stating what you are saying with some consideration given to your choice of words, (2) elaborating on your meaning in other words, (3) giving examples of what you mean from experiences you have had, and (4) using analogies, metaphors, pictures, or diagrams to illustrate what you mean. In clarifying thinking, you should state, elaborate, illustrate, and exemplify your points, and you will regularly ask others to do the same.Keep an intellectual journal. Each week, write out a certain number of journal entries. Use the following format for each important event you write about:Describe only situations that are emotionally significant to you (situations you care deeply about).Describe only one situation at a time.Describe (and keep this separate) how you behaved in the situation, being specific and exact. (What did you say? What did you do? How did you react?)Analyze, in the light of what you have written, what precisely was going on in the situation; dig beneath the surface.Assess the implications of your analysis. (What did you learn about yourself? What would you do differently if you could relive the situation?)Practice intellectual strategies. Choose a strategy from Chapter 16 on strategic thinking. While using that strategy, record your observations in a journal, including what you are learning about yourself and how you can use the strategy to improve your thinking.Reshape your character. Each month, choose one intellectual trait to strive for, focusing on how you can develop that trait in yourself. For example, if concentrating on intellectual humility, begin to notice when you admit you are wrong. Notice when you refuse to admit you are wrong, even in the face of glaring evidence that you are truly wrong. Notice when you become defensive when another person tries to point out a deficiency in your work or your thinking. Notice when your arrogance keeps you from learning, when you say to yourself, for example, “I already know everything I need to know about this subject,” or, “I know as much as he does. Who does he think he is, forcing his opinions onto me?”Deal with your ego. Daily, begin to observe your egocentric thinking in action by contemplating questions like these: As I reflect upon my behavior today, did I ever become irritable over small things? Did I do or say anything irrational to get my way? Did I try to impose my will upon others? Did I ever fail to speak my mind when I felt strongly about something and then later feel resentment?Once you identify egocentric thinking in operation, you can work to replace it with more rational thought through systematic reflection. What would a rational person feel in this or that situation? What would a rational person do? How does that compare with what you did? (Hint: If you find that you continually conclude that a rational person would behave just as you behaved, you probably are engaging in self-deception.) (See Chapter 11 for more ways to identify egocentric thinking.)Redefine the way you see things. We live in a world, both personal and social, in which every situation is defined; it is given a fundamental meaning. How a situation is defined determines how we feel about it, how we act in it, and what implications it has for us. Virtually every situation, however, can be defined in more than one way. This fact carries with it tremendous opportunities for all of us to make our life more of what we want it to be. In principle, it lies within your power to make your life much happier and more fulfilling than it is.Many of the negative definitions we apply to situations in our lives could, in principle, be transformed into positive definitions. As a result, we can gain when otherwise we would have lost. We can be happy when otherwise we would have been sad. We can be fulfilled when otherwise we would have been frustrated. In this game plan, we practice redefining the way we see things, turning negatives into positives, dead-ends into new beginnings, mistakes into opportunities to learn. To make this game plan practical, we should create some specific guidelines for ourselves. For example, we might make ourselves a list of five to ten recurring negative situations in which we feel frustrated, angry, unhappy, or worried. We then could identify the definition in each case that is at the root of the negative emotion. Next, we would choose a plausible alternative definition for each and plan for our new responses as well as our new emotions.Suppose you have a roommate who gets on your nerves by continually telling you about all the insignificant events in his or her life. Your present definition of the situation is, “What a bore! How am I going to last a whole semester listening to that brainless soap opera?” Your response might be: “Since I have to do a required research project for my introduction to psychology class, I will focus my project on the psychology of my roommate.” Now, instead of passively listening to the daily blow-by-blow description of your roommate’s day, you actively question him or her to gather information you can use in your psychology paper. Because you are now directing the conversation, your roommate is not able to bore you with the details of his or her day, and you transform your interactions into a learning experience.Another possibility is to redefine an “impossibly difficult class” into a “challenge to figure out new fundamental concepts and a new way of thinking.” For example: You redefine your initial approach to a member of the other sex not in terms of the definition, “His/her response will determine whether I am an attractive