the process of reading laterally supports critical thinking by

The power of lateral reading

by Open Minds Foundation | Critical Thinking

How we consume and read content has changed, in large part because the way that content is distributed has changed. Historically, printed media such as books and newspapers cost a premium to produce, distribute and then consume, meaning the content had to deliver value, with a focus on communication and not entertainment. The digital revolution has changed all that, removing the barriers to publishing, and enabling writers a lot more freedom of expression, as well as changing the distribution and consumption of content. This is not inherently bad, but it has facilitated the rise in misinformation and its ensuing problems.

Our education system, particularly in the early years, typically focusses on vertical reading – the consumption of one or two individual sources, applying a traditional, sequential process to gaining understanding. The goal of vertical thinking is to gather the key points in order to understand the main idea or concept that is being conveyed. There is value in vertical thinking in that it enables the reader to sift through content and identify the key points, as well as make quick assessments. It is also a straightforward approach to learning, which allows educators to focus on content and not context, for example in the learning of facts. Used in isolation however, vertical reading leaves room for misinformation, considering the content of the article, but not its credibility. It enables a single source to gain more credibility than it potentially merits, and does not encourage the reader to consider the bias of the author, the content, or their own bias when consuming information – a lot more dangerous in the face of misinformation.

Lateral reading presents an alternative, but it is an underutilized skill that is often not employed until college or University education, and is a skill that many adults may never employ. The purpose of lateral reading is the pursuit of a deeper level of understanding, focussing on deep thought and an interest in the bigger picture. It requires an open, expansive mindset, with a focus on comprehension. Interestingly, it does not require a greater investment of time, but does require a greater selection of sources and an evaluation of source credibility.

A 2017 study published by Stanford found that people typically fall into two groups – vertical thinkers, and lateral thinkers or “fact checkers”. As stated “Historians and students often fell victim to easily manipulated features of websites, such as official-looking logos and domain names. They read vertically, staying within a website to evaluate its reliability. In contrast, fact checkers read laterally, leaving a site after a quick scan and opening up new browser tabs in order to judge the credibility of the original site. Compared to the other groups, fact checkers arrived at more warranted conclusions in a fraction of the time.”

Ultimately, the purpose of lateral reading is still to ascertain the key points, but to read across different texts in order to evaluate the credibility of what you are reading and the ‘facts’ you are comprehending. Our blog on the “rule of five” puts the process of lateral thinking into a simple technique that can get you practising your critical thinking skills. The focus is on deliberately and consciously seeking out conflicting sources, in order to test your assumptions, overcome your own confirmation bias , and prevent the influence of groupthink . It also has the added advantage of diversifying your digital behaviours and footprint, thereby expanding the range of content provided to you by search engine algorithms.

Other ways you can employ lateral thinking are to:

• Go ”upstream”: whenever you are reading materials and you come across a ‘fact’ such as a statistic or quote for example, stop your reading and pursue its original source. Content can be manipulated to suit the context of what you are reading at the time, but that is not necessarily the understanding that was intended by the original source. As we explored in our series on statistics (see That statistic: is it true? and The problem with statistics ), the same information or ‘facts’ can entirely change meaning, depending on the way in which the information is presented, and the purpose for which it is used. Finding the original source gives you access to a broader range of information, in addition to the context, enabling you to gain a better, deeper understanding.
• Who funds the site that an article is published to?
• What is the political leaning of that site and its content?
• Who is the author? Are they credible? Have any of their previous articles been debunked?
• Has anyone fact checked the article? There are many fact checking agencies around, whose specific aim is to check the credibility of major articles and publishers.
• Does the article align with or object to the original content that they are referencing, and are they transparent about it?
• Specifically leave the site: as advised by the Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers when it comes to credibility checking, “most people go about this the wrong way. When confronted with a new site, they poke around the site and try to find out what the site says about itself by going to the “about page,” clicking around in onsite author biographies, or scrolling up and down the page. This is a faulty strategy for two reasons. First, if the site is untrustworthy, then what the site says about itself is most likely untrustworthy, as well. And, even if the site is generally trustworthy, it is inclined to paint the most favorable picture of its expertise and credibility possible.” Instead, focus on reading laterally, and specifically explore the credibility of the content and the source, outside of that content or source.
• Circle back: interestingly, we are typically extremely linear in our pursuit of understanding, so even practised critical thinkers will typically pursue a single line of enquiry, moving from source to source to source in a linear pattern. While lateral thinking is inherently about testing and validating knowledge, it is also important to evaluate the context of your original source. An underutilized skill therefore is to “circle back”, reconsidering the original source, article, or post, within the context of what you now know. This is an essential step in assuring that you are honing your skills in reading between the lines, and improves your ability to skim and rationalize quickly without error.

The purpose of all these strategies is ultimately to sharpen your critical thinking skills, and to support you in evaluating what you read, as you read it, also known as ‘active sense-making’. Through this, you develop a natural ability to source from multiple places, and quickly rationalize those sources, seeing the bigger picture, and understanding text in context. The outcome: reduced susceptibility to misinformation, which can’t be a bad thing.

• Developing critical thinking through play
• How individuals can avoid sharing mis- and disinformation
• The Martyr Complex and Conspiracy Theorists
• The global risk of misinformation and disinformation
• How to SCAMPER

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12 What “Reading Laterally” Means

Mike caulfield and kristin conlin.

Good fact-checkers read laterally , across many connected sites instead of digging deep into the site at hand.

When you start to read a book, a journal article, or a physical newspaper,  you already know quite a bit about your source. You subscribed to the newspaper, or picked it up from a newsstand because you recognize the name. You ordered the book or purchased it from a local bookstore because it was a book you were interested in reading or it was recommended to you based on your interests. In other words, when you get to the document you need to evaluate, the process of getting there has already given you some initial bearings.

The breadcrumbs of information described above is different from web reading which is more like teleportation. Even after following a source upstream, you arrive at a page, site, and author that are often all unknown to you. How do you analyze the author’s qualifications or the trustworthiness of the site?

Researchers have found that most people go about this the wrong way. When confronted with a new site, they poke around the site and try to find out what the site says about itself by going to the “about page,” clicking around in onsite author biographies, or scrolling up and down the page. This is a faulty strategy for two reasons:

• First, if the site is untrustworthy, then what the site says about itself is most likely untrustworthy, as well.
• Even if the site is generally trustworthy, it is inclined to paint the most favorable picture of its expertise and credibility possible.

The solution to this is, in the words of Sam Wineburg’s Stanford research team, to read laterally . Lateral readers don’t spend time on the page or site until they’ve first gotten their bearings by looking at what other sites and resources say about the source at which they are looking.

You can tell lateral readers at work:

• They have multiple tabs open.
• They perform web searches on the author of the piece and the ownership of the site.
• They also look at pages linking to the site, not just pages coming from it.

Lateral reading helps the reader understand both the perspective from which the site’s analyses come and if the site has an editorial process or expert reputation that would allow one to accept the truth of a site’s facts.

We’re going to deal with the latter issue of factual reliability, while noting that lateral reading is just as important for the first issue.

• Stanford History Education Group (2020 Jan 16) Sort Fact from Fiction Online with Lateral Reading [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/SHNprb2hgzU ↵

Move away from source page and investigate what other authoritative sources have said about the site. Researchers who read laterally open up many tabs in their browser, piecing together different bits of information from across the web to get a better picture of the site they're investigating.

Many of the questions they ask are the same as the vertical readers scrolling up and down the pages of the source they are evaluating.

Unlike those readers, lateral readers realize that the truth is more likely to be found in the network of links to (and commentaries about) the site than in the site itself.

What “Reading Laterally” Means Copyright © 2019 by Mike Caulfield and Kristin Conlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Critical Thinking and Reasoning

Lateral reading.

• Misinformation

Lateral reading is a technique often used by fact checkers.  It is the practice of doing a quick initial evaluation of a website by spending little time on the website and more time reading what others say about the source or related issue. 

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• Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024 11:41 AM
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Lateral reading: College students learn to critically evaluate internet sources in an online course

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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced college students to spend more time online. Yet many studies show that college students struggle to discern fact from fiction on the Internet. A small body of research suggests that students in face-to-face settings can improve at judging the credibility of online sources. But what about asynchronous remote instruction? In an asynchronous college nutrition course at a large state university, we embedded modules that taught students how to vet websites using fact checkers’ strategies. Chief among these strategies was lateral reading, the act of leaving an unknown website to consult other sources to evaluate the original site. Students improved significantly from pretest to posttest, engaging in lateral reading more often post intervention. These findings inform efforts to scale this type of intervention in higher education.

Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, USA

College of Merchandising, Hospitality & Tourism, University of North Texas, USA

Research Question

Can college students learn to effectively evaluate Internet sources in an asynchronous online course?

Essay Summary

• The COVID-19 pandemic has forced college students to spend more time online. However, research has shown that students are ill-equipped to evaluate information they encounter there (Hargittai et al., 2010; Kirschner & van Merriënboer, 2013; McGrew et al., 2018; Shellenbarger, 2016). In the midst of the pandemic and increasing disinformation, this lack of preparation threatens civic and public health.
• Prior interventions have shown that middle school, high school, and college students can become more skilled evaluators of digital content through in-person instruction when taught strategies used by professional fact checkers (Brodsky et al., 2019; Kohnen et al., 2020; McGrew, 2020; McGrew et al., 2019; Wineburg et al., 2019; Wineburg & McGrew, 2017, 2019). This study tested whether these strategies could be taught in an asynchronous college course.
• Students (n = 87) completed 4 one-hour modules. These modules included instructional videos; exercises in which students evaluated online sources about nutrition; and screencasts that modeled how to evaluate the credibility of these sources. The modules also provided instruction that addressed common misconceptions (e.g., that a dot-org domain makes a site trustworthy or that links to authoritative sources, by themselves, confer credibility). A repeated-measures ANOVA showed significant improvements in student scores from pretest to posttest. 
• At pretest, only 3 of 87 students engaged in lateral reading by leaving the original site and consulting at least one other source. At posttest, 67 of 87 did so.
• Results suggest that students can learn to evaluate the credibility of online sources through asynchronous instruction embedded in regular course content. As higher education seeks to address digital illiteracy at scale, these findings can inform curricular revisions.

Implications 

Recent events underscore the threat that digital illiteracy poses to public health and democracy. In February 2020, the World Health Organization declared that the coronavirus pandemic had spawned an “infodemic” of dangerously inaccurate health information (Zarocostas, 2020). Despite this warning, disinformation has spread with stunning speed. Millions viewed social media posts about miracle cures, some of which urged the ingestion of chlorine dioxide, a chemical that can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and even death (Eaton et al., 2020; Merlan, 2020). Pernicious disinformation surged during racial justice protests. Facebook groups spread conspiracy theories that demonstrators protesting the killing of George Floyd were paid by George Soros, a spurious claim as well as an anti-Semitic dog whistle (Seitz, 2020). Coordinated disinformation campaigns sought to discourage Black voters from voting in the 2020 election cycle (Halper, 2020).

As COVID-19 threatened public health, much of higher education in the United States shifted to remote instruction. College students are being sent online to complete assignments and do research (“Colleges’ reopening models,” 2020). At the same time, many studies have shown that college students struggle to evaluate Internet sources (Hargittai et al., 2010; List et al., 2016; Lurie & Mustafaraj, 2018; Martzoukou et al., 2020; McGrew et al., 2018; Pan et al., 2007). Still, a misperception tenaciously holds that because young people grew up with digital devices, they know how to evaluate the information that flows across their screens (Prensky, 2001). Without offering evidence or citing research, a recent  Politico  article claimed that Gen Z’ers “aren’t falling for the same fake news stories that may have duped their parents in 2016” (Choi, 2020). Such claims persist despite a 2019 national survey of 3,446 high school students that revealed major deficiencies in evaluating the credibility of online sources (Breakstone et al., 2019; Mathews, 2019). Fifty-two percent said that a Facebook video claiming to show ballot stuffing during the 2016 Democratic primary elections (a video that came from Russia—a fact easily established by searching for “2016 voter fraud video”) constituted “strong evidence” of U.S. voter fraud. Nine of ten students were unable to come up with a cogent rationale for rejecting the video. Across the survey’s tasks, students overwhelmingly judged websites on the basis of surface-level features: their top-level domain (i.e., whether a site was a dot-com or a dot-org), appearance and design, links to other sites, and information on the About page. Rarely did students leave the original website to consult other sources. Students from all demographic groups fared poorly. The chasm between young people’s perceived competence and their demonstrated performance (Hargittai et al., 2010; Nygren & Guath, 2019; Porat et al., 2018) represents a growing threat when disinformation is ascendant and young adults spend more time on digital devices.

This worrisome mixture of digital illiteracy and misplaced confidence motivated the present study. We investigated whether a curricular intervention implemented asynchronously could improve college students’ ability to evaluate the credibility of online sources. We based our intervention on strategies culled from observations of professional fact checkers recruited from leading fact-checking organizations and prominent news outlets located in New York City and Washington, DC. Fact checkers were videotaped and their screens recorded as they evaluated unfamiliar websites. Fact checkers’ approaches were compared to those of undergraduates from an elite university and history professors from five different institutions (Wineburg & McGrew, 2019). When undergraduates and academics landed on an unfamiliar source, they tended to read it  vertically , proceeding from the top of the screen to the bottom, examining the URL, mulling over the prose, clicking on internal links (such as the About page), but rarely leaving the target site. Fact checkers differed dramatically. Landing on an unfamiliar site, they left it almost immediately and opened new tabs across the horizontal axis of their browser, a practice we refer to as  lateral reading.  By briefly clicking away from an unfamiliar site to consult trusted sources from the broader Web, fact checkers answered a crucial question: Who’s behind the information? In contrast, many of the academics and college students remained glued to the original site, unaware of its real backers. To verify claims online, fact checkers’ judgments were also broadly guided by two other questions: (1) What’s the evidence? (2) What do other sources say? (McGrew et al., 2018). Lateral reading allowed fact checkers to evaluate the credibility of online content more quickly and accurately than either the academics or students. 

Fact checkers’ strategies are akin to the “fast and frugal” heuristics that have enhanced performance across a broad spectrum of fields (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011). Their strategies guided our development of curriculum for evaluating online sources. To date, interventions based on fact checkers’ strategies have yielded promising results across a wide age span: middle school (Kohnen et al., 2020), high school (McGrew, 2020; Wineburg et al., 2019), and college (Brodsky et al., 2019; Fielding, 2019; McGrew et al., 2019; Supiano, 2019). 

Despite these encouraging findings, substantial barriers limit widespread adoption. In these interventions, lessons were add-ons to the regular curriculum and were not tailored to course content. Additionally, researchers either delivered instruction themselves or provided teachers with substantial support. Such intensive involvement is obviously impractical to scale. 

For the present study, we wove fact checkers’ strategies into an asynchronous nutrition class at a large state university. We used examples directly tied to the course’s focus on nutrition. Pretest and posttest data showed statistically significant growth in students’ ability to evaluate online sources. Posttest data showed that students engaged in the specific strategy of lateral reading far more often post intervention. These results indicate that students can become more skilled evaluators of digital content through asynchronous instruction embedded in regular course content. 

