和谁学到得更多 GRE“We can usually learn much more from people whose views we share than from people
1.“We can usually learn much more from people whose views we share than from people
whose views contradict our own; disagreement can cause stress and inhibit learning.”
It is a rather frequently debated topic whether we learn more from people whose views we share or more from those who hold contrary opinions. This question is quite simple for me to answer. In the general case, we definitely learn much more from discourse and debate with those whose ideas we oppose than from people whose ideas are in accord with our own.
It is of no doubt that people feel more at ease with others who have the same views. People feel that they are supported and thus confident, and this is a mood favorable to learning. However, if such state continues for too long, over confidence is developed, which naturally leads to over optimism. People who are overwhelmed by undue confidence and optimism always think they hold the ultimate truth and lack the motivation to explore further. An interesting phenomenon in organizational psycholog y called “groupthink” is a good example to illustrate this question. Groupthink refers a tendency within organizations or society to promote or establish the view of the predominant group. In such situation, a group is very likely to make incorrect judgments or bad decisions due to a lack of disagreement. This is because people can learn just a little bit from those with similar ideas; therefore they are unable to view the matter from various perspectives. However, things are much more different when people around have opinions different from ours. Contrary views cause people to consider the reason for their differentiations and different possibilities, rendering them to reconsider their own thinking and exposing them to different perspectives. I have had such experience. Two of my friends back in college fell to quite different divisions. With Cheng, I always held the same opinion no matter on social issues or books we read or courses we had. When we two had discussions, we always nodded heavily to show our consensus, then we laughed and the discussion was over. However, when I was with Qin, who always viewed things from a different angle, things changed. Due to different perspectives, she usually put up with different point of view, which subsequently led to my curiosity and then we spent quite a period finding out the cause. During this process, quite a few problems were combed through, and we usually each had some points neglected.
Those holding that we can learn more from people who share our opinions think disagreement can cause stress and inhibit learning. Admittedly, this is true in some circumstances. However, throughout the course of human history, many of the new subjects have come from scientific and philosophical debates about which there was much disagreement. If the notable figures in the scientific revolution, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Galileo and Einstein had not questioned existing traditional dogma, they would never have developed their outstanding theories which formed the foundation of modern science.
To sum up, disagreement can not only increase our knowledge, but also can provide a good method to discover our faults and improve our understanding trough a broad spectrum of opinions due to those contradictions. Therefore, much more can be learned from people with views contrary to our own than those we share the same opinions.