Free Preference Of Similarity Critical Thinking Sample

We look at people around us in two different ways, those who are similar to us or different from us basing on factors such as race, ethnicity, religion, and class. We act differently towards these people in such a way that we support those who are like us and detest those who are different by being hostile to them. An experiment was conducted to determine similarity of preference in infants using puppets with similar clothing and it proved that they chose food from a puppet that had a clothing of the same color as their clothes.
I agree with this discovery because there are various researched works that have proved so and infants display this behavior in their character of similarity for preference. Before infant’s learn to speak, they begin to engage in some form of social interaction such as pointing of gestures. They do so to seek attention from people around them and this emerging ability to coordinate attention is known as joint attention which enables language interaction possible. This joint attention has been focused on as a foundation for social understanding known as theory of mind that is tied up with our participation in culture. These joint skills include pointing gestures and social referencing by an infant looking at the parents reaction. Manifestation of certain behavior show the basic level of social understanding thereby explain the reason why infants act in certain way they have copied from their parent. There are various reason infants act in a similar manner as people around them.
Infants want to resemble people and things that they associate with. According to cognitive theory of development, knowledge does not only consist of images and representations but getting to know what is done to the aspects of the world. He states that knowledge is significant to a child so since it solves problems related to nativisms and empiricism thatleads to similarity of prefernce in children. Although children grow up emulating their parents regardless of their characters, knowledge can prove to be very important so that they can distinguish a good deed from a bad one. Such children would do anything to be like their parents and in any case you tell them the opposite, they will be hostile to your attitude. Knowledge in their developement process is the only solution to such problems because they will get to undrestand other important matters in life rather thatn wanting to b like others. (Sjöberg, Derbaix & Jansson, 2008). A kid grows having in mind those things that he or she is the best and in the same way believing that only those people around him or her are the best. A white child might treat another white child with affection and support but the case is different when it is a child from a different race. He or she will treat the other kid with hostility because he or she is different from him or her. In such a case, preference of similarity is occurring.
Conservation in psychological development in children is used to refer to the understanding that a whole remains intact despite undergoing transformation. Since operative understanding of conservation is logical in nature, children who tend to lack this operative understanding of conservation are likely to be misled by the appearance of the transformation of a task. Such conditions lead to infants having a similarity of preference since they do not understand this operative (Fawcett, 2008). Any attitude or behavior that such parents displays will be emulated by the kid since they are following an example. We sometimes believe that we are always the best, so anything that is different is not of benefit to us. Having such mind results to an individual rejecting people with different reasoning from ours. In real sense, this is not the case because we are humans, and nobody is perfect thereby indicating that all ideas a way of thinking cannot be the same.
Human beings gain a preference of similarity because of the initial things that we get introduced to after we are born. In the first stage of cognitive development, infants interact with the world through a pattern of activities that later come to be differentiated and coordinated as they come to interact more with the world. The first experience of the world in centered upon the infants body, leading to egocentrism and during the first and second year this initial egocentrism is overcame due to assimilation and accommodation in the world (Mackinnon, 2009)
It is also true that infants’ preference for similar things is driven by an attraction towards similarity to self, by an aversion to difference from self, or whether both inclinations exert equal influence. These habits that we pick when growing up remain with us up to adulthood so we will continue hating people and things that we disliked when we are growing up and like people that we have liked. Exhibiting such findings suggest that the phenomena of in-group bias as well as enriched interpersonal fascination toward those who look like ourselves, may be rooted in an intrinsic preference for resemblance to self, which itself may be improved during growth by the inspiration of cultural tenets.

References

Fawcett, C. (2008). Children's understanding of preference.
Mackinnon, S. (2009). Birds of a feather sit together. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University.
Ormiston, M. (2007). Beyond a preference for similarity.
Sjöberg, L., Derbaix, C., & Jansson, B. (2008). Preference and similarity. [Göteborg, Sweden]: University of Göteborg.