As higher education grapples with how to prepare students for civic life in an age of information overabundance, our findings suggest a practical way forward. Rather than design entirely new courses, these results suggest that curriculum developers could create subject-specific modules for instructors to integrate into existing curricula. The approach in this study could serve as a template in other disciplines. For example, in a history course, a module could be developed that shows how to debunk claims that thousands of Black Americans took up arms for the Confederacy—false claims that have proliferated on the unvetted Internet (Levin, 2019). Modules could be used in similar courses across institutions, and a national database of open educational resources could serve to disseminate this approach. Subject-matter experts could collaborate with curriculum developers to create modules for frequently taught courses (e.g., Biology 101). Once a bank of modules was developed, asynchronous delivery would allow them to be added to courses without the need for extensive faculty development about how to teach these strategies.

Findings 

Finding 1: Students’ evaluation of online sources improved significantly after a series of course-embedded activities. 

The pretest and posttest were parallel forms of the same assessment. They included the same questions with different online sources. (See Appendix A for parallel versions of a question.) Average scores improved from 3.95 points out of 13 at pretest to 7.08 at posttest, an average gain of 3.13 points. A repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that the gains from pretest to posttest were statistically significant,  Mean diff  = 3.13;  F (1, 85) = 136.03,  p  < .001. Scores improved significantly regardless of the order in which students took the two forms (see Figure 1). For Section 1, which took Form A at pretest and Form B at posttest, mean scores improved from 3.59 points ( SE  = .31, 95% CI 2.97 to 4.21)   to 7.7 points ( SE  = .42, 95% CI 6.83 to 8.49). For Section 2, which took the forms in the opposite order, average scores improved from 4.3 points ( SE  = .32, 95% CI 3.68 to 4.93) to 6.49 points ( SE  = .42, 95% CI 5.65 to 7.33) . 

Finding 2: Students employed the strategy of lateral reading more often on the posttest. 

Students’ written answers offer insights into how their thinking changed from the beginning of the course to the end. For example, Task 3 (Appendix A) presented websites that go against the scientific consensus on climate change (friendsofscience.org on Form A and co2science.org on Form B) and asked students to respond to this prompt: “Is this website a trustworthy source for learning about global warming?” (Although the instructional modules featured sources related to nutrition, the pretest and posttest included sources about social and political issues. This was done to gauge whether students could evaluate the credibility of Internet sources regardless of content.) The task directions informed students that they were free to “open a new tab and do an Internet search if that helps.” For both websites, lateral reading turns up multiple sources that reveal funding from fossil fuel companies with vested interests in climate change denial.  

At pretest, only 3 of 87 students engaged in lateral reading by leaving the original website and consulting at least one other source (Figure 2). Two students correctly questioned the site’s credibility. The other searched outside of the site but did not locate information about its backers. The remaining 84 students focused exclusively on features that were either irrelevant or could be easily manipulated. Most importantly, students never consulted the broader Web. They focused on the site’s top-level domain (.org), whether there were links to other sites, the layout and graphics, and information provided on the About page. Leaving the site to engage in lateral reading was the least employed strategy. In sum, students’ attention remained focused on the original website, which precluded them from finding information needed to judge its credibility. Typical was this student’s pretest evaluation of friendsofscience.org: 

“First, it seems very disorganized. Way too many colors and boxes on the home page. I also see donation boxes as a red flag–even if it is a nonprofit. They claim validity with ‘professionals’ which kind of swayed me at first, but they fail to mention any of their names for a point of reference. I would like to see that on the about page with their top professionals.” 

This student never left the site. Moreover, the student relied on the site’s About page without considering how groups craft their About pages to reflect positively on their aims.

At posttest, 67 of 87 students engaged in lateral reading by leaving the target website (either friendsofscience.org or co2science.org, depending on the form) and consulting at least one other online source. Thirty-six students correctly raised questions about the website’s credibility (Figure 2). Thirty-one engaged in lateral reading but concluded the site was credible or rejected it for irrelevant reasons. The same student who focused on surface-level features at pretest used lateral reading at posttest and found damning information on Wikipedia that was linked to established news sources: “They are funded by Exxon so automatically that raises flags of the reliability of the info. [Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_the_Study_of_Carbon_Dioxide_and_Global_Change].”

Post-intervention, lateral reading went from the least to the most used strategy. Students’ reliance on ineffective strategies declined. At pretest, 23 students believed that a dot-org domain conferred reliability, a misconception common not only among college students but among adults (Wineburg & Ziv, 2019). On the posttest, the number fell to seven, a decrease of 69%. At pretest, 21 students maintained that the mere presence of links increased a site’s credibility. At posttest, only seven students did. On the pretest, 14 students evaluated the site based on its appearance compared to four at posttest. Fourteen students relied on the site’s About page at pretest; only two did so at posttest. In designing the instructional modules, we had directly addressed why each of the above strategies could lead to erroneous conclusions.

Methods 

Research question

Course context

Curriculum materials were integrated into two sections of an online nutrition course at a public research university in the southwestern United States. In Summer 2020, the course was offered during two 5-week sessions with the same instructor and content. All instruction was delivered asynchronously using an online learning management system. 

The class introduced students to the basics of human nutrition, including a review of nutrients and how food choices impact health and risk of chronic disease. The course sought to provide students with the tools to make informed decisions in the nutrition marketplace and was required for undergraduates majoring in human development and family science. For students in other majors, the course fulfilled a general education requirement. 

Intervention

The intervention included four modules. The first was a brief introduction to evaluating digital information and the problems of online disinformation. The next two focused on the strategy of lateral reading. The last one provided instruction on how to evaluate the quality of online evidence. Across the modules, we also addressed common misconceptions about assessing digital sources, such as trusting a site because it carried a dot-org top-level domain or accepting at face value information on a site’s About page. The decision to emphasize lateral reading was based on prior research (e.g., Hargittai et al., 2010; McGrew et al., 2018) that showed students’ tendency to evaluate a website by remaining on it, without ever turning to the open Web to vet it. 

Each module included three types of activities. First, videos provided direct instruction about evaluating the credibility of Internet sources. Developed as part of an earlier project, these videos were produced in collaboration with John Green and Crash Course, creators of popular educational YouTube series (Crash Course, 2019a). Videos broadly addressed how to judge the credibility of online sources and were not specific to nutrition. After viewing, students completed multiple-choice questions about their content. Next, students completed guided evaluations of online sources. Students answered questions about various sources and how to evaluate them. Finally, they watched screencasts created by the research team that demonstrated how to evaluate these same sources using fact checkers’ strategies. Screencasts were a form of  cognitive modeling,  an instructional approach that makes expert strategies visible to novice learners (Collins et al., 1989, 1991; De La Paz et al., 2016). 

For example, Module 2 introduced students to lateral reading, beginning with a Crash Course video (Crash Course, 2019b). After viewing, students answered multiple-choice questions and then evaluated an article from the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), an organization that describes itself as a “pro-science consumer advocacy organization and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit” (American Council on Science and Health, 2020). ACSH receives funding from corporations that have vested interests in the debates ACSH seeks to influence, such as proposed taxes on sugary drinks or the requirement that restaurants post nutrition information. Students then watched a screencast of a member of the research team using lateral reading to evaluate the same article. Finally, students practiced reading laterally using an article on proposed soda taxes from The Odyssey Online, a crowd-sourced website known for producing clickbait (Porter, 2017). 

Each module took about an hour to complete. Students were assigned one module per week. The modules were required, and the instructor awarded points for completing them. However, the quality of students’ work on the modules did not affect course grades. 

Participants

Eighty-seven undergraduate students completed all parts of the study. Forty-four students were in one section of the course and 43 in the other. Table 1 provides an overview of participants’ race, gender, and ethnicity. Although the modules were a required part of the course, students’ participation in the pretest and posttest was voluntary. Students received a $5 gift card as a token of appreciation for completing the pretest and a second $5 card for completing the posttest. 

Outcome measures

Each assessment form included nine items that asked students to evaluate the credibility of different types of online sources. (See Appendix B for descriptions of the items.) As part of a prior project, the research team developed the questions through an iterative process of prototyping, expert review, piloting, and think-aloud interviews (McGrew et al., 2018). The items assessed a range of the approaches to evaluating the credibility of online sources taught in the instructional modules. Four items were constructed-response; five were multiple-choice. (See Appendix C for an example of a multiple-choice question.) Prompts were identical across forms, but the questions featured different online stimuli. (See Appendix A for an example of parallel versions of Task 3.) Distractors for the multiple-choice items reflected common errors observed when students in a prior study completed constructed-response versions of the same tasks (McGrew et al., 2018). 

Students could earn a total of 13 points on the assessment. Multiple-choice items were worth 1 point and constructed-response questions 2. Constructed responses were evaluated using a three-level rubric ( Beginning  – 0;  Emerging  – 1;  Mastery  – 2). In Mastery responses, students evaluated online content by investigating the source of information, interrogating the evidence presented, or seeking out information from other reliable sources. Emerging responses were on the right track but were partially incorrect or did not fully articulate sound reasoning. Beginning responses relied on incorrect or irrelevant strategies. (See Appendix D for a sample rubric.) 

Design and analysis

Students in one section took Form A as a pretest and Form B as a posttest. Students in the other section completed the forms in the opposite order. Counterbalancing reduced the risk that the findings would be affected by differences in the difficulty of the two forms. If students showed significant improvement from pretest to posttest in both sections, we could be confident that gains were not attributable to one form being more difficult than the other. 

Two raters independently scored student responses. Scores were identical for multiple-choice items, and weighted kappa was used to estimate inter-rater reliability for constructed-response scores on both forms, Form A weighted   κ = .956 (95% CI, .934 to .979),  p  < .001, Form B weighted   κ = .968 (95% CI, .948 to .988),  p  < .001. 

Two independent raters also coded the strategies students used to evaluate the climate change denial websites (Task 3). Responses were coded for each strategy used, so a single response could receive multiple codes. Codes were applied regardless of how a response was scored. For example, at posttest, many responses received a lateral reading code but were not scored as Mastery. Intercoder reliability was high at both pretest and posttest, Cohen’s  𝜅 pre  = .921 (95% CI, .881 to .961),  p  < .001, Cohen’s 𝜅 post  = .949 (95% CI, .916 to .982),  p  < .001.

A repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine whether students showed significant improvement in evaluating the credibility of Internet sources. This analysis tested whether the average posttest score was significantly different than the average pretest score. The analysis also controlled for potential effects of counterbalancing administration of the forms. Controlling for order effects leads to a more accurate estimate of the size of the observed treatment effect.

Limitations and future directions

Further research is needed to investigate the efficacy of embedding web credibility modules across varied disciplines in the college curriculum. Additionally, it will be important to investigate the effect of including controversial subject matter in order to better understand how motivated reasoning influences student behavior. 

Although this study suggested that students could become more skilled evaluators of online sources, we don’t know the durability of these changes. Nor do we know whether students carry these evaluative strategies into their everyday lives. Additional research on both fronts would provide a more robust understanding of the efficacy of these types of interventions.   

• / Media Literacy

Cite this Essay

Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Connors, P., Ortega, T., Kerr, D., & Wineburg, S. (2021). Lateral reading: College students learn to critically evaluate internet sources in an online course. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review . https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-56

• / Appendix B
• / Appendix C
• / Appendix D

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Choi, M. (2020, October 11). When Gen Z is the source of the misinformation it consumes. Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/11/gen-z-misinformation-politics- news-conspiracy-423913

Colleges’ reopening models. (2020, October 1). The Chronicle of Higher Education . https://www.chronicle.com/reopening

Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Holum, A. (1991). Cognitive apprenticeship: Making thinking visible. American Educator , 15 (3), 6-11, 38-46.

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This research was supported by the Spencer Foundation, Grant #201900060 , Sam Wineburg, Principal Investigator. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the views of the Spencer Foundation.

Competing Interests

The authors have no potential conflicts of interest.

The research was approved by an institutional review board, and human subjects provided informed consent.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are properly credited.

Data Availability

All materials needed to replicate this study are available via the Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/N6HY37

What is Lateral Reading: Importance; How-Tos; Real Examples

Have you ever stumbled upon a term or concept and wondered, “What is lateral reading?” You’re not alone. Lateral reading isn’t just skimming through texts; it’s a critical skill in the modern digital era. It’s about cross-checking information, assessing credibility, and understanding the value of diverse sources.

In the following sections, you’ll learn how lateral reading stands apart from vertical reading, why it’s essential in evaluating sources, and how it ties into the broader conversation of scholarship. You’ll gain insights into the constructed nature of authority and the intrinsic value of information in our interconnected world.

Table of Contents

Lateral Reading: What is it?

Definition of lateral reading.

When you’re seeking information, understanding what lateral reading is becomes crucial. Lateral reading is a method where you verify the credibility of a source by consulting multiple external references rather than relying solely on the initial material. Defined simply, lateral reading means to read across various resources in tandem, allowing for a comprehensive and multi-faceted view of a subject.

The lateral reading definition encompasses techniques like fact-checking across different platforms, seeking out author qualifications, and comparing findings. This is exceptionally pertinent for audiobook listeners who often engage in learning and entertainment through this format; by applying lateral reading, you gather a broader understanding of the topics discussed without being constrained by a single narrative or perspective.

Consider a lateral reading strategy like a detective’s approach to reading. You don’t just take what’s presented at face value; instead, you investigate further. Such scrutiny leaves less room for misinformation and gives you the power to form an educated opinion.

Purpose of Lateral Reading

Lateral reading isn’t just about identifying truth but deepening comprehension and critical thinking. In the context of an audiobook, for example, you might explore reviews, author biographies, and related podcasts to enrich your interpretation and enjoyment of the book. The Purpose of Lateral Reading is to empower you to build knowledge that is not just deep but also wide in scope.

Why is lateral reading essential? In a world brimming with information, lateral reading cultivates a discerning mind. For audiobook aficionados, lateral reading can mean the difference between listening passively and engaging actively with the content. It’s a skill that enhances your ability to sift through vast amounts of data efficiently.

Beyond entertainment, academia, or your professional life, knowing how to read laterally ensures that the information you cite or base decisions on is reliable and valid. So when you next listen to an audiobook on contemporary issues or historical accounts, remember to read laterally beyond the spoken words. This will broaden your horizons and improve your competency in any field by instilling a habit of thorough analysis and evaluation.

Why is Lateral Reading Important?

In an era overflowing with data, lateral reading is a critical technique. It’s about checking facts across various sources to confirm their validity.

Challenging Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias can cloud your judgment, leading you to accept information that aligns with your beliefs and dismiss what doesn’t—reading laterally counters this. When you read laterally , you seek different perspectives on a topic. This approach is crucial in developing a balanced understanding and prevents the trap of reinforcing pre-existing biases.

Utilizing the lateral reading strategy also enables you to notice inconsistencies and discrepancies in information that you wouldn’t catch if you stayed within the confines of a single source. By engaging in lateral searching , you become more critical of the content you consume, empowering you to form well-rounded opinions.

Evaluating the Reliability of Sources

Determining reliable information is often your goal when you’re researching. Why is lateral reading pivotal here? When considering what is lateral reading , remember it’s a process where you validate the credibility of a source by consulting various external references.

The lateral reading technique asks you to leave the initial page and investigate other sources, answering essential questions like Who’s behind the information? What’s their agenda? Are other sources, both supporting and opposing, reporting the same facts? Lateral reading is like detective work: you’re piecing together various clues from across the web to form a clearer picture of the truth.

