Your Belief System (answer both, use a terrible pun): 1. Identify a belief system (ideology) where your beliefs are dominant in American culture. How do you think this ideology was legitimized and became dominant? What rhetoric or rhetorical strategies facilitated this legitimization? 2. Identify a belief system (ideology) where your beliefs are not dominant in American culture. How are your beliefs marginalized? How does rhetoric work in the process of beliefs becoming oppressive?

Write a short thought paper (maximum 1500 words) drawing on evidence in cognitive science. Your thought paper should start with a research question that explores how cognitive science research could be applied to a problem. Here are some examples: A) Could knowing about research on moral outrage change people’s behavior on social media? B) How can studying child learning increase the efficiency of machine learning? Your introduction should introduce your research question and why it’s important.

The body of your paper should describe evidence from at least two scientific sources that span at least two of the sub disciplines of cognitive science (e.g. philosophy and neuroscience) that address your question. You can also cite sources that are not peer-reviewed. Be sure to relate the evidence to the bigger question you are trying to answer. Your conclusion should summarize the research you described and discuss implications and directions for future work.