Why people go to the Theatre; A qualitative study of audience motivation

RES/341 Research and Evaluation I

02/19/12

Why people go to the Theatre; A qualitative study of audience motivation

“Critical thinking is the disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.” (The Critical Thinking Community, 2011). The benefits of critical thinking include confidence, justice, mental improvements, stay open-minded, integrity, courage, empathy and perseverance. There are two characteristics of Critical thinkers; strong sense and weak sense approaches to critical thinking. The weak sense tends to be a self-centeredness, selfish way of thinking that uses lower-level skills of argumentation, and attempt to make unreasonable thinking look reasonable and reasonable thinking look unreasonable, according to our readings. This form of thinking can be easily seen in unethical lawyers, prosecutors, and politicians who are more concerned with winning than with being fair. They use emotionalism and trickery in an intellectually skilled way, (Paul, R., & Elder, L. 2006). The Mortgage Industry has been plagued by the unethical practices of Mortgage Bankers that were corrupt and only cared about their commission. Some of these Mortgage Bankers used argumentation to bully consumers into higher interest rates, higher closing costs or loan programs that had zero benefit for the consumer. The opposite sense of thinking is a strong sense; the strong sense thinker tends to be fair-minded and ethical, they behave in ways that do not exploit or harm others. They change their views when faced with better reasoning. Rather than using their thinking to manipulate others and to hide from the truth (in a weak-sense way), they use thinking in an ethical, reasonable manner, (Paul & Elder, 2006) Most of the ethical strong sensed thinkers in the Mortgage Industry, are still in the industry; they are the ones that were “in it” for the benefit of the consumer, that do the job not exploit or harm any consumers and are fair-minded and ethical. All the weak-minded thinkers “flew the coop” when the Federal Government cracked down on the industry with increased Underwriting and Compensation regulations. My personal experience in applying critical thinking to a work-related decision seems to happen frequently, and occurs often in my industry. On one occasion, I had a consumer and his wife that were trying to buy a home, near the end of the loan process; we were forced to repull their credit scores as their old credit report expired. Once the credit report was pulled, we discovered the consumers had opened up two new credit lines and bought appliances, carpet and window coverings in anticipation of their home loan closing. Our problem was now these consumers no longer qualified for the home loan due to excessive debt obligations. Under FHA Guidelines for purchases, there is a debt vs. income threshold that we are not allowed to surpass; otherwise the borrowers do not qualify for the loan. After careful review of their overall profile, we noticed the borrower’s two monthly car payments seemed high; when I inquired about refinancing their car loans to lower rates that our credit union offered, both clients agreed to refinance their car loans to the lower rates. Once the refinance process was over, (only took a couple of days), the new car payments were recalculated into their total debt vs. income obligations; they know qualified below the max threshold debt vs. income ratios again. Once the underwriter accepts this method of creative thinking, my client is able buy a home of their own, whereas the other way of thinking would have stopped the client from attaining their dream. None of this would have been accomplished without understanding what the underwriter wants to see to feel rest assured to sign off on and put their name on, to close this transaction.

References

The Critical Thinking Community, (2011). Downloaded on 11/20/2011 from

http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766

Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2006). Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.