So, when you read laterally , where should you go? Aim for authoritative and respected websites, verified news outlets, scholarly databases, and other reliable platforms. This process of lateral research helps you sift through the 25 quintillion bytes of data produced daily, avoiding the pitfalls of misinformation.

Remember, lateral reading , unlike vertical reading , equips you with a broader, more authentic view of the topic at hand. It’s not just about what you’re reading—it’s about understanding where the information comes from, why it’s being presented, and what else is being said on the matter. This multi-angle approach offers insights that vertical reading alone does not.

Engaging in lateral reading isn’t just beneficial; it’s crucial in today’s digital landscape, ensuring you’re informed, aware, and always a step ahead in your knowledge quest. So, next time you dive into content online, don’t just browse— read laterally .

How to Practice Lateral Reading?

Conducting a source search.

When diving into lateral reading, your first step is to conduct a thorough source search. This means stepping away from the initial article you’re examining and using search engines to find other sources discussing the same topic. When you read laterally, you’re embarking on a lateral search that moves you away from the material at hand to get external opinions and facts.

First, type key phrases from the original article into a search engine and peruse the top results. Your priority should be relevant articles from reputable news outlets, academia, or well-established fact-checking organizations. Your goal is to gather comprehensive viewpoints and data that can corroborate or challenge the claims you’re investigating.

Assessing the Author’s Credibility

Next, you’ll need to assess the author’s credibility. This involves investigating the author’s background , their expertise on the subject matter, and their previous work. Remember, avoiding being misled is why lateral reading is essential. Look for other articles written by the same author, considering how their viewpoints are presented. Check if they have a history of fact-based reporting or if they’re known for promoting subjective opinions.

Ask critical questions: Have other credible figures cited the author? Are there any conflicts of interest, such as funding or endorsements, that might bias their perspective? These details are crucial to understanding the potential influence on their reporting.

Considering Multiple Perspectives

Lateral reading shines when you consider multiple perspectives on the topic. It’s not just about gathering more information—it’s about understanding the diversity of viewpoints and interpretations out there. By reading laterally, you expose yourself to a spectrum of analysis and opinion, which can profoundly shape your understanding of the subject.

Seek out contrasting opinions and analyses on the same topic. Notice if there’s a consensus among experts or if the debate is still very much alive. This doesn’t mean giving equal weight to all views but rather recognizing which arguments are backed by solid evidence and logical reasoning. What can lateral reading offer that vertical reading cannot? It gives you a more nuanced and informed view rather than a single-thread narrative that might miss key points of contention or consensus.

Through this exercise, you’re not just informally browsing—you’re conducting lateral research, a key component of digital and information literacy. This approach is efficient for complex topics with no clear-cut answer, allowing you to form a well-rounded opinion based on various reliable sources.

Examples of Lateral Reading in Action

Fact-checking viral news stories.

When you encounter a news story that ignites the web with its shocking headlines, your first instinct might be to share it. Before you hit that share button, engaging in lateral reading is wise. Why is lateral reading essential here? Because it allows you to check the integrity of these viral pieces. Start by leaving the original article and searching laterally ; open a new tab to verify the information against reputable news sources. Does the story appear elsewhere? Are the facts consistent? What’s lateral reading? Is it not the perfect tool for this scenario?

The lateral reading definition inherently challenges sensational claims. By consulting multiple sources, you sift the facts from the hype. Highly shareable content may not always stand up to scrutiny, and through lateral reading, you play detective, ensuring you’re informed and not inflamed by misinformation.

Investigating Online Product Reviews

When searching for reviews on the latest gadgets or books, especially if you’re considering audiobooks, lateral reading can be your ally. Audiobook lovers know that a single glowing or damning review doesn’t paint the whole picture. Reading laterally means sourcing multiple reviews across different platforms. You might check the publisher’s site, then head to consumer forums or retailer websites for additional opinions. This lateral reading strategy helps you make purchases based on a well-rounded understanding of a product.

Questions like “What does it mean to read laterally?” arise often among audiobook enthusiasts. In essence, it’s about going beyond superficial glances at star ratings. There’s no substitute for corroborating evidence: real people share their experiences across various venues. This approach – lateral searching – adds dimension to your buying process, ensuring your next listen is as rewarding as possible.

As your understanding of lateral reading techniques grows, you’ll be equipped to navigate the web more effectively. When considering lateral reading examples , remember: whether debunking dubious news or evaluating reviews, lateral reading enriches your comprehension and equips you with a discerning eye—or ear—for the facts.

Lateral reading isn’t just a skill—it’s your shield against the onslaught of misinformation in the digital age. By stepping outside a single source and exploring others, you’re not just consuming information but actively engaging in critical analysis. It’s your tool for sifting through the noise to find the signals worth listening to. Remember, every click, every search, every pause to question is a step towards a more informed you. Embrace lateral reading as your strategy for clarity in a cluttered informational landscape, and watch as your understanding of the world becomes sharper, more nuanced, and infinitely richer.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an example of vertical reading.

Vertical reading is typically seen when you read a text from start to finish without cross-referencing or checking other sources. It’s like reading a book cover-to-cover without looking for additional background information or context.

What can lateral reading offer that vertical reading cannot?

Lateral reading offers a critical evaluation of information by comparing and verifying with different sources, which helps identify biases or inaccuracies that vertical reading might miss.

What is the lateral reading technique demonstrated?

The lateral reading technique is demonstrated by quickly leaving an unfamiliar site to evaluate its content by reviewing external sites and references, thus gaining a broader understanding of the subject and the source’s reliability.

What do we lose when we don’t read laterally?

Without lateral reading, we miss the opportunity to assess information critically. This can lead to the spread and acceptance of misinformation and limits our understanding of potentially biased or incomplete sources.

What is an example of lateral reading?

An example of lateral reading is when you investigate a website’s credibility by exploring its “About” page, checking for author biographies, or comparing the information on the site with external sources to get a more accurate picture.

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Read Laterally

16 What “Reading Laterally” Means

Mike Caulfield

Time for our third move: good fact-checkers read “laterally,” across many connected sites instead of digging deep into the site at hand.

When you start to read a book, a journal article, or a physical newspaper in the “real world,” you already know quite a bit about your source. You’ve subscribed to the newspaper, or picked it up from a newsstand because you’ve heard of it. You’ve ordered the book from Amazon or purchased it from a local bookstore because it was a book you were interested in reading. You’ve chosen a journal article either because of the quality of the journal article or because someone whose expertise and background you know cited it. In other words, when you get to the document you need to evaluate, the process of getting there has already given you some initial bearings.

Compared to these intellectual journeys, web reading is a bit more like teleportation. Even after following a source upstream, you arrive at a page, site, and author that are often all unknown to you. How do you analyze the author’s qualifications or the trustworthiness of the site?

Researchers have found that most people go about this the wrong way. When confronted with a new site, they poke around the site and try to find out what the site says about itself by going to the “about page,” clicking around in onsite author biographies, or scrolling up and down the page. This is a faulty strategy for two reasons. First, if the site is untrustworthy, then what the site says about itself is most likely untrustworthy, as well. And, even if the site is generally trustworthy, it is inclined to paint the most favorable picture of its expertise and credibility possible.

The solution to this is, in the words of Sam Wineburg’s Stanford research team, to “read laterally.” Lateral readers don’t spend time on the page or site until they’ve first gotten their bearings by looking at what other sites and resources say about the source at which they are looking.

For example, when presented with a new site that needs to be evaluated, professional fact-checkers don’t spend much time on the site itself. Instead they get off the page and see what other authoritative sources have said about the site. They open up many tabs in their browser, piecing together different bits of information from across the web to get a better picture of the site they’re investigating. Many of the questions they ask are the same as the vertical readers scrolling up and down the pages of the source they are evaluating. But unlike those readers, they realize that the truth is more likely to be found in the network of links to (and commentaries about) the site than in the site itself.

Only when they’ve gotten their bearings from the rest of the network do they re-engage with the content. Lateral readers gain a better understanding as to whether to trust the facts and analysis presented to them.

You can tell lateral readers at work: they have multiple tabs open and they perform web searches on the author of the piece and the ownership of the site. They also look at pages linking to the site, not just pages coming from it.

Lateral reading helps the reader understand both the perspective from which the site’s analyses come and if the site has an editorial process or expert reputation that would allow one to accept the truth of a site’s facts.

We’re going to deal with the latter issue of factual reliability, while noting that lateral reading is just as important for the first issue.

What “Reading Laterally” Means by Mike Caulfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Reading & Writing Purposes

Introduction: critical thinking, reading, & writing, critical thinking.

The phrase “critical thinking” is often misunderstood. “Critical” in this case does not mean finding fault with an action or idea. Instead, it refers to the ability to understand an action or idea through reasoning. According to the website SkillsYouNeed [1]:

Critical thinking might be described as the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.

In essence, critical thinking requires you to use your ability to reason. It is about being an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information.

Critical thinkers rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. They will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments, and findings represent the entire picture and are open to finding that they do not.

Critical thinkers will identify, analyze, and solve problems systematically rather than by intuition or instinct.

Someone with critical thinking skills can:

• Understand the links between ideas.
• Determine the importance and relevance of arguments and ideas.
• Recognize, build, and appraise arguments.
• Identify inconsistencies and errors in reasoning.
• Approach problems in a consistent and systematic way.
• Reflect on the justification of their own assumptions, beliefs and values.

Read more at:  https://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/critical-thinking.html

Critical thinking—the ability to develop your own insights and meaning—is a basic college learning goal. Critical reading and writing strategies foster critical thinking, and critical thinking underlies critical reading and writing.

Critical Reading

Critical reading builds on the basic reading skills expected for college.

College Readers’ Characteristics

• College readers are willing to spend time reflecting on the ideas presented in their reading assignments. They know the time is well-spent to enhance their understanding.
• College readers are able to raise questions while reading. They evaluate and solve problems rather than merely compile a set of facts to be memorized.
• College readers can think logically. They are fact-oriented and can review the facts dispassionately. They base their judgments on ideas and evidence.
• College readers can recognize error in thought and persuasion as well as recognize good arguments.
• College readers are skeptical. They understand that not everything in print is correct. They are diligent in seeking out the truth.

Critical Readers’ Characteristics

• Critical readers are open-minded. They seek alternative views and are open to new ideas that may not necessarily agree with their previous thoughts on a topic. They are willing to reassess their views when new or discordant evidence is introduced and evaluated.
• Critical readers are in touch with their own personal thoughts and ideas about a topic. Excited about learning, they are eager to express their thoughts and opinions.
• Critical readers are able to identify arguments and issues. They are able to ask penetrating and thought-provoking questions to evaluate ideas.
• Critical readers are creative. They see connections between topics and use knowledge from other disciplines to enhance their reading and learning experiences.
• Critical readers develop their own ideas on issues, based on careful analysis and response to others’ ideas.

The video below, although geared toward students studying for the SAT exam (Scholastic Aptitude Test used for many colleges’ admissions), offers a good, quick overview of the concept and practice of critical reading.

Critical Reading & Writing

College reading and writing assignments often ask you to react to, apply, analyze, and synthesize information. In other words, your own informed and reasoned ideas about a subject take on more importance than someone else’s ideas, since the purpose of college reading and writing is to think critically about information.

Critical thinking involves questioning. You ask and answer questions to pursue the “careful and exact evaluation and judgment” that the word “critical” invokes (definition from The American Heritage Dictionary ). The questions simply change depending on your critical purpose. Different critical purposes are detailed in the next pages of this text.

However, here’s a brief preview of the different types of questions you’ll ask and answer in relation to different critical reading and writing purposes.

When you react to a text you ask:

• “What do I think?” and
• “Why do I think this way?”

e.g., If I asked and answered these “reaction” questions about the topic assimilation of immigrants to the U.S. , I might create the following main idea statement, which I could then develop in an essay:  I think that assimilation has both positive and negative effects because, while it makes life easier within the dominant culture, it also implies that the original culture is of lesser value.

When you apply text information you ask:

• “How does this information relate to the real world?”

e.g., If I asked and answered this “application” question about the topic assimilation , I might create the following main idea statement, which I could then develop in an essay:  During the past ten years, a group of recent emigrants has assimilated into the local culture; the process of their assimilation followed certain specific stages.

When you analyze text information you ask:

• “What is the main idea?”
• “What do I want to ‘test’ in the text to see if the main idea is justified?” (supporting ideas, type of information, language), and
• “What pieces of the text relate to my ‘test?'”

e.g., If I asked and answered these “analysis” questions about the topic immigrants to the United States , I might create the following main idea statement, which I could then develop in an essay: Although Lee (2009) states that “segmented assimilation theory asserts that immigrant groups may assimilate into one of many social sectors available in American society, instead of restricting all immigrant groups to adapting into one uniform host society,” other theorists have shown this not to be the case with recent immigrants in certain geographic areas.

When you synthesize information from many texts you ask:

• “What information is similar and different in these texts?,” and
• “What pieces of information fit together to create or support a main idea?”

e.g., If I asked and answered these “synthesis” questions about the topic immigrants to the U.S. , I might create the following main idea statement, which I could then develop by using examples and information from many text articles as evidence to support my idea: Immigrants who came to the United States during the immigration waves in the early to mid 20th century traditionally learned English as the first step toward assimilation, a process that was supported by educators. Now, both immigrant groups and educators are more focused on cultural pluralism than assimilation, as can be seen in educators’ support of bilingual education. However, although bilingual education heightens the child’s reasoning and ability to learn, it may ultimately hinder the child’s sense of security within the dominant culture if that culture does not value cultural pluralism as a whole.

Critical reading involves asking and answering these types of questions in order to find out how the information “works” as opposed to just accepting and presenting the information that you read in a text. Critical writing involves recording your insights into these questions and offering your own interpretation of a concept or issue, based on the meaning you create from those insights.

• Crtical Thinking, Reading, & Writing. Authored by : Susan Oaks, includes material adapted from TheSkillsYouNeed and Reading 100; attributions below. Project : Introduction to College Reading & Writing. License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
• Critical Thinking. Provided by : TheSkillsYouNeed. Located at : https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright . License Terms : Quoted from website: The use of material found at skillsyouneed.com is free provided that copyright is acknowledged and a reference or link is included to the page/s where the information was found. Read more at: https://www.skillsyouneed.com/
• The Reading Process. Authored by : Scottsdale Community College Reading Faculty. Provided by : Maricopa Community College. Located at : https://learn.maricopa.edu/courses/904536/files/32966438?module_item_id=7198326 . Project : Reading 100. License : CC BY: Attribution
• image of person thinking with light bulbs saying -idea- around her head. Authored by : Gerd Altmann. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/photos/light-bulb-idea-think-education-3704027/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
• video What is Critical Reading? SAT Critical Reading Bootcamp #4. Provided by : Reason Prep. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hc3hmwnymw . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video
• image of man smiling and holding a lightbulb. Authored by : africaniscool. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/photos/man-african-laughing-idea-319282/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved

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Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate. The abilities can be identified directly; the dispositions indirectly, by considering what factors contribute to or impede exercise of the abilities. Standardized tests have been developed to assess the degree to which a person possesses such dispositions and abilities. Educational intervention has been shown experimentally to improve them, particularly when it includes dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. Controversies have arisen over the generalizability of critical thinking across domains, over alleged bias in critical thinking theories and instruction, and over the relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking.

