critical thinking strengths and weaknesses

The Advantages & Disadvantages of Critical Thinking

Micah mcdunnigan.

Critical thinking is, at heart, questioning what you are told instead of taking it at face value. It is evaluating information in a rational framework where facts and reason line up to support or fail to support assertions. Critical thinking skills are highly sought, and have a number of benefits in life. However, with the upsides comes certain downsides.

Explore this article

• Academic Success
• Professional Success
• Disadvantages

1 Academic Success

Memorizing what your teacher tells you and regurgitating it verbatim will only get you so far in school. Memorizing exactly what the teacher told you gives you access to a number of discrete facts you can call on for exams. This will serve you well on questions that ask for such verbatim recitation of information, but the best grades and future success will go to students who can ask questions about those facts, draw connections between them, formulate their own thoughts on the matter, and articulate them.

2 Professional Success

Critical thinking skills will make you more effective in whatever field you choose to go into. The ability to look at your professional field and make connections to identify opportunities no one else has seen yet will give you an edge. This is the way new and innovative products come about. If you are always just following the crowd, you'll never stand out. In a competitive business world, you're in professional trouble if you can't stand on your own or make valuable contributions to your employer.

Critical thinking skills can help you get along with a wider range of people. This is because if you can step back and evaluate a situation from a perspective other than your own, you can better understand why different people do what they do. This helps you avoid the social conflict that results from two narrow-minded perspectives butting heads with one another. It can expand your social circle, and lead to more harmonious interactions with everyone around you.

4 Disadvantages

The downside of critical thinking skills is that they can lead you into new and frightening territory. You might find yourself questioning the values, even the religion, by which you were raised. There is a certain existential comfort in someone else telling you how the world works, then blindly clinging to those tenets. The price of this simple comfort is forgoing a deeper understanding of how the world works, and all the opportunities this deeper thinking provides. While you can use your thinking skills to find new tenets that make sense, a modified version of those original tenets, or a new understanding of those original tenets, you might feel lost as you move between points A and B.

• 1 McGraw Hill: Introduction to Critical Thinking

About the Author

Micah McDunnigan has been writing on politics and technology since 2007. He has written technology pieces and political op-eds for a variety of student organizations and blogs. McDunnigan earned a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from the University of California, Davis.

Related Articles

Critical Thinking in the Decision-Making Processes

How Can a College Experience Help With Achieving Future...

How to Improve Adult Reading Comprehension

Seven Key Features of Critical Thinking

Trusting Others After Being Disappointed

What Does It Mean When You Have a High Intuition?

Differences Between Analytical & Critical Thinking

What Are the Differences Between Bias & Fallacy?

How to Move on After a Long Term Relationship Without...

What Are Ethical Ramifications?

The Importance of College After High School Graduation

How to Practice the Serenity Prayer

Signs of Intelligence

Types of Argument Syles

How to Get Over Being Dumped From a Long-Term Relationship

What to Do When a Friend Tells You She's Not Your Friend...

How to Write a Philosophy Thesis

How to Control Anger If Someone Hurls Insults at Me

How to Increase Your Critical Thinking Skills

How to Make People Want to Follow You on Tumblr

Regardless of how old we are, we never stop learning. Classroom is the educational resource for people of all ages. Whether you’re studying times tables or applying to college, Classroom has the answers.

• Accessibility
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Copyright Policy
• Manage Preferences

© 2020 Leaf Group Ltd. / Leaf Group Media, All Rights Reserved. Based on the Word Net lexical database for the English Language. See disclaimer .

• LEARNING SKILLS
• Study Skills
• Critical Thinking

Search SkillsYouNeed:

Learning Skills:

• A - Z List of Learning Skills
• What is Learning?
• Learning Approaches
• Learning Styles
• 8 Types of Learning Styles
• Understanding Your Preferences to Aid Learning
• Lifelong Learning
• Decisions to Make Before Applying to University
• Top Tips for Surviving Student Life
• Living Online: Education and Learning
• 8 Ways to Embrace Technology-Based Learning Approaches

Critical Thinking Skills

• Critical Thinking and Fake News
• Understanding and Addressing Conspiracy Theories
• Critical Analysis
• Top Tips for Study
• Staying Motivated When Studying
• Student Budgeting and Economic Skills
• Getting Organised for Study
• Finding Time to Study
• Sources of Information
• Assessing Internet Information
• Using Apps to Support Study
• What is Theory?
• Styles of Writing
• Effective Reading
• Critical Reading
• Note-Taking from Reading
• Note-Taking for Verbal Exchanges
• Planning an Essay
• How to Write an Essay
• The Do’s and Don’ts of Essay Writing
• How to Write a Report
• Academic Referencing
• Assignment Finishing Touches
• Reflecting on Marked Work
• 6 Skills You Learn in School That You Use in Real Life
• Top 10 Tips on How to Study While Working
• Exam Skills
• Writing a Dissertation or Thesis
• Research Methods
• Teaching, Coaching, Mentoring and Counselling
• Employability Skills for Graduates

Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and start improving your life in just 5 minutes a day.

