Persuasive Speech Paper

Discussion Board Requirements – Spring 2019 • The general discussion entries should be used to offer your opinion about a topic covered in the current Chapter. Feel free to disagree with information from the text but if you do, you must offer some explanation as to why you believe the text is wrong. • Your general discussion board post needs to be 350 words or more. I would suggest you include a question at the end of your post to help inspire discussion and/or debate. • When responding to another post, your response may be shorter but wimpy posts will not receive full credit. You cannot simply say you enjoyed their post or that you agree with them. Chapter 3 – Textbook not arrived yet. Please refer to the PowePoint

*** Choose any topic to discuss from the current Chapter reading *** Student 1 Post: Chapter 3

I used to think that how we see ourselves was pretty much just based on our self-esteem but

after reading Chapter 3 I know that our self-concept involves so much more than that. I also never

realized that our self-concept played such a big role in how well we perform in life. It is intriguing how

fast the brain reacts to stimuli in our environment and processes it to form lasting conclusions that have

significant impacts in our lives.

I interpret the familiar phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” as meaning not to let your first

impressions cloud your judgement, in other words keep an open mind. Say for instance you are out with

a group of friends and decide to eat at Restaurant A at 5 o’clock. When you get there you see very few

cars and when you are seated at your table, you see very few people dining. On the other hand right

next door is Restaurant B which is packed. This signals to you that the reason why Restaurant A is

deserted is that the food and or the service is bad, so you draw the conclusion that the whole

experience will be bad. As a result, when one minor thing goes wrong while at Restaurant A, you

overreact to the situation or get aggravated quicker than if the same mishap were to occur at

Restaurant B, which you have no negative thoughts about. Had you have kept an open mind, your night

out with friends could have been much more pleasant. From experience, we all know that being open

minded can be a lot easier said than done. Chapter 3 explains the reasoning behind this with several

well developed elements.

As soon as you drew the conclusion that the whole experience at Restaurant A would be bad,

you experienced what is called the primacy effect, in that you were quick to form an opinion about the

restaurant based on your very first observations about it.

Selective attention is similar to the familiar term selective hearing in that you process some information

while leaving out other information based on what you deem noteworthy. This concept describes why

you failed to notice that the waitress gave you a 10% discount off your meal because of the mishap. As

humans we want to have support in our outlooks, so we tend to pay attention to the concepts that go

along with our views and ignore those that are against them.

You engage in a form of stereotyping when you come to the conclusion that from here on out

you won’t go to any restaurants that are not full during peak meal times because they are deserted for a

reason.

Chapter 3 describes these concepts in terms of people, but I have stretched them to fit the

scenario. All these things happen without us even trying, we can’t stop the brain from doing so but we

can minimize the effects by being aware that they exist and having a good understanding of our self-

concept. Looking back on this situation, you can see and learn for future outings that your

preconceptions are not always correct and by standing firm in them you can miss the good around you.