2.1 Dewey’s Three Main Examples

2.2 dewey’s other examples, 2.3 further examples, 2.4 non-examples, 3. the definition of critical thinking, 4. its value, 5. the process of thinking critically, 6. components of the process, 7. contributory dispositions and abilities, 8.1 initiating dispositions, 8.2 internal dispositions, 9. critical thinking abilities, 10. required knowledge, 11. educational methods, 12.1 the generalizability of critical thinking, 12.2 bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, 12.3 relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking, other internet resources, related entries.

Use of the term ‘critical thinking’ to describe an educational goal goes back to the American philosopher John Dewey (1910), who more commonly called it ‘reflective thinking’. He defined it as

active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind. His lengthy quotations of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill indicate that he was not the first person to propose development of a scientific attitude of mind as an educational goal.

In the 1930s, many of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association (Aikin 1942) adopted critical thinking as an educational goal, for whose achievement the study’s Evaluation Staff developed tests (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942). Glaser (1941) showed experimentally that it was possible to improve the critical thinking of high school students. Bloom’s influential taxonomy of cognitive educational objectives (Bloom et al. 1956) incorporated critical thinking abilities. Ennis (1962) proposed 12 aspects of critical thinking as a basis for research on the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability.

Since 1980, an annual international conference in California on critical thinking and educational reform has attracted tens of thousands of educators from all levels of education and from many parts of the world. Also since 1980, the state university system in California has required all undergraduate students to take a critical thinking course. Since 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). In 1987, the APA’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy commissioned a consensus statement on critical thinking for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Facione 1990a). Researchers have developed standardized tests of critical thinking abilities and dispositions; for details, see the Supplement on Assessment . Educational jurisdictions around the world now include critical thinking in guidelines for curriculum and assessment.

For details on this history, see the Supplement on History .

2. Examples and Non-Examples

Before considering the definition of critical thinking, it will be helpful to have in mind some examples of critical thinking, as well as some examples of kinds of thinking that would apparently not count as critical thinking.

Dewey (1910: 68–71; 1933: 91–94) takes as paradigms of reflective thinking three class papers of students in which they describe their thinking. The examples range from the everyday to the scientific.

Transit : “The other day, when I was down town on 16th Street, a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12:20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o’clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o’clock.” (Dewey 1910: 68–69; 1933: 91–92)

Ferryboat : “Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river is a long white pole, having a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere on the boat two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

“I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of the pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

“In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot’s position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly.” (Dewey 1910: 69–70; 1933: 92–93)

Bubbles : “In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat, or by decrease of pressure, or both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse” (Dewey 1910: 70–71; 1933: 93–94).

Dewey (1910, 1933) sprinkles his book with other examples of critical thinking. We will refer to the following.

Weather : A man on a walk notices that it has suddenly become cool, thinks that it is probably going to rain, looks up and sees a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and quickens his steps (1910: 6–10; 1933: 9–13).

Disorder : A man finds his rooms on his return to them in disorder with his belongings thrown about, thinks at first of burglary as an explanation, then thinks of mischievous children as being an alternative explanation, then looks to see whether valuables are missing, and discovers that they are (1910: 82–83; 1933: 166–168).

Typhoid : A physician diagnosing a patient whose conspicuous symptoms suggest typhoid avoids drawing a conclusion until more data are gathered by questioning the patient and by making tests (1910: 85–86; 1933: 170).

Blur : A moving blur catches our eye in the distance, we ask ourselves whether it is a cloud of whirling dust or a tree moving its branches or a man signaling to us, we think of other traits that should be found on each of those possibilities, and we look and see if those traits are found (1910: 102, 108; 1933: 121, 133).

Suction pump : In thinking about the suction pump, the scientist first notes that it will draw water only to a maximum height of 33 feet at sea level and to a lesser maximum height at higher elevations, selects for attention the differing atmospheric pressure at these elevations, sets up experiments in which the air is removed from a vessel containing water (when suction no longer works) and in which the weight of air at various levels is calculated, compares the results of reasoning about the height to which a given weight of air will allow a suction pump to raise water with the observed maximum height at different elevations, and finally assimilates the suction pump to such apparently different phenomena as the siphon and the rising of a balloon (1910: 150–153; 1933: 195–198).

Diamond : A passenger in a car driving in a diamond lane reserved for vehicles with at least one passenger notices that the diamond marks on the pavement are far apart in some places and close together in others. Why? The driver suggests that the reason may be that the diamond marks are not needed where there is a solid double line separating the diamond lane from the adjoining lane, but are needed when there is a dotted single line permitting crossing into the diamond lane. Further observation confirms that the diamonds are close together when a dotted line separates the diamond lane from its neighbour, but otherwise far apart.

Rash : A woman suddenly develops a very itchy red rash on her throat and upper chest. She recently noticed a mark on the back of her right hand, but was not sure whether the mark was a rash or a scrape. She lies down in bed and thinks about what might be causing the rash and what to do about it. About two weeks before, she began taking blood pressure medication that contained a sulfa drug, and the pharmacist had warned her, in view of a previous allergic reaction to a medication containing a sulfa drug, to be on the alert for an allergic reaction; however, she had been taking the medication for two weeks with no such effect. The day before, she began using a new cream on her neck and upper chest; against the new cream as the cause was mark on the back of her hand, which had not been exposed to the cream. She began taking probiotics about a month before. She also recently started new eye drops, but she supposed that manufacturers of eye drops would be careful not to include allergy-causing components in the medication. The rash might be a heat rash, since she recently was sweating profusely from her upper body. Since she is about to go away on a short vacation, where she would not have access to her usual physician, she decides to keep taking the probiotics and using the new eye drops but to discontinue the blood pressure medication and to switch back to the old cream for her neck and upper chest. She forms a plan to consult her regular physician on her return about the blood pressure medication.

Candidate : Although Dewey included no examples of thinking directed at appraising the arguments of others, such thinking has come to be considered a kind of critical thinking. We find an example of such thinking in the performance task on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which its sponsoring organization describes as

a performance-based assessment that provides a measure of an institution’s contribution to the development of critical-thinking and written communication skills of its students. (Council for Aid to Education 2017)

A sample task posted on its website requires the test-taker to write a report for public distribution evaluating a fictional candidate’s policy proposals and their supporting arguments, using supplied background documents, with a recommendation on whether to endorse the candidate.

Immediate acceptance of an idea that suggests itself as a solution to a problem (e.g., a possible explanation of an event or phenomenon, an action that seems likely to produce a desired result) is “uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection” (Dewey 1910: 13). On-going suspension of judgment in the light of doubt about a possible solution is not critical thinking (Dewey 1910: 108). Critique driven by a dogmatically held political or religious ideology is not critical thinking; thus Paulo Freire (1968 [1970]) is using the term (e.g., at 1970: 71, 81, 100, 146) in a more politically freighted sense that includes not only reflection but also revolutionary action against oppression. Derivation of a conclusion from given data using an algorithm is not critical thinking.

What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. Ennis (2016) lists 14 philosophically oriented scholarly definitions and three dictionary definitions. Following Rawls (1971), who distinguished his conception of justice from a utilitarian conception but regarded them as rival conceptions of the same concept, Ennis maintains that the 17 definitions are different conceptions of the same concept. Rawls articulated the shared concept of justice as

a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining… the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (Rawls 1971: 5)

Bailin et al. (1999b) claim that, if one considers what sorts of thinking an educator would take not to be critical thinking and what sorts to be critical thinking, one can conclude that educators typically understand critical thinking to have at least three features.

• It is done for the purpose of making up one’s mind about what to believe or do.
• The person engaging in the thinking is trying to fulfill standards of adequacy and accuracy appropriate to the thinking.
• The thinking fulfills the relevant standards to some threshold level.

One could sum up the core concept that involves these three features by saying that critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking. This core concept seems to apply to all the examples of critical thinking described in the previous section. As for the non-examples, their exclusion depends on construing careful thinking as excluding jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question.

If the core of critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one’s criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses. As to its scope, some conceptions (e.g., Dewey 1910, 1933) restrict it to constructive thinking on the basis of one’s own observations and experiments, others (e.g., Ennis 1962; Fisher & Scriven 1997; Johnson 1992) to appraisal of the products of such thinking. Ennis (1991) and Bailin et al. (1999b) take it to cover both construction and appraisal. As to its goal, some conceptions restrict it to forming a judgment (Dewey 1910, 1933; Lipman 1987; Facione 1990a). Others allow for actions as well as beliefs as the end point of a process of critical thinking (Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b). As to the criteria and threshold for being careful, definitions vary in the term used to indicate that critical thinking satisfies certain norms: “intellectually disciplined” (Scriven & Paul 1987), “reasonable” (Ennis 1991), “skillful” (Lipman 1987), “skilled” (Fisher & Scriven 1997), “careful” (Bailin & Battersby 2009). Some definitions specify these norms, referring variously to “consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey 1910, 1933); “the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning” (Glaser 1941); “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (Scriven & Paul 1987); the requirement that “it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting” (Lipman 1987); “evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations” (Facione 1990a); and “plus-minus considerations of the product in terms of appropriate standards (or criteria)” (Johnson 1992). Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) propose to ground the concept of critical thinking in the concept of rationality, which they understand as combining epistemic rationality (fitting one’s beliefs to the world) and instrumental rationality (optimizing goal fulfillment); a critical thinker, in their view, is someone with “a propensity to override suboptimal responses from the autonomous mind” (2010: 227). These variant specifications of norms for critical thinking are not necessarily incompatible with one another, and in any case presuppose the core notion of thinking carefully. As to the thinking component singled out, some definitions focus on suspension of judgment during the thinking (Dewey 1910; McPeck 1981), others on inquiry while judgment is suspended (Bailin & Battersby 2009, 2021), others on the resulting judgment (Facione 1990a), and still others on responsiveness to reasons (Siegel 1988). Kuhn (2019) takes critical thinking to be more a dialogic practice of advancing and responding to arguments than an individual ability.

In educational contexts, a definition of critical thinking is a “programmatic definition” (Scheffler 1960: 19). It expresses a practical program for achieving an educational goal. For this purpose, a one-sentence formulaic definition is much less useful than articulation of a critical thinking process, with criteria and standards for the kinds of thinking that the process may involve. The real educational goal is recognition, adoption and implementation by students of those criteria and standards. That adoption and implementation in turn consists in acquiring the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker.

Conceptions of critical thinking generally do not include moral integrity as part of the concept. Dewey, for example, took critical thinking to be the ultimate intellectual goal of education, but distinguished it from the development of social cooperation among school children, which he took to be the central moral goal. Ennis (1996, 2011) added to his previous list of critical thinking dispositions a group of dispositions to care about the dignity and worth of every person, which he described as a “correlative” (1996) disposition without which critical thinking would be less valuable and perhaps harmful. An educational program that aimed at developing critical thinking but not the correlative disposition to care about the dignity and worth of every person, he asserted, “would be deficient and perhaps dangerous” (Ennis 1996: 172).

Dewey thought that education for reflective thinking would be of value to both the individual and society; recognition in educational practice of the kinship to the scientific attitude of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (Dewey 1910: iii). Schools participating in the Eight-Year Study took development of the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems as a means to leading young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18, 81). Harvey Siegel (1988: 55–61) has offered four considerations in support of adopting critical thinking as an educational ideal. (1) Respect for persons requires that schools and teachers honour students’ demands for reasons and explanations, deal with students honestly, and recognize the need to confront students’ independent judgment; these requirements concern the manner in which teachers treat students. (2) Education has the task of preparing children to be successful adults, a task that requires development of their self-sufficiency. (3) Education should initiate children into the rational traditions in such fields as history, science and mathematics. (4) Education should prepare children to become democratic citizens, which requires reasoned procedures and critical talents and attitudes. To supplement these considerations, Siegel (1988: 62–90) responds to two objections: the ideology objection that adoption of any educational ideal requires a prior ideological commitment and the indoctrination objection that cultivation of critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination.

Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:

• suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
• an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
• the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
• the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
• testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)

The process of reflective thinking consisting of these phases would be preceded by a perplexed, troubled or confused situation and followed by a cleared-up, unified, resolved situation (Dewey 1933: 106). The term ‘phases’ replaced the term ‘steps’ (Dewey 1910: 72), thus removing the earlier suggestion of an invariant sequence. Variants of the above analysis appeared in (Dewey 1916: 177) and (Dewey 1938: 101–119).

The variant formulations indicate the difficulty of giving a single logical analysis of such a varied process. The process of critical thinking may have a spiral pattern, with the problem being redefined in the light of obstacles to solving it as originally formulated. For example, the person in Transit might have concluded that getting to the appointment at the scheduled time was impossible and have reformulated the problem as that of rescheduling the appointment for a mutually convenient time. Further, defining a problem does not always follow after or lead immediately to an idea of a suggested solution. Nor should it do so, as Dewey himself recognized in describing the physician in Typhoid as avoiding any strong preference for this or that conclusion before getting further information (Dewey 1910: 85; 1933: 170). People with a hypothesis in mind, even one to which they have a very weak commitment, have a so-called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998): they are likely to pay attention to evidence that confirms the hypothesis and to ignore evidence that counts against it or for some competing hypothesis. Detectives, intelligence agencies, and investigators of airplane accidents are well advised to gather relevant evidence systematically and to postpone even tentative adoption of an explanatory hypothesis until the collected evidence rules out with the appropriate degree of certainty all but one explanation. Dewey’s analysis of the critical thinking process can be faulted as well for requiring acceptance or rejection of a possible solution to a defined problem, with no allowance for deciding in the light of the available evidence to suspend judgment. Further, given the great variety of kinds of problems for which reflection is appropriate, there is likely to be variation in its component events. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the critical thinking process is as a checklist whose component events can occur in a variety of orders, selectively, and more than once. These component events might include (1) noticing a difficulty, (2) defining the problem, (3) dividing the problem into manageable sub-problems, (4) formulating a variety of possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (5) determining what evidence is relevant to deciding among possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (6) devising a plan of systematic observation or experiment that will uncover the relevant evidence, (7) carrying out the plan of systematic observation or experimentation, (8) noting the results of the systematic observation or experiment, (9) gathering relevant testimony and information from others, (10) judging the credibility of testimony and information gathered from others, (11) drawing conclusions from gathered evidence and accepted testimony, and (12) accepting a solution that the evidence adequately supports (cf. Hitchcock 2017: 485).

Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted.

If one considers the critical thinking process illustrated by the 11 examples, one can identify distinct kinds of mental acts and mental states that form part of it. To distinguish, label and briefly characterize these components is a useful preliminary to identifying abilities, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits and the like that contribute causally to thinking critically. Identifying such abilities and habits is in turn a useful preliminary to setting educational goals. Setting the goals is in its turn a useful preliminary to designing strategies for helping learners to achieve the goals and to designing ways of measuring the extent to which learners have done so. Such measures provide both feedback to learners on their achievement and a basis for experimental research on the effectiveness of various strategies for educating people to think critically. Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the kinds of mental acts and mental events that can occur in a critical thinking process.