You'll get our 5 free 'One Minute Life Skills' and our weekly newsletter.

We'll never share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any time.

What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the logical connection between ideas.  Critical thinking has been the subject of much debate and thought since the time of early Greek philosophers such as Plato and Socrates and has continued to be a subject of discussion into the modern age, for example the ability to recognise fake news .

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, analyse 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.

Recognise, 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.

Critical thinking is thinking about things in certain ways so as to arrive at the best possible solution in the circumstances that the thinker is aware of. In more everyday language, it is a way of thinking about whatever is presently occupying your mind so that you come to the best possible conclusion.

Critical Thinking is:

A way of thinking about particular things at a particular time; it is not the accumulation of facts and knowledge or something that you can learn once and then use in that form forever, such as the nine times table you learn and use in school.

The Skills We Need for Critical Thinking

The skills that we need in order to be able to think critically are varied and include observation, analysis, interpretation, reflection, evaluation, inference, explanation, problem solving, and decision making.

Specifically we need to be able to:

Think about a topic or issue in an objective and critical way.

Identify the different arguments there are in relation to a particular issue.

Evaluate a point of view to determine how strong or valid it is.

Recognise any weaknesses or negative points that there are in the evidence or argument.

Notice what implications there might be behind a statement or argument.

Provide structured reasoning and support for an argument that we wish to make.

The Critical Thinking Process

You should be aware that none of us think critically all the time.

Sometimes we think in almost any way but critically, for example when our self-control is affected by anger, grief or joy or when we are feeling just plain ‘bloody minded’.

On the other hand, the good news is that, since our critical thinking ability varies according to our current mindset, most of the time we can learn to improve our critical thinking ability by developing certain routine activities and applying them to all problems that present themselves.

Once you understand the theory of critical thinking, improving your critical thinking skills takes persistence and practice.

Try this simple exercise to help you to start thinking critically.

Think of something that someone has recently told you. Then ask yourself the following questions:

Who said it?

Someone you know? Someone in a position of authority or power? Does it matter who told you this?

What did they say?

Did they give facts or opinions? Did they provide all the facts? Did they leave anything out?

Where did they say it?

Was it in public or in private? Did other people have a chance to respond an provide an alternative account?

When did they say it?

Was it before, during or after an important event? Is timing important?

Why did they say it?

Did they explain the reasoning behind their opinion? Were they trying to make someone look good or bad?

How did they say it?

Were they happy or sad, angry or indifferent? Did they write it or say it? Could you understand what was said?

What are you Aiming to Achieve?

One of the most important aspects of critical thinking is to decide what you are aiming to achieve and then make a decision based on a range of possibilities.

Once you have clarified that aim for yourself you should use it as the starting point in all future situations requiring thought and, possibly, further decision making. Where needed, make your workmates, family or those around you aware of your intention to pursue this goal. You must then discipline yourself to keep on track until changing circumstances mean you have to revisit the start of the decision making process.

However, there are things that get in the way of simple decision making. We all carry with us a range of likes and dislikes, learnt behaviours and personal preferences developed throughout our lives; they are the hallmarks of being human. A major contribution to ensuring we think critically is to be aware of these personal characteristics, preferences and biases and make allowance for them when considering possible next steps, whether they are at the pre-action consideration stage or as part of a rethink caused by unexpected or unforeseen impediments to continued progress.

The more clearly we are aware of ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, the more likely our critical thinking will be productive.

The Benefit of Foresight

Perhaps the most important element of thinking critically is foresight.

Almost all decisions we make and implement don’t prove disastrous if we find reasons to abandon them. However, our decision making will be infinitely better and more likely to lead to success if, when we reach a tentative conclusion, we pause and consider the impact on the people and activities around us.

The elements needing consideration are generally numerous and varied. In many cases, consideration of one element from a different perspective will reveal potential dangers in pursuing our decision.

For instance, moving a business activity to a new location may improve potential output considerably but it may also lead to the loss of skilled workers if the distance moved is too great. Which of these is the more important consideration? Is there some way of lessening the conflict?

These are the sort of problems that may arise from incomplete critical thinking, a demonstration perhaps of the critical importance of good critical thinking.

Further Reading from Skills You Need

The Skills You Need Guide for Students

Develop the skills you need to make the most of your time as a student.

