Bagaimana Berpikir yang Benar, menurut Al-Qur'an

16:78. Dan Allah mengeluarkan kamu dari perut ibumu dalam keadaan tidak mengetahui sesuatu pun, dan Dia memberi kamu pendengaran, penglihatan dan hati, agar kamu bersyukur.

7:179. Dan sesungguhnya Kami jadikan untuk isi neraka Jahanam kebanyakan dari jin dan manusia, mereka mempunyai hati, tetapi tidak dipergunakannya untuk memahami (ayat-ayat Allah) dan mereka mempunyai mata (tetapi) tidak dipergunakannya untuk melihat (tanda-tanda kekuasaan Allah), dan mereka mempunyai telinga (tetapi) tidak dipergunakannya untuk mendengar (ayat-ayat Allah). Mereka itu sebagai binatang ternak, bahkan mereka lebih sesat lagi. Mereka itulah orang-orang yang lalai.

22:46. maka apakah mereka tidak berjalan di muka bumi, lalu mereka mempunyai hati yang dengan itu mereka dapat memahami atau mempunyai telinga yang dengan itu mereka dapat mendengar? Karena sesungguhnya bukanlah mata itu yang buta, tetapi yang buta, ialah hati yang di dalam dada.

3:138. (Al Qur’an) ini adalah penerangan bagi seluruh manusia, dan petunjuk serta pelajaran bagi orang-orang yang bertakwa.

Beberapa budak datang kepada Hasan Al-Bashri, mengadukan praktek perbudakan yang telah membuat mereka menderita. Mereka meminta agar Hasan Al-Bashn memberi nasihat dan menghimbau orang-orang kaya supaya memerdekakan budak-budaknya. Dengan begitu mereka berharap mendapatkan kebebasan. Hasan Al-Bashri pun berjanji untuk memenuhi permintaan mereka. Pada khotbah Jum’at pertama setelah itu, Hasan Al-Bashri tidak berkhotbah tentang perbudakan. Jum’at kedua dan ketiga pun berlalu tanpa menyinggung tema ini dalam khotbahnya sebagaimana yang ia janjikan kepada mereka. Pada Jum’at keempat, barulah Hasan Al-Bashri berbicara dalam khotbahnya tentang pahala orang yang memerdekakan budaknya. Belum sampai waktu sore datang, majoriti budak telah dibebaskan. Tidak berapa lama kemudian, para budak mengunjunginya untuk mengucapkan terima kasih atas khotbahnya, namun mempersoalkan keterlambatannya menyampaikan tema ini hingga sebulan penuh. Hasan Al-Bashri meminta maaf atas keterlambatan tersebut seraya mengatakan, “Yang membuat saya menunda pembicaraan mi adalah karena saya tidak memiliki budak dan tidak juga memiliki wang. Saya menunggu sampai Allah mengaruniakan harta kepadaku, sehingga saya dapat membeli budak, lalu budak itu kubebaskan. Kemudian barulah saya berbicara dalam khotbah, mengajak orang untuk membebaskan budak. Allah pun memberkati ucapanku karena perbuatanku membenarkan ucapanku itu.”

Research States That Prejudice Comes From a Basic Human Need and Way of Thinking

Where does prejudice come from? Not from ideology, say the authors of a new paper. Instead, prejudice stems from a deeper psychological need, associated with a particular way of thinking. People who aren’t comfortable with ambiguity and want to make quick and firm decisions are also prone to making generalizations about others.

In a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Arne Roets and Alain Van Hiel of Ghent University in Belgium look at what psychological scientists have learned about prejudice since the 1954 publication of an influential book, The Nature of Prejudice by Gordon Allport.

People who are prejudiced feel a much stronger need to make quick and firm judgments and decisions in order to reduce ambiguity. “Of course, everyone has to make decisions, but some people really hate uncertainty and therefore quickly rely on the most obvious information, often the first information they come across, to reduce it” Roets says. That’s also why they favor authorities and social norms which make it easier to make decisions. Then, once they’ve made up their mind, they stick to it. “If you provide information that contradicts their decision, they just ignore it.”

Roets argues that this way of thinking is linked to people’s need to categorize the world, often unconsciously. “When we meet someone, we immediately see that person as being male or female, young or old, black or white, without really being aware of this categorization,” he says. “Social categories are useful to reduce complexity, but the problem is that we also assign some properties to these categories. This can lead to prejudice and stereotyping.”

People who need to make quick judgments will judge a new person based on what they already believe about their category. “The easiest and fastest way to judge is to say, for example, ok, this person is a black man. If you just use your ideas about what black men are generally like, that’s an easy way to have an opinion of that person,” Roets says. “You say, ‘he’s part of this group, so he’s probably like this.’”

It’s virtually impossible to change the basic way that people think. Now for the good news: It’s possible to actually also use this way of thinking to reduce people’s prejudice. If people who need quick answers meet people from other groups and like them personally, they are likely to use this positive experience to form their views of the whole group. “This is very much about salient positive information taking away the aversion, anxiety, and fear of the unknown,” Roets says.

Roets’s conclusions suggest that the fundamental source of prejudice is not ideology, but rather a basic human need and way of thinking. “It really makes us think differently about how people become prejudiced or why people are prejudiced,” Roets says. “To reduce prejudice, we first have to acknowledge that it often satisfies some basic need to have quick answers and stable knowledge people rely on to make sense of the world.”
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For more information about this study, please contact: Arne Roets at Arne.Roets@UGent.be.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, publishes concise reviews on the latest advances in theory and research spanning all of scientific psychology and its applications. For a copy of "Allport’s Prejudiced Personality Today: Need for Closure as the Motivated Cognitive Basis of Prejudice" and access to other Current Directions in Psychological Science research findings, please contact Divya Menon at 202-293-9300 or dmenon@psychologicalscience.org.