• Observing : One notices something in one’s immediate environment (sudden cooling of temperature in Weather , bubbles forming outside a glass and then going inside in Bubbles , a moving blur in the distance in Blur , a rash in Rash ). Or one notes the results of an experiment or systematic observation (valuables missing in Disorder , no suction without air pressure in Suction pump )
• Feeling : One feels puzzled or uncertain about something (how to get to an appointment on time in Transit , why the diamonds vary in spacing in Diamond ). One wants to resolve this perplexity. One feels satisfaction once one has worked out an answer (to take the subway express in Transit , diamonds closer when needed as a warning in Diamond ).
• Wondering : One formulates a question to be addressed (why bubbles form outside a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , how suction pumps work in Suction pump , what caused the rash in Rash ).
• Imagining : One thinks of possible answers (bus or subway or elevated in Transit , flagpole or ornament or wireless communication aid or direction indicator in Ferryboat , allergic reaction or heat rash in Rash ).
• Inferring : One works out what would be the case if a possible answer were assumed (valuables missing if there has been a burglary in Disorder , earlier start to the rash if it is an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug in Rash ). Or one draws a conclusion once sufficient relevant evidence is gathered (take the subway in Transit , burglary in Disorder , discontinue blood pressure medication and new cream in Rash ).
• Knowledge : One uses stored knowledge of the subject-matter to generate possible answers or to infer what would be expected on the assumption of a particular answer (knowledge of a city’s public transit system in Transit , of the requirements for a flagpole in Ferryboat , of Boyle’s law in Bubbles , of allergic reactions in Rash ).
• Experimenting : One designs and carries out an experiment or a systematic observation to find out whether the results deduced from a possible answer will occur (looking at the location of the flagpole in relation to the pilot’s position in Ferryboat , putting an ice cube on top of a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , measuring the height to which a suction pump will draw water at different elevations in Suction pump , noticing the spacing of diamonds when movement to or from a diamond lane is allowed in Diamond ).
• Consulting : One finds a source of information, gets the information from the source, and makes a judgment on whether to accept it. None of our 11 examples include searching for sources of information. In this respect they are unrepresentative, since most people nowadays have almost instant access to information relevant to answering any question, including many of those illustrated by the examples. However, Candidate includes the activities of extracting information from sources and evaluating its credibility.
• Identifying and analyzing arguments : One notices an argument and works out its structure and content as a preliminary to evaluating its strength. This activity is central to Candidate . It is an important part of a critical thinking process in which one surveys arguments for various positions on an issue.
• Judging : One makes a judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence and reasoning, such as the judgment in Ferryboat that the purpose of the pole is to provide direction to the pilot.
• Deciding : One makes a decision on what to do or on what policy to adopt, as in the decision in Transit to take the subway.

By definition, a person who does something voluntarily is both willing and able to do that thing at that time. Both the willingness and the ability contribute causally to the person’s action, in the sense that the voluntary action would not occur if either (or both) of these were lacking. For example, suppose that one is standing with one’s arms at one’s sides and one voluntarily lifts one’s right arm to an extended horizontal position. One would not do so if one were unable to lift one’s arm, if for example one’s right side was paralyzed as the result of a stroke. Nor would one do so if one were unwilling to lift one’s arm, if for example one were participating in a street demonstration at which a white supremacist was urging the crowd to lift their right arm in a Nazi salute and one were unwilling to express support in this way for the racist Nazi ideology. The same analysis applies to a voluntary mental process of thinking critically. It requires both willingness and ability to think critically, including willingness and ability to perform each of the mental acts that compose the process and to coordinate those acts in a sequence that is directed at resolving the initiating perplexity.

Consider willingness first. We can identify causal contributors to willingness to think critically by considering factors that would cause a person who was able to think critically about an issue nevertheless not to do so (Hamby 2014). For each factor, the opposite condition thus contributes causally to willingness to think critically on a particular occasion. For example, people who habitually jump to conclusions without considering alternatives will not think critically about issues that arise, even if they have the required abilities. The contrary condition of willingness to suspend judgment is thus a causal contributor to thinking critically.

Now consider ability. In contrast to the ability to move one’s arm, which can be completely absent because a stroke has left the arm paralyzed, the ability to think critically is a developed ability, whose absence is not a complete absence of ability to think but absence of ability to think well. We can identify the ability to think well directly, in terms of the norms and standards for good thinking. In general, to be able do well the thinking activities that can be components of a critical thinking process, one needs to know the concepts and principles that characterize their good performance, to recognize in particular cases that the concepts and principles apply, and to apply them. The knowledge, recognition and application may be procedural rather than declarative. It may be domain-specific rather than widely applicable, and in either case may need subject-matter knowledge, sometimes of a deep kind.

Reflections of the sort illustrated by the previous two paragraphs have led scholars to identify the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a “critical thinker”, i.e., someone who thinks critically whenever it is appropriate to do so. We turn now to these three types of causal contributors to thinking critically. We start with dispositions, since arguably these are the most powerful contributors to being a critical thinker, can be fostered at an early stage of a child’s development, and are susceptible to general improvement (Glaser 1941: 175)

8. Critical Thinking Dispositions

Educational researchers use the term ‘dispositions’ broadly for the habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker. Some writers (e.g., Paul & Elder 2006; Hamby 2014; Bailin & Battersby 2016a) propose to use the term ‘virtues’ for this dimension of a critical thinker. The virtues in question, although they are virtues of character, concern the person’s ways of thinking rather than the person’s ways of behaving towards others. They are not moral virtues but intellectual virtues, of the sort articulated by Zagzebski (1996) and discussed by Turri, Alfano, and Greco (2017).

On a realistic conception, thinking dispositions or intellectual virtues are real properties of thinkers. They are general tendencies, propensities, or inclinations to think in particular ways in particular circumstances, and can be genuinely explanatory (Siegel 1999). Sceptics argue that there is no evidence for a specific mental basis for the habits of mind that contribute to thinking critically, and that it is pedagogically misleading to posit such a basis (Bailin et al. 1999a). Whatever their status, critical thinking dispositions need motivation for their initial formation in a child—motivation that may be external or internal. As children develop, the force of habit will gradually become important in sustaining the disposition (Nieto & Valenzuela 2012). Mere force of habit, however, is unlikely to sustain critical thinking dispositions. Critical thinkers must value and enjoy using their knowledge and abilities to think things through for themselves. They must be committed to, and lovers of, inquiry.

A person may have a critical thinking disposition with respect to only some kinds of issues. For example, one could be open-minded about scientific issues but not about religious issues. Similarly, one could be confident in one’s ability to reason about the theological implications of the existence of evil in the world but not in one’s ability to reason about the best design for a guided ballistic missile.

Facione (1990a: 25) divides “affective dispositions” of critical thinking into approaches to life and living in general and approaches to specific issues, questions or problems. Adapting this distinction, one can usefully divide critical thinking dispositions into initiating dispositions (those that contribute causally to starting to think critically about an issue) and internal dispositions (those that contribute causally to doing a good job of thinking critically once one has started). The two categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, open-mindedness, in the sense of willingness to consider alternative points of view to one’s own, is both an initiating and an internal disposition.

Using the strategy of considering factors that would block people with the ability to think critically from doing so, we can identify as initiating dispositions for thinking critically attentiveness, a habit of inquiry, self-confidence, courage, open-mindedness, willingness to suspend judgment, trust in reason, wanting evidence for one’s beliefs, and seeking the truth. We consider briefly what each of these dispositions amounts to, in each case citing sources that acknowledge them.

• Attentiveness : One will not think critically if one fails to recognize an issue that needs to be thought through. For example, the pedestrian in Weather would not have looked up if he had not noticed that the air was suddenly cooler. To be a critical thinker, then, one needs to be habitually attentive to one’s surroundings, noticing not only what one senses but also sources of perplexity in messages received and in one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Habit of inquiry : Inquiry is effortful, and one needs an internal push to engage in it. For example, the student in Bubbles could easily have stopped at idle wondering about the cause of the bubbles rather than reasoning to a hypothesis, then designing and executing an experiment to test it. Thus willingness to think critically needs mental energy and initiative. What can supply that energy? Love of inquiry, or perhaps just a habit of inquiry. Hamby (2015) has argued that willingness to inquire is the central critical thinking virtue, one that encompasses all the others. It is recognized as a critical thinking disposition by Dewey (1910: 29; 1933: 35), Glaser (1941: 5), Ennis (1987: 12; 1991: 8), Facione (1990a: 25), Bailin et al. (1999b: 294), Halpern (1998: 452), and Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo (2001).
• Self-confidence : Lack of confidence in one’s abilities can block critical thinking. For example, if the woman in Rash lacked confidence in her ability to figure things out for herself, she might just have assumed that the rash on her chest was the allergic reaction to her medication against which the pharmacist had warned her. Thus willingness to think critically requires confidence in one’s ability to inquire (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Courage : Fear of thinking for oneself can stop one from doing it. Thus willingness to think critically requires intellectual courage (Paul & Elder 2006: 16).
• Open-mindedness : A dogmatic attitude will impede thinking critically. For example, a person who adheres rigidly to a “pro-choice” position on the issue of the legal status of induced abortion is likely to be unwilling to consider seriously the issue of when in its development an unborn child acquires a moral right to life. Thus willingness to think critically requires open-mindedness, in the sense of a willingness to examine questions to which one already accepts an answer but which further evidence or reasoning might cause one to answer differently (Dewey 1933; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b; Halpern 1998, Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). Paul (1981) emphasizes open-mindedness about alternative world-views, and recommends a dialectical approach to integrating such views as central to what he calls “strong sense” critical thinking. In three studies, Haran, Ritov, & Mellers (2013) found that actively open-minded thinking, including “the tendency to weigh new evidence against a favored belief, to spend sufficient time on a problem before giving up, and to consider carefully the opinions of others in forming one’s own”, led study participants to acquire information and thus to make accurate estimations.
• Willingness to suspend judgment : Premature closure on an initial solution will block critical thinking. Thus willingness to think critically requires a willingness to suspend judgment while alternatives are explored (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Halpern 1998).
• Trust in reason : Since distrust in the processes of reasoned inquiry will dissuade one from engaging in it, trust in them is an initiating critical thinking disposition (Facione 1990a, 25; Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Paul & Elder 2006). In reaction to an allegedly exclusive emphasis on reason in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, Thayer-Bacon (2000) argues that intuition, imagination, and emotion have important roles to play in an adequate conception of critical thinking that she calls “constructive thinking”. From her point of view, critical thinking requires trust not only in reason but also in intuition, imagination, and emotion.
• Seeking the truth : If one does not care about the truth but is content to stick with one’s initial bias on an issue, then one will not think critically about it. Seeking the truth is thus an initiating critical thinking disposition (Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). A disposition to seek the truth is implicit in more specific critical thinking dispositions, such as trying to be well-informed, considering seriously points of view other than one’s own, looking for alternatives, suspending judgment when the evidence is insufficient, and adopting a position when the evidence supporting it is sufficient.

Some of the initiating dispositions, such as open-mindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, are also internal critical thinking dispositions, in the sense of mental habits or attitudes that contribute causally to doing a good job of critical thinking once one starts the process. But there are many other internal critical thinking dispositions. Some of them are parasitic on one’s conception of good thinking. For example, it is constitutive of good thinking about an issue to formulate the issue clearly and to maintain focus on it. For this purpose, one needs not only the corresponding ability but also the corresponding disposition. Ennis (1991: 8) describes it as the disposition “to determine and maintain focus on the conclusion or question”, Facione (1990a: 25) as “clarity in stating the question or concern”. Other internal dispositions are motivators to continue or adjust the critical thinking process, such as willingness to persist in a complex task and willingness to abandon nonproductive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998: 452). For a list of identified internal critical thinking dispositions, see the Supplement on Internal Critical Thinking Dispositions .

Some theorists postulate skills, i.e., acquired abilities, as operative in critical thinking. It is not obvious, however, that a good mental act is the exercise of a generic acquired skill. Inferring an expected time of arrival, as in Transit , has some generic components but also uses non-generic subject-matter knowledge. Bailin et al. (1999a) argue against viewing critical thinking skills as generic and discrete, on the ground that skilled performance at a critical thinking task cannot be separated from knowledge of concepts and from domain-specific principles of good thinking. Talk of skills, they concede, is unproblematic if it means merely that a person with critical thinking skills is capable of intelligent performance.

Despite such scepticism, theorists of critical thinking have listed as general contributors to critical thinking what they variously call abilities (Glaser 1941; Ennis 1962, 1991), skills (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998) or competencies (Fisher & Scriven 1997). Amalgamating these lists would produce a confusing and chaotic cornucopia of more than 50 possible educational objectives, with only partial overlap among them. It makes sense instead to try to understand the reasons for the multiplicity and diversity, and to make a selection according to one’s own reasons for singling out abilities to be developed in a critical thinking curriculum. Two reasons for diversity among lists of critical thinking abilities are the underlying conception of critical thinking and the envisaged educational level. Appraisal-only conceptions, for example, involve a different suite of abilities than constructive-only conceptions. Some lists, such as those in (Glaser 1941), are put forward as educational objectives for secondary school students, whereas others are proposed as objectives for college students (e.g., Facione 1990a).

The abilities described in the remaining paragraphs of this section emerge from reflection on the general abilities needed to do well the thinking activities identified in section 6 as components of the critical thinking process described in section 5 . The derivation of each collection of abilities is accompanied by citation of sources that list such abilities and of standardized tests that claim to test them.

Observational abilities : Careful and accurate observation sometimes requires specialist expertise and practice, as in the case of observing birds and observing accident scenes. However, there are general abilities of noticing what one’s senses are picking up from one’s environment and of being able to articulate clearly and accurately to oneself and others what one has observed. It helps in exercising them to be able to recognize and take into account factors that make one’s observation less trustworthy, such as prior framing of the situation, inadequate time, deficient senses, poor observation conditions, and the like. It helps as well to be skilled at taking steps to make one’s observation more trustworthy, such as moving closer to get a better look, measuring something three times and taking the average, and checking what one thinks one is observing with someone else who is in a good position to observe it. It also helps to be skilled at recognizing respects in which one’s report of one’s observation involves inference rather than direct observation, so that one can then consider whether the inference is justified. These abilities come into play as well when one thinks about whether and with what degree of confidence to accept an observation report, for example in the study of history or in a criminal investigation or in assessing news reports. Observational abilities show up in some lists of critical thinking abilities (Ennis 1962: 90; Facione 1990a: 16; Ennis 1991: 9). There are items testing a person’s ability to judge the credibility of observation reports in the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, Levels X and Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). Norris and King (1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b) is a test of ability to appraise observation reports.

Emotional abilities : The emotions that drive a critical thinking process are perplexity or puzzlement, a wish to resolve it, and satisfaction at achieving the desired resolution. Children experience these emotions at an early age, without being trained to do so. Education that takes critical thinking as a goal needs only to channel these emotions and to make sure not to stifle them. Collaborative critical thinking benefits from ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotional commitments and reactions.

Questioning abilities : A critical thinking process needs transformation of an inchoate sense of perplexity into a clear question. Formulating a question well requires not building in questionable assumptions, not prejudging the issue, and using language that in context is unambiguous and precise enough (Ennis 1962: 97; 1991: 9).