Our eBooks are ideal for students at all stages of education, school, college and university. They are full of easy-to-follow practical information that will help you to learn more effectively and get better grades.

In Summary:

Critical thinking is aimed at achieving the best possible outcomes in any situation. In order to achieve this it must involve gathering and evaluating information from as many different sources possible.

Critical thinking requires a clear, often uncomfortable, assessment of your personal strengths, weaknesses and preferences and their possible impact on decisions you may make.

Critical thinking requires the development and use of foresight as far as this is possible. As Doris Day sang, “the future’s not ours to see”.

Implementing the decisions made arising from critical thinking must take into account an assessment of possible outcomes and ways of avoiding potentially negative outcomes, or at least lessening their impact.

• Critical thinking involves reviewing the results of the application of decisions made and implementing change where possible.

It might be thought that we are overextending our demands on critical thinking in expecting that it can help to construct focused meaning rather than examining the information given and the knowledge we have acquired to see if we can, if necessary, construct a meaning that will be acceptable and useful.

After all, almost no information we have available to us, either externally or internally, carries any guarantee of its life or appropriateness.  Neat step-by-step instructions may provide some sort of trellis on which our basic understanding of critical thinking can blossom but it doesn’t and cannot provide any assurance of certainty, utility or longevity.

Continue to: Critical Thinking and Fake News Critical Reading

See also: Analytical Skills Understanding and Addressing Conspiracy Theories Introduction to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

Why Critical Thinking Is Important (& How to Improve It)

Last updated May 1, 2023. Edited and medically reviewed by Patrick Alban, DC . Written by Deane Alban .

By improving the quality of your thoughts and your decisions, better critical thinking skills can bring about a big positive change in your life. Learn how.

The quality of your life largely depends on the quality of the decisions you make.

Amazingly, the average person makes roughly 35,000 conscious decisions every day! 

Imagine how much better your life would be if there were a way to make better decisions, day in and day out?

Well, there is and you do it by boosting a skill called critical thinking .

Learning to master critical thinking can have a profoundly positive impact on nearly every aspect of your life.

What Exactly Is Critical Thinking?

The first documented account of critical thinking is the teachings of Socrates as recorded by Plato. 

Over time, the definition of critical thinking has evolved.

Most definitions of critical thinking are fairly complex and best understood by philosophy majors or psychologists.

For example, the Foundation for Critical Thinking , a nonprofit think tank, offers this definition:

“Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

If that makes your head spin, here are some definitions that you may relate to more easily.

Critical thinking is “reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.”

WHAT'S THE BEST BRAIN SUPPLEMENT?

I hear this question often. Here's my answer:

#1 Live a brain-healthy lifestyle first (Be Brain Fit tells you how).

#2 Give Mind Lab Pro a try.

This brain supplement meets all 12 of my requirements for a high-quality brain supplement, including effectiveness, safety, purity, and value. So it's easier for you to be mentally sharper, positive, and more productive.

Choosing the right brain supplement is all about quality. And, when you buy a 3-month supply, you get 1 extra month free . See why I recommend Mind Lab Pro.

Or, a catchy way of defining critical thinking is “deciding what’s true and what you should do.”

But my favorite uber-simple definition is that critical thinking is simply “thinking about thinking.”

6 Major Benefits of Good Critical Thinking Skills

Whether or not you think critically can make the difference between success and failure in just about every area of your life.

Our human brains are imperfect and prone to irrationality, distortions, prejudices, and cognitive biases .

Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of irrational thinking.

While the number of cognitive biases varies depending on the source, Wikipedia, for example, lists nearly 200 of them ! 

Some of the most well-known cognitive biases include:

• catastrophic thinking
• confirmation bias
• fear of missing out (FOMO)

Critical thinking will help you move past the limitations of irrational thinking.

Here are some of the most important ways critical thinking can impact your life.

1. Critical Thinking Is a Key to Career Success

There are many professions where critical thinking is an absolute must.

Lawyers, analysts, accountants, doctors, engineers, reporters, and scientists of all kinds must apply critical thinking frequently.

But critical thinking is a skill set that is becoming increasingly valuable in a growing number of professions.

Critical thinking can help you in any profession where you must:

• analyze information
• systematically solve problems
• generate innovative solutions
• plan strategically
• think creatively
• present your work or ideas to others in a way that can be readily understood

And, as we enter the fourth industrial revolution , critical thinking has become one of the most sought-after skills.

According to the World Economic Forum , critical thinking and complex problem-solving are the two top in-demand skills that employers look for. 

Critical thinking is considered a soft or enterprise skill — a core attribute required to succeed in the workplace . 

