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Helping Students Overcome the “Myside” Bias

Novice writers often demonstrate a “myside bias” in their writing, ignoring points of view different from their own.  Research published in the journal Written Communication suggests that giving students a simple worksheet asking them to articulate their main claim, list supporting reasons, name one obvious objection, and refute that objection can help them adopt an schema for written arguments that leads to more successful writing.

[Wolfe, C. R., Britt, M. A., & Butler, J. A. (2009). Argumentation schema and the myside bias in written argumentation. Written Communication, 26(2), 183–209.]