Thinking, Logic…

• People tend to believe what they want to believe.
• People tend to project their own biases or experiences upon situations.
• People tend to generalize from a specific event.
• People tend to get personally involved in the analysis of an issue and tend to let their feelings overcome a sense of objectivity.
• People are not good listeners. They tend to hear selectively. They often hear only what they want to hear.
• People are eager to rationalize.
• People are often unable to distinguish what is relevant from what is irrelevant.
• People are easily diverted from the specific issue at hand.
• People are usually unwilling to explore thoroughly the ramifications of a topic; they tend to oversimplify.
• People often judge from appearances. They observe something, misinterpret what they observe, and make terrible errors in judgment.
• People often simply do not know what they are talking about, especially in matters of general discussion. They rarely think carefully before they speak, but they allow their feelings, prejudices, biases, likes, dislikes, hopes, and frustrations to supersede careful thinking.
• People rarely act according to a set of consistent standards. Rarely do they examine the evidence and then form a conclusion. Rather, they tend to do whatever they want to do and to believe whatever they want to believe and then find whatever evidence will support their actions or their beliefs. They often think selectively: in evaluating a situation they are eager to find reasons to support what they want to support and they are just as eager to ignore or disregard reasons that don’t support what they want.
• People often do not say what they mean and often do not mean what they say.