NUTRITION FOR THE MIND/BODY CONNECTION

It’s almost impossible to live a lifestyle that provides all the nutrients needed for good brain health and performance. The reason? All of us confront multiple nutrient thieves — stress, poor diet, insomnia, pharmaceuticals, pollution, and more — that steal nutrients that the brain needs to thrive.

• Provides the building blocks to create new brain cells and brain chemicals
• Helps increase resilience to stress to avoid mental burnout
• Supplies the brain with the fuel it needs for mental energy

A foundational principle of mental health and cognitive performance is to supply the body with the best nutrition possible. And, when you buy a 3-month supply of any Performance Lab supplement, you get 1 extra month free . See why I recommend Performance Lab.

According to The University of Arizona, other soft skills include : 

• interpersonal skills
• communication skills
• digital literacy

Critical thinking can help you develop the rest of these soft skills.

Developing your critical thinking can help you land a job since many employers will ask you interview questions or even give you a test to determine how well you can think critically.

It can also help you continually succeed in your career, since being a critical thinker is a powerful predictor of long-term success.

2. Critical Thinkers Make Better Decisions

Every day you make thousands of decisions.

Most of them are made by your subconscious , are not very important, and don’t require much thought, such as what to wear or what to have for lunch. 

But the most important decisions you make can be hard and require a lot of thought, such as when or if you should change jobs, relocate to a new city, buy a house, get married, or have kids.

At work, you may have to make decisions that can alter the course of your career or the lives of others.

Critical thinking helps you cope with everyday problems as they arise.

It promotes independent thinking and strengthens your inner “BS detector.”

It helps you make sense of the glut of data and information available, making you a smarter consumer who is less likely to fall for advertising hype, peer pressure, or scams.

3. Critical Thinking Can Make You Happier

Knowing and understanding yourself is an underappreciated path to happiness. 

We’ve already shown how your quality of life largely depends on the quality of your decisions, but equally as important is the quality of your thoughts.

Critical thinking is an excellent tool to help you better understand yourself and to learn to master your thoughts.

You can use critical thinking to free yourself from cognitive biases, negative thinking , and limiting beliefs that are holding you back in any area of your life.

Critical thinking can help you assess your strengths and weaknesses so that you know what you have to offer others and where you could use improvement.

Critical thinking will enable you to better express your thoughts, ideas, and beliefs.

Better communication helps others to understand you better, resulting in less frustration for both of you.

Critical thinking fosters creativity and out-of-the-box thinking that can be applied to any area of your life.

It gives you a process you can rely on, making decisions less stressful.

4. Critical Thinking Ensures That Your Opinions Are Well-Informed

We have access to more information than ever before .

Astoundingly, more data has been created in the past two years than in the entire previous history of mankind. 

Critical thinking can help you sort through the noise.

American politician, sociologist, and diplomat Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked , “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” 

Critical thinking ensures your opinions are well-informed and based on the best available facts.

You’ll get a boost in confidence when you see that those around you trust your well-considered opinions.

5. Critical Thinking Improves Relationships

You might be concerned that critical thinking will turn you into a Spock-like character who is not very good at relationships.

But, in fact, the opposite is true.

Employing critical thinking makes you more open-minded and better able to understand others’ points of view.

Critical thinkers are more empathetic and in a better position to get along with different kinds of people.

Critical thinking keeps you from jumping to conclusions.

You can be counted on to be the voice of reason when arguments get heated.

You’ll be better able to detect when others:

• are being disingenuous
• don’t have your best interests at heart
• try to take advantage of or manipulate you

6. Critical Thinking Makes You a Better, More Informed Citizen

“An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”

This quote has been incorrectly attributed to Thomas Jefferson , but regardless of the source, these words of wisdom are more relevant than ever. 

Critical thinkers are able to see both sides of any issue and are more likely to generate bipartisan solutions.

They are less likely to be swayed by propaganda or get swept up in mass hysteria.

They are in a better position to spot fake news when they see it.

5 Steps to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills

Some people already have well-developed critical thinking skills.

These people are analytical, inquisitive, and open to new ideas.

And, even though they are confident in their own opinions, they seek the truth, even if it proves their existing ideas to be wrong.

They are able to connect the dots between ideas and detect inconsistencies in others’ thinking.

But regardless of the state of your critical thinking skills today, it’s a skill set you can develop.

While there are many techniques for thinking rationally, here’s a classic 5-step critical thinking process . 

How to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills

Clearly define your question or problem.

This step is so important that Albert Einstein famously quipped:

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Gather Information to Help You Weigh the Options

Consider only the most useful and reliable information from the most reputable sources.

Disregard the rest.

Apply the Information and Ask Critical Questions

Scrutinize all information carefully with a skeptic’s eye.

Not sure what questions to ask?

You can’t go wrong starting with the “5 Ws” that any good investigator asks: Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Then finish by asking “How?”

