ENUMERATION OF FAVORABLE CIRCUMSTANCES
When constructing an argument, people have a tendency to count the pieces of evidence that support their view and to overlook the evidence that weighs against them. This sort of thinking is sometimes called the confirmation bias, and it is the driving force behind the enumeration of favorable circumstances.
Overview:
This flawed argument involves counting the “hits” and not the “misses.” For example, a sports fan wearing his or her “lucky jersey” might remember the one game that the home team lost when the jersey wasn’t worn, forgetting the many, many games that the team also lost when the jersey was worn. However, the enumeration of favorable circumstances has more dramatic impact that sports fandom.
Consider someone who finds a dozen websites that support his or her own position. “I must be right” the person wants to think, “because all these people agree with me.” This overlooks the dozen websites that disagree completely and the one million websites that take a position somewhere between these extremes.
In short, people have a tendency to ‘stack the deck’ in their favor, even without trying to be deceptive. Therefore, academic arguments need to be careful that they do not give in to this tendency.
Application:
Student writers need to be careful not to list only those bits and pieces of fact that support their own views. They need to be willing to look at the entire picture (or as close as they can get) and to reevaluate a stance based on what all of the evidence has to say (see Writing to Learn). Remember to consider the audience for most academic papers—classmates and instructors.
An instructor that assigns a paper is likely going to be aware of the evidence on a subject, and students who exclude inconvenient evidence are revealing that they did not do the research they should have, that they jumped to conclusions, or that they were unwilling to open their minds to other positions. None of those traits are typically rewarded in an academic setting.
Instead of ‘writing to win,’ students need to write to learn.
What to Avoid:
Avoid stacking the deck in your favor, and try to avoid selecting only the data points that support you. It will be tempting to look for evidence that supports your opinion and to focus only on listing reasons that you are right. This approach risks alienating readers, and—more importantly, in academic writing—it risks presenting a one-dimensional argument that fails to show an understanding of the issues at hand. Since many papers are assigned in order to cultivate an understanding of issues, one-dimensional arguments tend to be counterproductive.
When constructing an argument, people have a tendency to count the pieces of evidence that support their view and to overlook the evidence that weighs against them. This sort of thinking is sometimes called the confirmation bias, and it is the driving force behind the enumeration of favorable circumstances.
Overview:
This flawed argument involves counting the “hits” and not the “misses.” For example, a sports fan wearing his or her “lucky jersey” might remember the one game that the home team lost when the jersey wasn’t worn, forgetting the many, many games that the team also lost when the jersey was worn. However, the enumeration of favorable circumstances has more dramatic impact that sports fandom.
Consider someone who finds a dozen websites that support his or her own position. “I must be right” the person wants to think, “because all these people agree with me.” This overlooks the dozen websites that disagree completely and the one million websites that take a position somewhere between these extremes.
In short, people have a tendency to ‘stack the deck’ in their favor, even without trying to be deceptive. Therefore, academic arguments need to be careful that they do not give in to this tendency.
Application:
Student writers need to be careful not to list only those bits and pieces of fact that support their own views. They need to be willing to look at the entire picture (or as close as they can get) and to reevaluate a stance based on what all of the evidence has to say (see Writing to Learn). Remember to consider the audience for most academic papers—classmates and instructors.
An instructor that assigns a paper is likely going to be aware of the evidence on a subject, and students who exclude inconvenient evidence are revealing that they did not do the research they should have, that they jumped to conclusions, or that they were unwilling to open their minds to other positions. None of those traits are typically rewarded in an academic setting.
Instead of ‘writing to win,’ students need to write to learn.
What to Avoid:
Avoid stacking the deck in your favor, and try to avoid selecting only the data points that support you. It will be tempting to look for evidence that supports your opinion and to focus only on listing reasons that you are right. This approach risks alienating readers, and—more importantly, in academic writing—it risks presenting a one-dimensional argument that fails to show an understanding of the issues at hand. Since many papers are assigned in order to cultivate an understanding of issues, one-dimensional arguments tend to be counterproductive.