Imaginative abilities : Thinking directed at finding the correct causal explanation of a general phenomenon or particular event requires an ability to imagine possible explanations. Thinking about what policy or plan of action to adopt requires generation of options and consideration of possible consequences of each option. Domain knowledge is required for such creative activity, but a general ability to imagine alternatives is helpful and can be nurtured so as to become easier, quicker, more extensive, and deeper (Dewey 1910: 34–39; 1933: 40–47). Facione (1990a) and Halpern (1998) include the ability to imagine alternatives as a critical thinking ability.

Inferential abilities : The ability to draw conclusions from given information, and to recognize with what degree of certainty one’s own or others’ conclusions follow, is universally recognized as a general critical thinking ability. All 11 examples in section 2 of this article include inferences, some from hypotheses or options (as in Transit , Ferryboat and Disorder ), others from something observed (as in Weather and Rash ). None of these inferences is formally valid. Rather, they are licensed by general, sometimes qualified substantive rules of inference (Toulmin 1958) that rest on domain knowledge—that a bus trip takes about the same time in each direction, that the terminal of a wireless telegraph would be located on the highest possible place, that sudden cooling is often followed by rain, that an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug generally shows up soon after one starts taking it. It is a matter of controversy to what extent the specialized ability to deduce conclusions from premisses using formal rules of inference is needed for critical thinking. Dewey (1933) locates logical forms in setting out the products of reflection rather than in the process of reflection. Ennis (1981a), on the other hand, maintains that a liberally-educated person should have the following abilities: to translate natural-language statements into statements using the standard logical operators, to use appropriately the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, to deal with argument forms and arguments containing symbols, to determine whether in virtue of an argument’s form its conclusion follows necessarily from its premisses, to reason with logically complex propositions, and to apply the rules and procedures of deductive logic. Inferential abilities are recognized as critical thinking abilities by Glaser (1941: 6), Facione (1990a: 9), Ennis (1991: 9), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 99, 111), and Halpern (1998: 452). Items testing inferential abilities constitute two of the five subtests of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), two of the four sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), three of the seven sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), 11 of the 34 items on Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), and a high but variable proportion of the 25 selected-response questions in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Experimenting abilities : Knowing how to design and execute an experiment is important not just in scientific research but also in everyday life, as in Rash . Dewey devoted a whole chapter of his How We Think (1910: 145–156; 1933: 190–202) to the superiority of experimentation over observation in advancing knowledge. Experimenting abilities come into play at one remove in appraising reports of scientific studies. Skill in designing and executing experiments includes the acknowledged abilities to appraise evidence (Glaser 1941: 6), to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques (Facione 1990a: 9), to judge inductions to an explanatory hypothesis (Ennis 1991: 9), and to recognize the need for an adequately large sample size (Halpern 1998). The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) includes four items (out of 52) on experimental design. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) makes room for appraisal of study design in both its performance task and its selected-response questions.

Consulting abilities : Skill at consulting sources of information comes into play when one seeks information to help resolve a problem, as in Candidate . Ability to find and appraise information includes ability to gather and marshal pertinent information (Glaser 1941: 6), to judge whether a statement made by an alleged authority is acceptable (Ennis 1962: 84), to plan a search for desired information (Facione 1990a: 9), and to judge the credibility of a source (Ennis 1991: 9). Ability to judge the credibility of statements is tested by 24 items (out of 76) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) and by four items (out of 52) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). The College Learning Assessment’s performance task requires evaluation of whether information in documents is credible or unreliable (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Argument analysis abilities : The ability to identify and analyze arguments contributes to the process of surveying arguments on an issue in order to form one’s own reasoned judgment, as in Candidate . The ability to detect and analyze arguments is recognized as a critical thinking skill by Facione (1990a: 7–8), Ennis (1991: 9) and Halpern (1998). Five items (out of 34) on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) test skill at argument analysis. The College Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) incorporates argument analysis in its selected-response tests of critical reading and evaluation and of critiquing an argument.

Judging skills and deciding skills : Skill at judging and deciding is skill at recognizing what judgment or decision the available evidence and argument supports, and with what degree of confidence. It is thus a component of the inferential skills already discussed.

Lists and tests of critical thinking abilities often include two more abilities: identifying assumptions and constructing and evaluating definitions.

In addition to dispositions and abilities, critical thinking needs knowledge: of critical thinking concepts, of critical thinking principles, and of the subject-matter of the thinking.

We can derive a short list of concepts whose understanding contributes to critical thinking from the critical thinking abilities described in the preceding section. Observational abilities require an understanding of the difference between observation and inference. Questioning abilities require an understanding of the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness. Inferential abilities require an understanding of the difference between conclusive and defeasible inference (traditionally, between deduction and induction), as well as of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Experimenting abilities require an understanding of the concepts of hypothesis, null hypothesis, assumption and prediction, as well as of the concept of statistical significance and of its difference from importance. They also require an understanding of the difference between an experiment and an observational study, and in particular of the difference between a randomized controlled trial, a prospective correlational study and a retrospective (case-control) study. Argument analysis abilities require an understanding of the concepts of argument, premiss, assumption, conclusion and counter-consideration. Additional critical thinking concepts are proposed by Bailin et al. (1999b: 293), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 105–106), Black (2012), and Blair (2021).

According to Glaser (1941: 25), ability to think critically requires knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning. If we review the list of abilities in the preceding section, however, we can see that some of them can be acquired and exercised merely through practice, possibly guided in an educational setting, followed by feedback. Searching intelligently for a causal explanation of some phenomenon or event requires that one consider a full range of possible causal contributors, but it seems more important that one implements this principle in one’s practice than that one is able to articulate it. What is important is “operational knowledge” of the standards and principles of good thinking (Bailin et al. 1999b: 291–293). But the development of such critical thinking abilities as designing an experiment or constructing an operational definition can benefit from learning their underlying theory. Further, explicit knowledge of quirks of human thinking seems useful as a cautionary guide. Human memory is not just fallible about details, as people learn from their own experiences of misremembering, but is so malleable that a detailed, clear and vivid recollection of an event can be a total fabrication (Loftus 2017). People seek or interpret evidence in ways that are partial to their existing beliefs and expectations, often unconscious of their “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998). Not only are people subject to this and other cognitive biases (Kahneman 2011), of which they are typically unaware, but it may be counter-productive for one to make oneself aware of them and try consciously to counteract them or to counteract social biases such as racial or sexual stereotypes (Kenyon & Beaulac 2014). It is helpful to be aware of these facts and of the superior effectiveness of blocking the operation of biases—for example, by making an immediate record of one’s observations, refraining from forming a preliminary explanatory hypothesis, blind refereeing, double-blind randomized trials, and blind grading of students’ work. It is also helpful to be aware of the prevalence of “noise” (unwanted unsystematic variability of judgments), of how to detect noise (through a noise audit), and of how to reduce noise: make accuracy the goal, think statistically, break a process of arriving at a judgment into independent tasks, resist premature intuitions, in a group get independent judgments first, favour comparative judgments and scales (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein 2021). It is helpful as well to be aware of the concept of “bounded rationality” in decision-making and of the related distinction between “satisficing” and optimizing (Simon 1956; Gigerenzer 2001).

Critical thinking about an issue requires substantive knowledge of the domain to which the issue belongs. Critical thinking abilities are not a magic elixir that can be applied to any issue whatever by somebody who has no knowledge of the facts relevant to exploring that issue. For example, the student in Bubbles needed to know that gases do not penetrate solid objects like a glass, that air expands when heated, that the volume of an enclosed gas varies directly with its temperature and inversely with its pressure, and that hot objects will spontaneously cool down to the ambient temperature of their surroundings unless kept hot by insulation or a source of heat. Critical thinkers thus need a rich fund of subject-matter knowledge relevant to the variety of situations they encounter. This fact is recognized in the inclusion among critical thinking dispositions of a concern to become and remain generally well informed.

Experimental educational interventions, with control groups, have shown that education can improve critical thinking skills and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. For information about these tests, see the Supplement on Assessment .

What educational methods are most effective at developing the dispositions, abilities and knowledge of a critical thinker? In a comprehensive meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of strategies for teaching students to think critically, Abrami et al. (2015) found that dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring each increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They also found that in these studies a combination of separate instruction in critical thinking with subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically was more effective than either by itself. However, the difference was not statistically significant; that is, it might have arisen by chance.

Most of these studies lack the longitudinal follow-up required to determine whether the observed differential improvements in critical thinking abilities or dispositions continue over time, for example until high school or college graduation. For details on studies of methods of developing critical thinking skills and dispositions, see the Supplement on Educational Methods .

12. Controversies

Scholars have denied the generalizability of critical thinking abilities across subject domains, have alleged bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, and have investigated the relationship of critical thinking to other kinds of thinking.

McPeck (1981) attacked the thinking skills movement of the 1970s, including the critical thinking movement. He argued that there are no general thinking skills, since thinking is always thinking about some subject-matter. It is futile, he claimed, for schools and colleges to teach thinking as if it were a separate subject. Rather, teachers should lead their pupils to become autonomous thinkers by teaching school subjects in a way that brings out their cognitive structure and that encourages and rewards discussion and argument. As some of his critics (e.g., Paul 1985; Siegel 1985) pointed out, McPeck’s central argument needs elaboration, since it has obvious counter-examples in writing and speaking, for which (up to a certain level of complexity) there are teachable general abilities even though they are always about some subject-matter. To make his argument convincing, McPeck needs to explain how thinking differs from writing and speaking in a way that does not permit useful abstraction of its components from the subject-matters with which it deals. He has not done so. Nevertheless, his position that the dispositions and abilities of a critical thinker are best developed in the context of subject-matter instruction is shared by many theorists of critical thinking, including Dewey (1910, 1933), Glaser (1941), Passmore (1980), Weinstein (1990), Bailin et al. (1999b), and Willingham (2019).

McPeck’s challenge prompted reflection on the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific. McPeck argued for a strong subject-specificity thesis, according to which it is a conceptual truth that all critical thinking abilities are specific to a subject. (He did not however extend his subject-specificity thesis to critical thinking dispositions. In particular, he took the disposition to suspend judgment in situations of cognitive dissonance to be a general disposition.) Conceptual subject-specificity is subject to obvious counter-examples, such as the general ability to recognize confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. A more modest thesis, also endorsed by McPeck, is epistemological subject-specificity, according to which the norms of good thinking vary from one field to another. Epistemological subject-specificity clearly holds to a certain extent; for example, the principles in accordance with which one solves a differential equation are quite different from the principles in accordance with which one determines whether a painting is a genuine Picasso. But the thesis suffers, as Ennis (1989) points out, from vagueness of the concept of a field or subject and from the obvious existence of inter-field principles, however broadly the concept of a field is construed. For example, the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning hold for all the varied fields in which such reasoning occurs. A third kind of subject-specificity is empirical subject-specificity, according to which as a matter of empirically observable fact a person with the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker in one area of investigation will not necessarily have them in another area of investigation.

The thesis of empirical subject-specificity raises the general problem of transfer. If critical thinking abilities and dispositions have to be developed independently in each school subject, how are they of any use in dealing with the problems of everyday life and the political and social issues of contemporary society, most of which do not fit into the framework of a traditional school subject? Proponents of empirical subject-specificity tend to argue that transfer is more likely to occur if there is critical thinking instruction in a variety of domains, with explicit attention to dispositions and abilities that cut across domains. But evidence for this claim is scanty. There is a need for well-designed empirical studies that investigate the conditions that make transfer more likely.

It is common ground in debates about the generality or subject-specificity of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that critical thinking about any topic requires background knowledge about the topic. For example, the most sophisticated understanding of the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is of no help unless accompanied by some knowledge of what might be plausible explanations of some phenomenon under investigation.

Critics have objected to bias in the theory, pedagogy and practice of critical thinking. Commentators (e.g., Alston 1995; Ennis 1998) have noted that anyone who takes a position has a bias in the neutral sense of being inclined in one direction rather than others. The critics, however, are objecting to bias in the pejorative sense of an unjustified favoring of certain ways of knowing over others, frequently alleging that the unjustly favoured ways are those of a dominant sex or culture (Bailin 1995). These ways favour:

• reinforcement of egocentric and sociocentric biases over dialectical engagement with opposing world-views (Paul 1981, 1984; Warren 1998)
• distancing from the object of inquiry over closeness to it (Martin 1992; Thayer-Bacon 1992)
• indifference to the situation of others over care for them (Martin 1992)
• orientation to thought over orientation to action (Martin 1992)
• being reasonable over caring to understand people’s ideas (Thayer-Bacon 1993)
• being neutral and objective over being embodied and situated (Thayer-Bacon 1995a)
• doubting over believing (Thayer-Bacon 1995b)
• reason over emotion, imagination and intuition (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• solitary thinking over collaborative thinking (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• written and spoken assignments over other forms of expression (Alston 2001)
• attention to written and spoken communications over attention to human problems (Alston 2001)
• winning debates in the public sphere over making and understanding meaning (Alston 2001)

A common thread in this smorgasbord of accusations is dissatisfaction with focusing on the logical analysis and evaluation of reasoning and arguments. While these authors acknowledge that such analysis and evaluation is part of critical thinking and should be part of its conceptualization and pedagogy, they insist that it is only a part. Paul (1981), for example, bemoans the tendency of atomistic teaching of methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments to turn students into more able sophists, adept at finding fault with positions and arguments with which they disagree but even more entrenched in the egocentric and sociocentric biases with which they began. Martin (1992) and Thayer-Bacon (1992) cite with approval the self-reported intimacy with their subject-matter of leading researchers in biology and medicine, an intimacy that conflicts with the distancing allegedly recommended in standard conceptions and pedagogy of critical thinking. Thayer-Bacon (2000) contrasts the embodied and socially embedded learning of her elementary school students in a Montessori school, who used their imagination, intuition and emotions as well as their reason, with conceptions of critical thinking as

thinking that is used to critique arguments, offer justifications, and make judgments about what are the good reasons, or the right answers. (Thayer-Bacon 2000: 127–128)

Alston (2001) reports that her students in a women’s studies class were able to see the flaws in the Cinderella myth that pervades much romantic fiction but in their own romantic relationships still acted as if all failures were the woman’s fault and still accepted the notions of love at first sight and living happily ever after. Students, she writes, should

be able to connect their intellectual critique to a more affective, somatic, and ethical account of making risky choices that have sexist, racist, classist, familial, sexual, or other consequences for themselves and those both near and far… critical thinking that reads arguments, texts, or practices merely on the surface without connections to feeling/desiring/doing or action lacks an ethical depth that should infuse the difference between mere cognitive activity and something we want to call critical thinking. (Alston 2001: 34)

Some critics portray such biases as unfair to women. Thayer-Bacon (1992), for example, has charged modern critical thinking theory with being sexist, on the ground that it separates the self from the object and causes one to lose touch with one’s inner voice, and thus stigmatizes women, who (she asserts) link self to object and listen to their inner voice. Her charge does not imply that women as a group are on average less able than men to analyze and evaluate arguments. Facione (1990c) found no difference by sex in performance on his California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Kuhn (1991: 280–281) found no difference by sex in either the disposition or the competence to engage in argumentative thinking.