You’ll find more thought-provoking questions on this Critical Thinking Skills Cheatsheet .

Consider the Implications

Look for potential unintended consequences.

Do a thought experiment about how your solution could play out in both the short term and the long run.

Explore the Full Spectrum of Viewpoints

Examine why others are drawn to differing points of view.

This will help you objectively evaluate your own viewpoint.

You may find critical thinkers who take an opposing view and this can help you find gaps in your own logic.

Watch the Video

This TED-Ed video on YouTube elaborates on the five steps to improve your critical thinking.

Recommended: Upgrading brain health is key to making your brain work better.

• Improve your mental clarity and focus.
• Boost your memory and your ability to learn.
• Increase your capacity to think critically, solve problems, and make decisions.

P.S. Like what you've read on this page? Get more like this -- Sign up for our emails .

How it works

For Business

Join Mind Tools

Article • 8 min read

Critical Thinking

Developing the right mindset and skills.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

We make hundreds of decisions every day and, whether we realize it or not, we're all critical thinkers.

We use critical thinking each time we weigh up our options, prioritize our responsibilities, or think about the likely effects of our actions. It's a crucial skill that helps us to cut out misinformation and make wise decisions. The trouble is, we're not always very good at it!

In this article, we'll explore the key skills that you need to develop your critical thinking skills, and how to adopt a critical thinking mindset, so that you can make well-informed decisions.

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the discipline of rigorously and skillfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions, and beliefs. You'll need to actively question every step of your thinking process to do it well.

Collecting, analyzing and evaluating information is an important skill in life, and a highly valued asset in the workplace. People who score highly in critical thinking assessments are also rated by their managers as having good problem-solving skills, creativity, strong decision-making skills, and good overall performance. [1]

Key Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinkers possess a set of key characteristics which help them to question information and their own thinking. Focus on the following areas to develop your critical thinking skills:

Being willing and able to explore alternative approaches and experimental ideas is crucial. Can you think through "what if" scenarios, create plausible options, and test out your theories? If not, you'll tend to write off ideas and options too soon, so you may miss the best answer to your situation.

To nurture your curiosity, stay up to date with facts and trends. You'll overlook important information if you allow yourself to become "blinkered," so always be open to new information.

But don't stop there! Look for opposing views or evidence to challenge your information, and seek clarification when things are unclear. This will help you to reassess your beliefs and make a well-informed decision later. Read our article, Opening Closed Minds , for more ways to stay receptive.

Logical Thinking

You must be skilled at reasoning and extending logic to come up with plausible options or outcomes.

It's also important to emphasize logic over emotion. Emotion can be motivating but it can also lead you to take hasty and unwise action, so control your emotions and be cautious in your judgments. Know when a conclusion is "fact" and when it is not. "Could-be-true" conclusions are based on assumptions and must be tested further. Read our article, Logical Fallacies , for help with this.

Use creative problem solving to balance cold logic. By thinking outside of the box you can identify new possible outcomes by using pieces of information that you already have.

Self-Awareness

Many of the decisions we make in life are subtly informed by our values and beliefs. These influences are called cognitive biases and it can be difficult to identify them in ourselves because they're often subconscious.

Practicing self-awareness will allow you to reflect on the beliefs you have and the choices you make. You'll then be better equipped to challenge your own thinking and make improved, unbiased decisions.

One particularly useful tool for critical thinking is the Ladder of Inference . It allows you to test and validate your thinking process, rather than jumping to poorly supported conclusions.

Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset

Combine the above skills with the right mindset so that you can make better decisions and adopt more effective courses of action. You can develop your critical thinking mindset by following this process:

Gather Information

First, collect data, opinions and facts on the issue that you need to solve. Draw on what you already know, and turn to new sources of information to help inform your understanding. Consider what gaps there are in your knowledge and seek to fill them. And look for information that challenges your assumptions and beliefs.

Be sure to verify the authority and authenticity of your sources. Not everything you read is true! Use this checklist to ensure that your information is valid:

• Are your information sources trustworthy ? (For example, well-respected authors, trusted colleagues or peers, recognized industry publications, websites, blogs, etc.)
• Is the information you have gathered up to date ?
• Has the information received any direct criticism ?
• Does the information have any errors or inaccuracies ?
• Is there any evidence to support or corroborate the information you have gathered?
• Is the information you have gathered subjective or biased in any way? (For example, is it based on opinion, rather than fact? Is any of the information you have gathered designed to promote a particular service or organization?)

If any information appears to be irrelevant or invalid, don't include it in your decision making. But don't omit information just because you disagree with it, or your final decision will be flawed and bias.