person,” but, instead, in terms of the definition, “Let me test to see if this person is initially drawn to me, given the way he or she perceives me.”With the first definition in mind, you feel personally put down if the person is not interested in you. With the second definition, you explicitly recognize that people initially respond not to the way a stranger is but, rather, to the way the person subjectively looks to the other. You therefore do not perceive someone’s failure to show interest in you as a defect in you.Get in touch with your emotions. Whenever you feel some negative emotion, systematically ask yourself, “What, exactly, is the thinking that leads to this emotion? How might this thinking be flawed? What am I assuming? Should I be making these assumptions? What information is my thinking based on? Is that information reliable?” and so on. (See Chapters 3 and 16.)Analyze group influences on your life. Closely analyze the behavior that is encouraged and discouraged in the groups to which you belong. For a given group, what are you required or expected to believe? What are you “forbidden” to do? If you conclude that your group does not require you to believe anything or has no taboos, you can conclude that you have not deeply analyzed that group. To gain insight into the process of socialization and group membership, review an introductory text in sociology. (See Chapter 11)Integrating Strategies One by OneWhen designing strategies, the key point is to engage in an experiment. You are testing strategies in your personal life, integrating them, and building on them in light of your actual experience. All strategies have advantages and disadvantages. One plausible way to do this is to work with all the strategies on the following list in any order.Use “wasted” time.Handle a problem a day.Internalize intellectual standards.Keep an intellectual journal.Practice intellectual strategies.Reshape your character.Deal with your ego.Redefine the way you see things.Get in touch with your emotions.Analyze group influences on your life.As you design strategies to improve the quality of your life, suppose you find the strategy “Redefine the way you see things” to be intuitive to you. Therefore, it’s a good strategy to begin with. As you focus intently on this idea and apply it in your life, you begin to notice social definitions within groups. You begin to recognize how your behavior is shaped and controlled by group definitions. You begin to see how you and others uncritically accept group definitions rather than creating your own definitions. Notice the definitions embedded in the following statements.“I’m giving a party.”“We’re going to have a meeting.”“Why don’t you run for election?”“The funeral is Tuesday.”“Jack is an acquaintance, not really a friend.”When you internalize this idea, you begin to see how important and pervasive social definitions are. When you more insightful about social definitions, you can redefine situations in ways that run contrary to commonly accepted social definitions. You then see how redefining situations and relationships enables you to “get in touch with your emotions.” You recognize that the way you define things generates the emotions you feel. When you think you are threatened (you define a situation as “threatening”), you feel fear. On the one hand, if you define a situation as a “failure,” you might feel depressed. On the other hand, if you define that same situation as “a lesson or an opportunity to learn,” you feel empowered to learn. When you recognize the control you are capable of exercising, the two strategies begin to work together and reinforce each other.You then might begin to integrate Strategy 10 (“Analyze group influences on your life”) with the two strategies you have already internalized. One of the main ways in which groups control us is by controlling the definitions they allow us to use. When a group defines some things as “cool” and some as “dumb,” members of the group try to appear “cool” and not “dumb.” When the boss of a business says, “That makes a lot of sense,” his subordinates know they are not to say, “No, it is ridiculous.” They know this because defining someone as the “boss” gives him or her special privileges to define situations and relationships. As a developing thinker, you begin to decide which groups you allow to influence your thinking and which group influences you reject.You now have three interwoven strategies: You “redefine the way you see things,” “get in touch with your emotions,” and “analyze group influences on your life.” The three strategies are integrated into one. At this point, you can experiment with any of the other strategies (which follow), looking for opportunities to integrate them into your thinking and your life.Use wasted time.Handle a problem a day.Internalize intellectual standards.Keep an intellectual journal.Practice intellectual strategies.Reshape your character.Deal with your ego.Think for Yourself 2.8Developing a Plan for YourselfFocusing on strategies 1–10, which you have just read, write out a basic plan for beginning your development as a thinker. List the first three strategies you will incorporate into your thinking and how you plan to do this. Be specific and detailed. Then at the end of each day, revisit your list and see how you are progressing. Add to your list as you internalize previously learned ideas.If you follow through on a plan, you are going beyond the Beginning Thinker stage; you are becoming a Practicing Thinker. We discuss this and the other two stages of development in Chapter 17.