The critics propose a variety of remedies for the biases that they allege. In general, they do not propose to eliminate or downplay critical thinking as an educational goal. Rather, they propose to conceptualize critical thinking differently and to change its pedagogy accordingly. Their pedagogical proposals arise logically from their objections. They can be summarized as follows:

• Focus on argument networks with dialectical exchanges reflecting contesting points of view rather than on atomic arguments, so as to develop “strong sense” critical thinking that transcends egocentric and sociocentric biases (Paul 1981, 1984).
• Foster closeness to the subject-matter and feeling connected to others in order to inform a humane democracy (Martin 1992).
• Develop “constructive thinking” as a social activity in a community of physically embodied and socially embedded inquirers with personal voices who value not only reason but also imagination, intuition and emotion (Thayer-Bacon 2000).
• In developing critical thinking in school subjects, treat as important neither skills nor dispositions but opening worlds of meaning (Alston 2001).
• Attend to the development of critical thinking dispositions as well as skills, and adopt the “critical pedagogy” practised and advocated by Freire (1968 [1970]) and hooks (1994) (Dalgleish, Girard, & Davies 2017).

A common thread in these proposals is treatment of critical thinking as a social, interactive, personally engaged activity like that of a quilting bee or a barn-raising (Thayer-Bacon 2000) rather than as an individual, solitary, distanced activity symbolized by Rodin’s The Thinker . One can get a vivid description of education with the former type of goal from the writings of bell hooks (1994, 2010). Critical thinking for her is open-minded dialectical exchange across opposing standpoints and from multiple perspectives, a conception similar to Paul’s “strong sense” critical thinking (Paul 1981). She abandons the structure of domination in the traditional classroom. In an introductory course on black women writers, for example, she assigns students to write an autobiographical paragraph about an early racial memory, then to read it aloud as the others listen, thus affirming the uniqueness and value of each voice and creating a communal awareness of the diversity of the group’s experiences (hooks 1994: 84). Her “engaged pedagogy” is thus similar to the “freedom under guidance” implemented in John Dewey’s Laboratory School of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It incorporates the dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring that Abrami (2015) found to be most effective in improving critical thinking skills and dispositions.

What is the relationship of critical thinking to problem solving, decision-making, higher-order thinking, creative thinking, and other recognized types of thinking? One’s answer to this question obviously depends on how one defines the terms used in the question. If critical thinking is conceived broadly to cover any careful thinking about any topic for any purpose, then problem solving and decision making will be kinds of critical thinking, if they are done carefully. Historically, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’ were two names for the same thing. If critical thinking is conceived more narrowly as consisting solely of appraisal of intellectual products, then it will be disjoint with problem solving and decision making, which are constructive.

Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives used the phrase “intellectual abilities and skills” for what had been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others (Bloom et al. 1956: 38). Thus, the so-called “higher-order thinking skills” at the taxonomy’s top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are just critical thinking skills, although they do not come with general criteria for their assessment (Ennis 1981b). The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) likewise treats critical thinking as cutting across those types of cognitive process that involve more than remembering (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270). For details, see the Supplement on History .

As to creative thinking, it overlaps with critical thinking (Bailin 1987, 1988). Thinking about the explanation of some phenomenon or event, as in Ferryboat , requires creative imagination in constructing plausible explanatory hypotheses. Likewise, thinking about a policy question, as in Candidate , requires creativity in coming up with options. Conversely, creativity in any field needs to be balanced by critical appraisal of the draft painting or novel or mathematical theory.

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify four moves for fact-checking.
• Apply fact-checking to specific exercises.

Start with a Strong Foundation

When you are learning a new concept or writing a paper, you probably do some internet research to locate information about the topic. However, as you probably know, not all internet sources are reliable. Philosophy students are fortunate to have two online philosophy encyclopedias that provide excellent information about a wide array of topics. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides good general topic coverage of the major areas of philosophy. The IEP is a traditional encyclopedia, and its articles are written for new students without a lot of prior knowledge. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides in-depth, up-to-date articles on a wide range of topics and includes both general and specific coverage. The articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy are well written, but they typically go into greater depth and sometimes include technical terms or information you will have to look up. These articles provide an excellent, free introduction to a wide range of specific topics in philosophy. As with all encyclopedia entries, students should start with the article itself and then move on to sources cited in the article. Think of these articles as an entry point into research.

Wherever possible, read articles and books written by philosophers on the topics you are interested in. You can usually find these resources at your college or university library. You may want to cast a wider net on the internet itself by tapping into YouTube channels, podcasts, and other websites that can help you understand philosophical issues or provide information for philosophy papers. However, be discriminating when selecting material. In this section, we will outline some tools and habits that can make you a better, more critically engaged online researcher.

Finally, many instructors in philosophy will encourage their students to engage only with the assigned texts in the class. This can be a valuable technique for learning philosophy since philosophical thinking is cultivated by serious, critical engagement with good philosophical writing. If you can learn to engage directly with primary sources (texts written by philosophers about philosophy), you will be a better philosophy student. However, we acknowledge that most students are accustomed to using the internet for research when they are learning something new. So this section is intended to provide some guidance for students who want to supplement their class readings with information gleaned from online sources.

The SIFT Method (Four Moves for Student Fact Checkers)

Information literacy scholar Michael Caulfield came to realize that the methods of research taught by librarians and information literacy educators often did not work well for students. Typically, students are encouraged to assess the quality of information using an acronym like CRAAP: currency, relevancy, authority, accuracy, and purpose. But these criteria are not always useful in spotting misinformation turned up through search engines. After all, many sources that provide misinformation appear current and relevant and are generated by organizations that appear to be authoritative while they conceal a hidden agenda.

To find out how students evaluate sources they find on Google, Caulfield relies on the empirical research of Sam Wineburg and Sarah Mcgrew (2016). The researchers compared the behavior of Stanford University students to trained fact-checkers at newspapers and magazines. Not surprisingly, the online fact-checkers used search engines more effectively. Based on this research, Caulfield developed his own protocol to make students better researchers.

The first thing to know about using a search engine like Google is that results are not ranked by authority, accuracy, or relevance. Internet companies are notoriously secretive about the algorithms (mathematical procedural rules) they use to generate search engine results, but we know that they prioritize paid advertisements, popularity, and web interconnectivity (the degree to which key words and links from a website are shared with other websites). Thus, websites interested in sharing misinformation can use the same search engine optimization tools that legitimate companies or media sources use to move up the ranks of search results. So you need to learn to use the search engine to your advantage. Caulfield recommends using the acronym SIFT, or the “four moves” of student fact checkers.

The first move reiterates something we have already discussed: to become a better critical thinker, slow down the quick and efficient thinking that leads to errors and engage in critical reflection and metacognition. By stopping, slowing down, or taking your time to allow for critical reflection, you will be using rational and reflective thinking to assess claims. Additionally, after some searching, you will want stop, return to your original source, and check its claims again. When you circle back after going down a bit of a rabbit hole, you will have a new perspective from which to evaluate these claims.

Investigate the Source

Next, investigate the source of your information. Internet searches will often lead you through a series of links, in which you jump from one document to another. Strive to understand this electronic paper trail. Who wrote each document? What are their credentials? You can prioritize academic sources, such as web pages of philosophy faculty members, and you can discount sites that aggregate student papers or provide content without clear authorship. But investigating authorship does not mean that you should just read the “About” page on a website. Rather, Wineburg and Mcgrew (2016) found that fact-checkers used search tools to check the reputation of the sites they were investigating, a move they called “reading laterally.” You do not have to spend a lot of time on the site itself. Instead, search reviews or critiques of the website and the authors on the site. Find out what other authoritative sources say about the site. Is this a website that is approved by other people you trust? Or do people you trust indicate that the website or its information are questionable?

Find Better Coverage

Check the claims and information on the site you are reading. What do other sources say about the same information? Is there other coverage on the same topic? This move is particularly important for controversial claims you might find on social media, where the original source is frequently obscured. Is this information being covered elsewhere, and does the coverage agree with what you have read? This move can help in evaluating your original source or gaining familiarity with the claims being made. If the claims by one source do not match up with what you are reading elsewhere, be skeptical.

Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to the Original Context

Frequently, claims made on the internet are divorced from their original context. It is important to trace those claims back to the original source. This advice holds for online research in philosophy. You may discover a claim or quote about a philosopher that lacks context. To evaluate the claim, you need its original context, which will reveal whether the claim or quote was mischaracterized or portrayed in a misleading way. Look for citations, and then follow those citations to the original publication. If the source you have found does not have citations, then you will need to search key terms or phrases in quotation marks to see if you can locate the claim or quote using another method. Good academic sources ought to provide citations so you can verify the original source of the claim. If it is hard to verify a claim or quote, that should be a red flag to not trust the source making those claims or providing those quotes.

Think Like A Philosopher

Here are three examples of claims made online. Use the four moves to assess whether these claims are true. You have been provided with a screen capture of a headline, so you do not have links back to a website. Therefore, use search tools on the web to verify the claims being made. In each case, find a source that either verifies or debunks the claim. The source you use to verify or debunk the claim should be reputable and authoritative.

Mexico’s Border Wall

This post claims to be picture of fencing from Mexico’s southern border. Is the photo accurate? Is this an image of Mexico’s southern border? Has the Mexican government constructed a wall to prevent the flow of migrants from across its southern border?

Smart Toilet?

This image was shared on the web. Is it a real product or satire?

Drilling Stonehenge?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Information Literacy

• Explore different types of AI
• Using AI carefully and thoughtfully
• Fact-checking AI with Lateral Reading
• Beyond fact-checking
• How do I cite AI correctly?
• Level Up: Further information on AI

AI and Information Literacy: Assessing Content

Lateral reading: your #1 analysis tool

If you cannot take AI-cited sources at face value and you (or the AI's programmers) cannot determine where the information is sourced from, how are you going to assess the validity of what AI is telling you? Here you should use the most important method of analysis available to you: lateral reading. Lateral reading is done when you apply fact-checking techniques by leaving the AI output and consulting other sources to evaluate what the AI has provided based on your prompt. You can think of this as “tabbed reading”, moving laterally away from the AI information to sources in other tabs rather than just proceeding “vertically” down the page based on the AI prompt alone.

• Watch: how to read laterally
• Watch: how lateral reading helps you sort fact from fiction

What does this process look like specifically with AI-based tools? Learn more in the sections below.

Lateral reading and AI

Lateral reading can (and should) be applied to all online sources, but you will find fewer pieces of information to assess through lateral reading when working with AI. While you can typically reach a consensus about online sources by searching for a source’s publication, funding organization, author or title, none of these bits of information are available to you when assessing AI output. As a result, it is critical that you read several sources outside the AI tool to determine whether credible, non-AI sources can confirm the information the tool returned. 

With AI, instead of asking “who’s behind this information?” we have to ask “who can confirm this information?” In the video above, lateral reading is applied to an online source with an organization name, logo, URL, and authors whose identities and motivations can be researched and fact checked from other sources. AI content has no identifiers and AI output is a composite of multiple unidentifiable sources. This means you must take a look at the factual claims in AI content and decide on the validity of the claims themselves rather than the source of the claims.

Since AI output is not a single source of information but rather drawn from multiple sources that could be both factual and false, you will find it useful to break apart AI output into smaller components of information that can be evaluated independent of each other. For instance, let’s see what happens when we ask ChatGPT to write an essay on Jim Henson’s undergraduate studies at The Ohio State University.

Of course, many of you know that Jim Henson completed his undergraduate at UMD, not Ohio State, which illustrates a critical distinction to be made about AI; it will take what you provide it and try to answer your question as best it can, but it will NOT fact check you or spot incorrect assumptions in the prompt you give it. In paragraph 2 from the example above, the AI correctly states that Henson was involved in puppetry activities on campus, but is incorrect in stating this was at Ohio State. If one were to assume AI output is accurate throughout, they would not realize their own error in prompting the AI with the incorrect university. 

The issues in this example are not just based on the flawed prompt. In paragraph 3, the AI describes a Dr. Richard Lederer who was a mentor of Henson’s. A quick Google search reveals no mentions of a Dr. Richard Lederer at Ohio State or UMD. Further, the only Richard Lederer of note to come up is an author, linguist and speaker who seems to have no connection to Henson himself. This is an example of the AI “hallucinating” a seemingly factual answer that sounds plausible, but is unfounded upon some quick lateral reading.

Instructions: tackle an AI fact-check

Here's how to fact-check something you got from ChatGPT or a similar tool:

• Break down the information. Take a look at the response and see if you can isolate specific, searchable claims. This is called fractionation .
• When searching for specific pieces of information: Google results or Wikipedia
• When seeing if something exists: Google Scholar, WorldCat , or Wikipedia
• Tip: Some things to watch out for – is the AI putting correct information in the wrong context (like when it said that Texas A&M’s tradition was a UMD one)? Is it attributing a fake article to a real author?
• What did your prompt assume?
• What did the AI assume?
• Who would know things about this topic? Would they have a different perspective than what the AI is offering? Where could you check to find out?
• Finally, make a judgment call . What here is true, what is misleading, and what is factually incorrect? Can you re-prompt the AI to try and fix some of these errors? Can you dive deeper into one of the sources you found while fact-checking? Remember, you’re repeating this process for each of the claims the AI made – go back to your list from the first step and keep going!

For an example of this in action, take a look at the video at the bottom of the page.

Example: Let's fact-check an AI response!

Check out the videos below to see these lateral reading strategies in action!

The first video has information on fact-checking AI-generated text and links:

And the second video has advice on fact-checking AI-generated citations and scholarly sources:

But just checking specific claims isn't all we need to do. Click the "next" button below to learn about critical thinking beyond fact-checking.

• << Previous: What does AI get wrong?
• Next: Beyond fact-checking >>
• Last Updated: Apr 26, 2024 11:01 AM
• URL: https://lib.guides.umd.edu/AI

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Lateral Thinking vs Vertical Thinking: Harnessing Different Thought Processes for Problem Solving

Lateral thinking and vertical thinking represent two distinct approaches to problem-solving and reasoning. Lateral thinking, often associated with creativity and the ability to generate novel ideas, involves looking at problems from various angles and applying non-traditional methods to arrive at a solution. It’s about thinking outside the conventional framework and often leads to unexpected or innovative outcomes. On the other hand, vertical thinking is characterized by a logical, sequential approach, following a direct and structured path. This type of thinking digs deep into a subject through methodical analysis and is efficient at solving problems with a clear and established set of rules.

Each thinking style has its advantages and can be more effective in different situations. For complex issues where there is no clear path forward, lateral thinking can provide the breakthrough needed to find a solution. Whereas, for problems that require detailed analysis or a methodical approach, vertical thinking is indispensable. Understanding when and how to apply each type of thinking is crucial for effective problem-solving and decision-making in both personal and professional contexts.

Key Takeaways

• Lateral thinking encourages innovative solutions through a non-linear, creative approach.
• Vertical thinking provides a systematic method of problem-solving using logical steps.
• The effective application of both thinking styles enhances problem-solving and decision-making abilities.

Understanding Lateral and Vertical Thinking

In the realm of problem-solving, two distinct forms of thinking predominate: lateral and vertical. These methodologies differ fundamentally in their approach to reasoning and generating solutions.

Definition and Origin

Lateral thinking is a concept coined by Edward de Bono in 1967, emphasizing the search for new ideas and creative solutions through an indirect and innovative approach. It advocates a break from traditional patterns of thought to foster innovation. In contrast, vertical thinking is characterized by a sequential, logical process that builds on existing knowledge and procedures to reach the correct answer.