Now observe the information you have gathered, and interpret it. What are the key findings and main takeaways? What does the evidence point to? Start to build one or two possible arguments based on what you have found.

You'll need to look for the details within the mass of information, so use your powers of observation to identify any patterns or similarities. You can then analyze and extend these trends to make sensible predictions about the future.

To help you to sift through the multiple ideas and theories, it can be useful to group and order items according to their characteristics. From here, you can compare and contrast the different items. And once you've determined how similar or different things are from one another, Paired Comparison Analysis can help you to analyze them.

The final step involves challenging the information and rationalizing its arguments.

Apply the laws of reason (induction, deduction, analogy) to judge an argument and determine its merits. To do this, it's essential that you can determine the significance and validity of an argument to put it in the correct perspective. Take a look at our article, Rational Thinking , for more information about how to do this.

Once you have considered all of the arguments and options rationally, you can finally make an informed decision.

Afterward, take time to reflect on what you have learned and what you found challenging. Step back from the detail of your decision or problem, and look at the bigger picture. Record what you've learned from your observations and experience.

Critical thinking involves rigorously and skilfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions and beliefs. It's a useful skill in the workplace and in life.

You'll need to be curious and creative to explore alternative possibilities, but rational to apply logic, and self-aware to identify when your beliefs could affect your decisions or actions.

You can demonstrate a high level of critical thinking by validating your information, analyzing its meaning, and finally evaluating the argument.

Critical Thinking Infographic

See Critical Thinking represented in our infographic: An Elementary Guide to Critical Thinking .

You've accessed 1 of your 2 free resources.

Get unlimited access

Discover more content

Book Insights

Extreme Teaming: Lessons in Complex, Cross-Sector Leadership

Amy Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey

Who's in the Room?: How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them

Add comment

Comments (1)

priyanka ghogare

Team Management

Learn the key aspects of managing a team, from building and developing your team, to working with different types of teams, and troubleshooting common problems.

Sign-up to our newsletter

Subscribing to the Mind Tools newsletter will keep you up-to-date with our latest updates and newest resources.

Subscribe now

Business Skills

Personal Development

Leadership and Management

Member Extras

Most Popular

Newest Releases

SWOT Analysis

How to Build a Strong Culture in a Distributed Team

Mind Tools Store

About Mind Tools Content

Discover something new today

Top tips for delegating.

Delegate work to your team members effectively with these top tips

Ten Dos and Don'ts of Change Conversations

Tips for tackling discussions about change

How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?

Boosting Your People Skills

Self-Assessment

What's Your Leadership Style?

Learn About the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Way You Like to Lead

Recommended for you

Starting a new job: three tips for success.

Taking the stress out of settling in

Business Operations and Process Management

Strategy Tools

Customer Service

Business Ethics and Values

Handling Information and Data

Project Management

Knowledge Management

Self-Development and Goal Setting

Time Management

Presentation Skills

Learning Skills

Career Skills

Communication Skills

Negotiation, Persuasion and Influence

Working With Others

Difficult Conversations

Creativity Tools

Self-Management

Work-Life Balance

Stress Management and Wellbeing

Coaching and Mentoring

Change Management

Managing Conflict

Delegation and Empowerment

Performance Management

Leadership Skills

Developing Your Team

Talent Management

Problem Solving

Decision Making

Member Podcast

5 Barriers to Critical Thinking

What holds us back from thinking critically in day-to-day situations.

Posted January 18, 2019 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• What Is Cognition?
• Find a therapist near me

Quite often, discussions of Critical Thinking (CT) revolve around tips for what you or your students should be doing to enhance CT ability. However, it seems that there’s substantially less discussion of what you shouldn’t be doing—that is, barriers to CT.

About a year ago, I posted "5 Tips for Critical Thinking" to this blog, and after thinking about it in terms of what not to do , along with more modern conceptualizations of CT (see Dwyer, 2017), I’ve compiled a list of five major barriers to CT. Of course, these are not the only barriers to CT; rather, they are five that may have the most impact on how one applies CT.

1. Trusting Your Gut

Trust your gut is a piece of advice often thrown around in the context of being in doubt. The concept of using intuitive judgment is actually the last thing you want to be doing if critical thinking is your goal. In the past, intuitive judgment has been described as "the absence of analysis" (Hamm, 1988); and automatic cognitive processing—which generally lacks effort, intention, awareness, or voluntary control—is usually experienced as perceptions or feelings (Kahneman, 2011; Lieberman, 2003).

Given that intuitive judgment operates automatically and cannot be voluntarily "turned off," associated errors and unsupported biases are difficult to prevent, largely because reflective judgment has not been consulted. Even when errors appear obvious in hindsight, they can only be prevented through the careful, self-regulated monitoring and control afforded by reflective judgment. Such errors and flawed reasoning include cognitive biases and logical fallacies .

