I was leaving home to go to church that morning and it seemed like it could rain and I could get wet, but then something at the back of my mind reminded me that there are times that it looks like it could rain and it never rains. Any decision that I would make, that is, going to church or not solely depended on whether it would rain or not. After giving the whole issue much thought, I decided to go anyway and it never rained that day and so I never got wet. I used conditional reasoning to arrive at my decision.
I must attest to the fact that some of the reasoning techniques that I used were more effective than others. For instance, I kept reasoning in line with denying the consequent. When making a decision denying the consequent may make a person take a risk (Nisbett 2013). Or so I thought, ‘If it will rain, I will get wet’ but then I assumed that if it would not rain, then I would not get wet and I would have accomplished my mission.
This kind of reasoning was more effective than the rest because the rest could have led me to, not to go to church. I was very careful with the questions I asked myself concerning what would have happened if I would get rained on and if I would not go to church. The risks are normally high and I had to make sober decisions no matter the outcome. Denying the consequent meant that I had to think of the opposite of the possibilities and this makes a person take the risk anyway (Buss 2005). Contrary to denying the antecedent, affirming the consequent and affirming the antecedent, denying the consequent makes a person take a step into the opposite direction, therefore taking a risk (Matlin 2013).
References
Buss, D. M. (2005).The handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. New York: John W3illey & Sons.
Matlin, M. W. (2013). Cognitive Psychology, 8th Edition. International Student Version. New York: John Wiley & Sons
Nisbett, R. E. (2013). Rules for Responding. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
