Automatic Attitudinal Response

The top 5 things that influence what, why, and how I believe are:

1. My family and how I was raised  
2. My Religion (Mormon)   
3. My friends
4. My personal life experiences (good and bad) 
5. My personality 

Just because something appears one way doesn't always mean it's the right way. Whether you're right or wrong, I believe that it's important to gain perspective and try to look at something from another persons point of view. You might be asking yourself, "Well if I'm right then why does it matter to try and look at another persons point of view?" Important to remember: Just because you listen to someone else opinion does not mean you have to agree with their opinion. Here's a few reasons why I think it is vital to try and understand why other people think the way they do:

 

• You might learn something new
• Maybe you're looking at it the wrong way
• A new perspective never hurts
• Now you better understand someone else and have increased empathy and influence with them
• It's the right thing to do
• You gain respect from the other individual 
• More trust can be established through listening to someone else's opinion 

Something I have tried to do is be the least judgmental of a person as I can. Which at times can be hard, especially because EVERYONE judges everyone automatically. It's hard for me too because I fall into a stereotype of being labeled automatically judgmental simply because I am a Mormon. (Apparently were the worst). For this reason I try extra hard to listen and prove that I am not one of those people who think's you are a bad person just because you did something that is contrary to my beliefs. Because to you, it may be completely okay. I don't know what you know, and you don't know what I know. This is a reason why it is so vital to try to understand where other people are coming from.

Something else I would like to talk about is media. In today's world, it can be difficult to discern between fact and fiction. When it comes to my personal Automatic Attitudinal Response, I believe that this is something I struggle with. In my On The Media 1 Post, "The Game Has Changed", I talk a lot about Buzz-feed and their so-called "fake news" against Trump.

"When the news is focused on stories that do not have all the facts, it distracts from other important news. Maybe this is what the media wants? For this reason, it's difficult for me to take what is said on the news seriously. Which brings up another big issue. If there was something major happening in the world, I might not take as proactive of action because to me, it's just the news being the news, exaggerating and not giving me the whole truth, so why worry? How can we trust the news and what can we trust exactly?" - (OTM 1 - "The Game Has Changed")

I have a hard time listening to the news because to me, I have seen so much fake news it has almost become more normal to receive fake news than actual news. I realize this is not the best way to look at news because it may take away from something important in my life. Maybe this can be somewhat positive? I am questioning the news, but maybe a little too much. I believe that it is important to searach out all different sources to enable yourself to know as much as possible about a given topic on the news to be able to form the best educated opinion about that topic.

The difficult thing is, I don't know if what I am "searching out is true or not, so why bother? This is an automatic attitudinal response I have developed over the course of learning more and more about what fake news is, I will be the first to admit, I talk about searching out all different types of sources. but I don't usually do it to the fullest extent. This is something I need to work on in order for me to truly make a valid argument. Otherwise the argument I am making could be something I read that was completely fabricated, thus, making me extremely hypocritical. This is exactly the type of behavior that I am trying to avoid.