Going with your gut—experienced as perceptions or feelings—generally leads the thinker to favor perspectives consistent with their own personal biases and experiences or those of their group.

2. Lack of Knowledge

CT skills are key components of what CT is, and in order to conduct it, one must know how to use these skills. Not knowing the skills of CT—analysis, evaluation, and inference (i.e., what they are or how to use them)—is, of course, a major barrier to its application. However, consideration of a lack of knowledge does not end with the knowledge of CT skills.

Let’s say you know what analysis, evaluation, and inference are, as well as how to apply them. The question then becomes: Are you knowledgeable in the topic area you have been asked to apply the CT? If not, intellectual honesty and reflective judgment should be engaged to allow you to consider the nature, limits, and certainty of what knowledge you do have, so that you can evaluate what is required of you to gain the knowledge necessary to make a critically thought-out judgment.

However, the barrier here may not necessarily be a lack of topic knowledge, but perhaps rather believing that you have the requisite knowledge to make a critically thought-out judgment when this is not the case or lacking the willingness to gain additional, relevant topic knowledge.

3. Lack of Willingness

In addition to skills, disposition towards thinking is also key to CT. Disposition towards thinking refers to the extent to which an individual is willing or inclined to perform a given thinking skill, and is essential for understanding how we think and how we can make our thinking better, in both academic settings and everyday circumstances (Norris, 1992; Siegel, 1999; Valenzuela, Nieto, & Saiz, 2011; Dwyer, Hogan & Stewart, 2014).

Dispositions can’t be taught, per se, but they do play a large role in determining whether or not CT will be performed. Simply, it doesn’t matter how skilled one is at analysis, evaluation, and inference—if they’re not willing to think critically, CT is not likely to occur.

4. Misunderstanding of Truth

Truth-seeking is one such disposition towards thinking, which refers to a desire for knowledge; to seek and offer both reasons and objections in an effort to inform and to be well-informed; a willingness to challenge popular beliefs and social norms by asking questions (of oneself and others); to be honest and objective about pursuing the truth, even if the findings do not support one’s self-interest or pre-conceived beliefs or opinions; and to change one’s mind about an idea as a result of the desire for truth (Dwyer, 2017).

Though this is something for which many of us strive or even just assume we do, the truth is that we all succumb to unwarranted assumptions from time to time: that is, beliefs presumed to be true without adequate justification. For example, we might make a judgment based on an unsubstantiated stereotype or a commonsense/belief statement that has no empirical evidence to justify it. When using CT, it’s important to distinguish facts from beliefs and, also, to dig a little deeper by evaluating "facts" with respect to how much empirical support they have to validate them as fact (see " The Dirtiest Word in Critical Thinking: 'Proof' and its Burden ").

Furthermore, sometimes the truth doesn’t suit people, and so, they might choose to ignore it or try and manipulate knowledge or understanding to accommodate their bias . For example, some people may engage in wishful thinking , in which they believe something is true because they wish it to be; some might engage in relativistic thinking , in which, for them, the truth is subjective or just a matter of opinion.

5. Closed-mindedness

In one of my previous posts, I lay out " 5 Tips for Critical Thinking "—one of which is to play Devil’s Advocate , which refers to the "consideration of alternatives." There’s always more than one way to do or think about something—why not engage such consideration?

The willingness to play Devil’s Advocate implies a sensibility consistent with open-mindedness (i.e., an inclination to be cognitively flexible and avoid rigidity in thinking; to tolerate divergent or conflicting views and treat all viewpoints alike, prior to subsequent analysis and evaluation; to detach from one’s own beliefs and consider, seriously, points of view other than one’s own without bias or self-interest; to be open to feedback by accepting positive feedback, and to not reject criticism or constructive feedback without thoughtful consideration; to amend existing knowledge in light of new ideas and experiences; and to explore such new, alternative, or "unusual" ideas).

At the opposite end of the spectrum, closed-mindedness is a significant barrier to CT. By this stage, you have probably identified the inherent nature of bias in our thinking. The first step of CT is always going to be to evaluate this bias. However, one’s bias may be so strong that it leads them to become closed-minded and renders them unwilling to consider any other perspectives.

Another way in which someone might be closed-minded is through having properly researched and critically thought about a topic and then deciding that this perspective will never change, as if their knowledge will never need to adapt. However, critical thinkers know that knowledge can change and adapt. An example I’ve used in the past is quite relevant here—growing up, I was taught that there were nine planets in our solar system; however, based on further research, our knowledge of planets has been amended to now only consider eight of those as planets.

