Cognitive dissonance

This is a persuasive paper in which you choose a topic you wish to explore, and take a position. You will research and summarize the arguments in favor of your position, articulate the arguments against your position, and combine evidence and reason to justify your claims and support your position.

A literature review is not a summary but a synthesis of the material you have read. The idea is to take your sources and organize them in some way that informs the reader about the ‘state of knowledge’ regarding the topic you wish to write about. This requires that you pull your sources together in a way that explains to the reader why the issue/topic/problem you have identified is worth studying, and concludes with a position statement or hypothesis that is expressly stated and supported by the evidence.

Be sure to cite all sources using APA format, and include a final Works Cited page for all articles referenced. Your paper should be approximately 8-12 pages in length. Critical thinking requires students to think through situations, facts, and issues in an open-minded and objective way, in an effort to analyze and evaluate information in an informed manner.

Your paper will be evaluated in this context. Qualities of a critical thinker (and of arguments that embody critical thinking) include: Certainty- is not always necessary for a critical thinker; possibility and probability should always be a consideration—in other words, just because the article tells you it is true, doesn’t mean that there may not be another solution or possibility to consider. The way that facts relate to one another—and not just fact alone—should be used to determine truth. Critical thinkers are not only independent thinkers; they are also fair-minded in that they are willing to consider all points of view, and they are careful to take every aspect of an argument into consideration—your way of thinking may not necessarily be the only correct way. Consider other perspectives. Consider evidence (facts), source (from what source did your evidence come from), and motivations (what might be the underlying motivation behind these facts)—in other words, gather information from credible sources and evaluate these sources/factual information in the context of what you aim to discuss/evaluate.