Kisha
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is seen throughout our life every day. I have not given much thought to the emphasis that is put on being argumentative until I started reading the class material. This also had a huge impact on the articles I read as well. The Washington Post article titled (Why do we feel compelled to fight about everything). Brought to light a story about teachers encouraging their students debate in arguments where only a few of the more outspoken students would end up sharing their views while the majority would either stand to the side watching or decide to not participate at all. This type of debate makes for the goal to end up being not to lose the argument as opposed to finding a resolution. With our whole world being set up in a kind of pro con, or with or against attitudes, it pushes us from a young age to see this as the best way to resolve disputes. Everywhere from the school yard to our politicians, to our justice system is set up this way. It is the way our world works. To change this, would put a change in motion in all of the above categories I mentioned. If we change the ways our lawyers litigated and switched our focus to actual conflict resolution instead of argument winning, overtime it would not only lead to disputes being handled with more empathy for both sides, but would require us as people to think deeper about conflict.