Fwd: [Humanist-grad] This Thursday - Open Your Mind! - 12 Eliot St, 7pm

[Seanan Fong]

Come to the Humanist Grad Community event this Thursday evening -- on the human "need for closure."

By the way, these happen every Thursday at 7pm at 12 Eliot St. I'll try to be more conscientious about forwarding these on!

--Seanan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: James Croft <jflc...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 6:08 AM
Subject: [Humanist-grad] This Thursday - Open Your Mind! - 12 Eliot St, 7pm
To: humani...@lists.hcs.harvard.edu

Dear Friends,

This Thursday the Humanist Graduate Community has a special treat for you: a session on closed mindedness led by community member Amy Gilson! Here's how she describes the session:

"HUMAN CLOSED MINDEDNESS is not only pervasive but also essential to our mental functioning. Without it, we would be forever suspended in a limbo of non-belief, incapable of crystallizing a single judgment or undertaking a single decision. However necessary, our need to ultimately close our minds at a given juncture has numerous negative consequences." - Arie Kruglanski

Cognitive closure: Ignoring ambiguity to reach a firm conclusion. Maybe it's a euphemism for close mindedness but it lets us make decisions rather than living in a constant state of limbo. On a larger scale, social closure lets us make collective decisions in the form of social conventions or policy. When is cognitive closure good and when does it go too far? Do you cultivate cognitive closure in your personal life or fight it? What conditions increase people's need for cognitive closure, and can we harness this psych knowledge to build a  more humanistic world?

Together we'll take a need for closure quiz and discuss closure, and closed mindedness!

See you at 12 Eliot St, 7pm! Food provided as always.

Best,

James

--

James Croft
Doctoral Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Research and Education Fellow, The Humanist Community at Harvard

Blog: Temple of the Future

Web: ROUSE Them | : JFLCroft

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