Core Principles and Differences

Lateral and vertical thinking are guided by different core principles. Lateral thinking involves divergent thinking , where a person generates multiple alternatives and perspectives. It focuses less on the immediate correctness and more on the potential of numerous ideas, even when they seem illogical at first. Vertical thinking , on the other hand, is based on convergent thinking and critical thinking , where the goal is to filter through ideas and data in a structured way to arrive at the one correct answer, using logical reasoning .

• Seek out alternatives
• Encourage creative disruption
• Apply innovative problem-solving
• Adhere to a structured approach
• Utilize linear thinking and logical progression
• Focus on finding the correct answer through reason

Thought Patterns and Problem-Solving Approaches

The thought patterns that shape lateral and vertical thinking are inherently different. Lateral thinking encourages individuals to look beyond the obvious and explore new ideas through divergent thinking . It leverages creative problem-solving techniques such as brainstorming or analogical thinking to generate innovative solutions. Vertical thinking, conversely, is associated with established thought patterns and problem-solving approaches that rely on critical thinking and step-by-step analysis .

• Embrace unpredictability and creativity
• Leverage alternatives to traditional solutions
• Follow a logical sequence of idea evaluation
• Depend on empirical evidence and structured reasoning

The Role of Creativity in Thinking

Creativity is an invaluable asset in both lateral and vertical thinking processes, facilitating innovation and the generation of unique solutions.

Enhancing Creativity Through Lateral Thinking

Lateral thinking, originally coined by Edward de Bono, encompasses imaginative approaches to problem-solving. It emphasizes the power of random entry points and idea generation that diverge from typical pathways. This mode of thinking encourages individuals to step outside their habitual patterns and consider a broader range of possibilities. For instance, in a brainstorming session, one employs lateral thinking when they use a stimulus word unrelated to the problem at hand to spark creative ideas . These ideas might then be developed into novel solutions that would not have been discovered through more conventional means.

Balancing Creativity and Structure in Vertical Thinking

Conversely, vertical thinking offers a more structured and analytical approach to creativity. It involves a logical flow of ideas and is characterized by drilling down into the depth of knowledge and facts available. Vertical thinking benefits from creativity when it explores new angles of analysis within a given framework, allowing for innovation within the boundaries of existing paradigms. For example, a scientist may use vertical thinking when she methodically tests hypotheses, drawing on her deep well of knowledge to interpret results creatively and propose further research avenues. This approach to creative thinking leverages structured imagination , carefully building on established rules and information.

Strategies for Lateral and Vertical Thinking

The effectiveness of problem-solving can often hinge on the strategic use of lateral and vertical thinking. Developing skills in both areas allows for a more comprehensive approach to innovation and problem resolution, whether through creative brainstorming or structured analysis.

Applying Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats

Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats is a method designed to streamline group discussion and individual thinking. It divides thinking into six distinct modes, represented by colored hats, to manage emotion, information, logic, hope, and creativity.

• White Hat : Focuses on facts, figures, and objective information.
• Red Hat : Concerns feelings, hunches, and intuition without justification.
• Black Hat : Cautious and careful; it highlights the weaknesses in an idea.
• Yellow Hat : Symbolizes optimism and the exploration of positives and benefits.
• Green Hat : Indicates creativity, alternatives, and possibilities for innovative solutions.
• Blue Hat : Oversees the thinking process and ensures that the Six Hats guidelines are followed.

Using this method encourages full-spectrum thinking, from cautious judgment to optimistic possibility.

Techniques for Divergent and Convergent Thinking

Divergent and convergent thinking are essential to both lateral and vertical thinking processes, particularly in problem-solving and generating innovative solutions.

Divergent Thinking :

• Encourages the generation of multiple possible solutions.
• Often applied in brainstorming sessions.
• Open-ended and embraces spontaneity and free-flowing ideas.

Convergent Thinking :

• Narrows down the multitude of possibilities to a select few options.
• Involves critical evaluations and decision-making.
• Seeks to arrive at the best possible answer to a problem.

By utilizing both divergent and convergent thinking techniques, an individual or team ensures that creativity and practicality are both considered, leading to more robust, innovative, and achievable outcomes.

Lateral and Vertical Thinking in Real-world Applications

In the competitive landscape of modern business and the pursuit of personal mastery, lateral and vertical thinking play pivotal roles. They are the twin engines driving innovation and development respectively, each offering a distinct approach to problem-solving and ideation.

Fostering Innovation in Business

Lateral thinking is instrumental in business for generating new ideas and fostering innovation . It equips teams to look beyond conventional solutions and explore innovative services that disrupt markets. Companies that encourage their employees to practice thinking outside the box often find themselves at the forefront of their industries, as they’re able to identify unique selling propositions and redefine customer expectations.

• Example: A tech firm leveraging lateral thinking might create a unique app that offers an unprecedented way to integrate daily work and life tasks, differentiating itself from competitors.

Vertical thinking , on the other hand, is equally valuable, as it lays the foundation for executing innovative ideas with precision. It involves a more traditional and structured approach, where depth rather than breadth of knowledge is emphasized, and services are developed and improved upon through a sequenced and analytical method.

• Example: That same tech firm would rely on vertical thinking to refine the user interface of the app, ensuring a seamless and reliable user experience through systematic testing and development.

Improving Personal Development and Learning

When it comes to personal development and learning , lateral thinking expands an individual’s perception and opens the door to unconventional ways of learning and personal growth. By embracing diverse perspectives and approaches, lateral thinkers often experience a more holistic development.

• Example: A professional might use lateral thinking to combine skills from different disciplines, such as coding and design, to become more versatile in their career path.

Conversely, vertical thinking fosters expertise and mastery in a specific area, allowing individuals to build a robust knowledge base and achieve high levels of competency. It’s a focused approach where learning is incrementally built on existing knowledge.

• Example: A scholar might delve deeply into a single subject area, building a comprehensive understanding that facilitates advanced study or informed teaching in their field.

Best Practices for Combining Lateral and Vertical Thinking

Combining lateral and vertical thinking in decision making and problem solving harnesses the power of creativity and structure. Employing best practices in this multi-faceted approach stimulates innovation and enhances teamwork within organizations.

Integration in Decision Making and Problem Solving

Lateral thinking , characterized by its experimental and creative nature, can be seamlessly integrated with the structured analytical methods of vertical thinking to improve decision making and problem solving processes. They should:

• Use lateral thinking to generate diverse ideas and possibilities.
• Apply vertical thinking to evaluate those ideas against real-world constraints.

The integration encourages a wider view through brainstorming (lateral) and narrows down to the best solutions by applying logical steps (vertical).

Cultivating a Balance Between Different Thinking Modes

Maintaining a balance between lateral and vertical thinking modes underscores the importance of flexibility. To cultivate this balance:

• Encourage regular exercises in design thinking workshops that promote both modes of thought.
• Develop a culture where structured problem-solving (vertical) coexists with experimentation and creativity (lateral).

This deliberate practice helps individuals recognize when to switch between thinking styles for optimal outcomes.

Enhancing Team Creativity and Dynamics

Incorporating both lateral and vertical thinking in teams can lead to enhanced team creativity and dynamics . It entails:

• Assigning roles that leverage individuals’ strengths in creative ideation (lateral thinkers) and methodical analysis (vertical thinkers).
• Creating collaborative spaces where all ideas are valued and examined critically.

These practices empower teams to tackle challenges with a holistic view, elevating their collective innovation power .

Frequently Asked Questions

This section aims to clarify common inquiries surrounding the distinct methodologies of lateral and vertical thinking, their applications, and the development of skills in both areas to improve cognitive capabilities.

How do lateral and vertical thinking approaches differ in problem-solving?

Lateral thinking is characterized by an unconventional, creative approach that explores multiple possibilities and alternatives. It contrasts with vertical thinking, which follows a more traditional, step-by-step process that builds upon known concepts and procedures.

What are the practical applications of lateral thinking in contrast to vertical thinking?

Practical applications of lateral thinking often involve creative industries and innovation, where new solutions and ideas are crucial. On the other hand, vertical thinking applies to areas requiring detailed analysis and precision, such as mathematics or science-related tasks.

Can you provide examples where lateral thinking is more beneficial than vertical thinking?

In marketing and advertising , lateral thinking can lead to groundbreaking campaigns that capture public imagination. Similarly, in product design, approaching a problem laterally can result in innovative products that redefine their categories.

How do traditional problem-solving methods relate to vertical thinking, and how do they differ from lateral thinking techniques?

Traditional problem-solving methods, which are synonymous with vertical thinking, rely on established patterns and logical progression. In contrast, lateral thinking techniques break away from the norm and encourage thinking outside of the box to generate solutions.

In what scenarios is vertical thinking preferable to lateral thinking?

Vertical thinking is often preferable in scenarios where there is a clear objective, and the solution requires accuracy, such as in legal analysis or when following regulatory standards.

How can one develop skills in both lateral and vertical thinking to enhance their cognitive abilities?

Developing skills in both lateral and vertical thinking involves practicing different types of thinking techniques and recognizing when to apply each approach. Engaging in puzzles and brain teasers can improve vertical thinking, while brainstorming and free association can foster lateral thinking abilities.

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The Surprising Benefits of Early Reading

Early reading for pleasure is linked to enhanced thinking, feeling, and acting..

Updated May 9, 2024 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina

• Research into children who start reading for pleasure at an early age, shows notable brain enhancement.
• Reading for pleasure between 2 and 9 supports healthy development in a variety of brain regions.
• Reading rather than screen time is connected to better cognitive, mental health, and behavioural outcomes.
• Reading offers children a proven way to reduce anxiety and depression.

In 2023, researchers in the United Kingdom, at the universities of Warwick and Cambridge, and others in China at the University of Fudan, published results of the data they analyzed from over 10,000 teens gathered from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development cohort in the United States.

Their focus was not academic. They were not trying to see who read the earliest and tested the best. They studied children who read for pleasure and how it improved their brain function if they began between two and nine years old, started after that time, or did not read for pleasure at all. The study was cross-sectional. The researchers collected data from many different teens at a single point in time. They were from diverse socio-economic backgrounds in families that had a whole range of educational levels.

The study was longitudinal. They assessed the over 10,000 adolescent participants over a series of years. Furthermore, a “2-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis for potential causal interference was also performed.” While the study revealed “moderately significant heritability of early” reading for pleasure “with considerable contribution from environments,” the brain differences were found to be causally connected to those children who started reading for pleasure early in life.

This major dataset showed that children who start reading early, for the sheer pleasure of it, develop brain structure in such a way that they improve their thinking skills, mental health, and conduct. They show signs of reduced stress , as well as reduced tendencies towards aggressive behaviours such as bullying .

Imagine children excited to go to school because their peers are joyfully turning the pages of stories rather than seeking opportunities to target, humiliate, and harm. Imagine for teachers a classroom where their students have healthy brains, facility with thinking and learning, and a capacity to self-regulate both internalizing and externalizing behaviours. In other words, their students aren’t withdrawing, disengaging, feeling anxiety and depression . Their students aren’t aggressively lashing out or breaking rules.

Twelve hours a week of reading for pleasure, started early in life, could potentially transform today’s classrooms into spaces where education comes alive and mental health issues are significantly reduced. It might even save many teachers from burnout .

The more children read early, the less time they are on screens which has been shown to change the way their brains develop. The early readers for pleasure showed distinct improvements in their brain development as documented on brain scans. The impacts were notably positive for children’s verbal learning, memory , speech development, and overall academic performance. The impacts were also notable for improvements in mental health and behaviour.

The Research

The Warwick, Cambridge, and Fudan researchers put their study into the context of an extensive meta-analysis of other studies. What they add to our understanding is the significant connection between early reading for pleasure and enhanced brain health versus the correlation between screen time and “multiple psychopathological problems” ranging from externalizing behaviours like bullying, and internalizing ones like depression and anxiety, and learning challenges like ADHD .

Not only are structures in the brain linked specifically to reading impacted, other brain regions, such as “the middle frontal, temporal pole, circular insula, left superior frontal” and more, were positively associated with cognitive or thinking performance. Just as important, the positive impact on so many brain regions were also associated with reducing “psychopathology scores.” If we want children and teens to succeed at academics and avoid the sometimes lifetime curse of mental illness and mental disorders then encouraging and facilitating early reading for pleasure is one critical intervention. The improved health of these brain regions didn’t just slightly improve cognition and mental health outcomes, they “significantly mediated” them.

To put these research insights more forcefully, specific brain regions impacted by early reading for pleasure, among the many identified, “play critical roles in cognitive function.” This is vitally important to lay a foundation for learning that underpins academic success. At the same time, these findings show “abnormal pathological dysfunctions/defects and alterations in these brain regions are significantly related to multiple psychiatric and mental health disorders.”

There is that powerful word once again “significantly.” It is not used lightly by scientific researchers who are cautious to overstate their findings.To recap, if we prioritize children’s early reading for pleasure and keep them away from screen time as their brain is developing intensely, we not only give them an enhanced foundation to academically achieve, but we may also help protect them from the immense suffering and loss frequently connected to mental health disorders.

Early Reading for Pleasure is Protective

Research shows that children who spend time with care-givers reading in early childhood suffer less from social-emotional problems. Children who are reading for pleasure, rather than interacting with screen content, suffer less depression and aggression . They disengage less. They have less anxiety. They are less likely to develop ADHD. They don’t bully as much or break rules as frequently.

Why? Is one activity morally better than the other? Is reading the ethical choice and screen time a "bad" choice? Not according to this research. Because reading for pleasure enhances many brain regions associated with thinking and emotions and mood and behaviours, it is a prescription for success and mental health.

If children cannot see properly, we are quick to get them glasses. If children cannot hear effectively, we get them hearing aids. When they cannot walk, we get them crutches or a wheelchair. If children are struggling to think clearly, problem-solve, develop social- emotional intelligence , behave in regulated, empathic ways, we need to get them reading for pleasure, the sooner the better.

If children are struggling to avoid acting with cruelty and aggression, if they struggle to be motivated, engaged, and happy, we need to supply them with books so that they can learn to read for pleasure. We need to surround them with caregivers who read to them, show them pictures, say words out loud, tell stories until they reach that moment when children are keen to read for pleasure on their own. These children become teens who read rather than are addicted to screens.

If we are a society that intervenes when eyes need support, when ears need enhancement, when legs require rehabilitation, recovery, or assistance, then the research encourages us to become a society that prevents pressing mental health issues, strives for all to have educational and career success, and reduces bullying and aggression by intervening on behalf of brains and brain development.

As one of the study’s researchers, Cambridge psychiatry professor Barbara Sahakian explains: “Reading isn’t just a pleasurable experience – it’s widely accepted that it inspires thinking and creativity , increases empathy and reduces stress. But on top of this, we found significant evidence that it’s linked to important developmental factors in children, improving their cognition, mental health, and brain structure, which are cornerstones for future learning and well-being.”

Sun, Y., Sahakian, B., Langley, C., Yang, A., Jiang, Y., Kang, J., Zhao, X., Li, C., Cheng, W., & Feng, J. (2023). Early-initiated childhood reading for pleasure: associations with better cognitive performance, mental well-being and brain structure in young adolescence. Psychological Medicine.

Jennifer Fraser, Ph.D., is an award-winning educator and bestselling author. Her latest book, The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health , hit shelves and airwaves in April 2022.

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