Being open-minded is a valuable disposition, but so is skepticism (i.e., the inclination to challenge ideas; to withhold judgment before engaging all the evidence or when the evidence and reasons are insufficient; to take a position and be able to change position when the evidence and reasons are sufficient; and to look at findings from various perspectives).

However, one can be both open-minded and skeptical. It is closed-mindedness that is the barrier to CT, so please note that closed-mindedness and skepticism are distinct dispositions.

Dwyer, C.P. (2017). Critical thinking: Conceptual perspectives and practical guidelines. UK: Cambridge University Press.

Dwyer, C.P., Hogan, M.J. & Stewart, I. (2014). An integrated critical thinking framework for the 21st century. Thinking Skills & Creativity, 12, 43-52.

Hamm, R. M. (1988). Clinical intuition and clinical analysis: expertise and the cognitive continuum. In J. Dowie & A. Elstein (Eds.), Professional judgment: A reader in clinical decision making, 78–105. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking fast and slow. Penguin: Great Britain.

Lieberman, M. D. (2003). Reflexive and reflective judgment processes: A social cognitive neuroscience approach. Social Judgments: Implicit and Explicit Processes, 5, 44–67.

Norris, S. P. (Ed.). (1992). The generalizability of critical thinking: Multiple perspectives on an educational ideal. New York: Teachers College Press.

Siegel, H. (1999). What (good) are thinking dispositions? Educational Theory, 49, 2, 207–221.

Valenzuela, J., Nieto, A. M., & Saiz, C. (2011). Critical thinking motivational scale: A contribution to the study of relationship between critical thinking and motivation. Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, 9, 2, 823–848.

Christopher Dwyer, Ph.D., is a lecturer at the Technological University of the Shannon in Athlone, Ireland.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Teletherapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

• Coronavirus Disease 2019
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

• The Center for Critical Thinking Community Online
• Customized Webinars and Online Courses for Faculty
• Certification in the Paul-Elder Approach to Critical Thinking
• Consulting for Leaders and Key Personnel at Your Organization
• K-12 Instruction
• Higher Education
• Business & Professional Groups
• Build a Local Critical Thinking Town Hall
• Critical Thinking Training for Law Enforcement
• Online Courses for Instructors
• Critical Thinking Therapy
• Bring Critical Thinking Into Your Website's Discussion

The State of Critical Thinking Today

• Professional Development Model for K-12
• Professional Development Model - College and University
• Workshop Descriptions
• Mentor Program
• Inservice Information Request Form
• Institutions Using Our Approach to Critical Thinking

Translate this page from English...

*Machine translated pages not guaranteed for accuracy. Click Here for our professional translations.

“Too many facts, too little conceptualizing, too much memorizing, and too little thinking.” ~  Paul Hurd , the Organizer in Developing Blueprints for Institutional Change

Introduction The question at issue in this paper is: What is the current state of critical thinking in higher education?

Sadly, studies of higher education demonstrate three disturbing, but hardly novel, facts:

• Most college faculty at all levels lack a substantive concept of critical thinking.
• Most college faculty don’t realize that they lack a substantive concept of critical thinking, believe that they sufficiently understand it, and assume they are already teaching students it.  
• Lecture, rote memorization, and (largely ineffective) short-term study habits are still the norm in college instruction and learning today.

These three facts, taken together, represent serious obstacles to essential, long-term institutional change, for only when administrative and faculty leaders grasp the nature, implications, and power of a robust concept of critical thinking — as well as gain insight into the negative implications of its absence — are they able to orchestrate effective professional development. When faculty have a vague notion of critical thinking, or reduce it to a single-discipline model (as in teaching critical thinking through a “logic” or a “study skills” paradigm), it impedes their ability to identify ineffective, or develop more effective, teaching practices. It prevents them from making the essential connections (both within subjects and across them), connections that give order and substance to teaching and learning.

This paper highlights the depth of the problem and its solution — a comprehensive, substantive concept of critical thinking fostered across the curriculum. As long as we rest content with a fuzzy concept of critical thinking or an overly narrow one, we will not be able to effectively teach for it. Consequently, students will continue to leave our colleges without the intellectual skills necessary for reasoning through complex issues.

Part One: An Initial Look at the Difference Between a Substantive and Non-Substantive Concept of Critical Thinking

Faculty Lack a Substantive Concept of Critical Thinking

Studies demonstrate that most college faculty lack a substantive concept of critical thinking. Consequently they do not (and cannot) use it as a central organizer in the design of instruction. It does not inform their conception of the student’s role as learner. It does not affect how they conceptualize their own role as instructors. They do not link it to the essential thinking that defines the content they teach. They, therefore, usually teach content separate from the thinking students need to engage in if they are to take ownership of that content. They teach history but not historical thinking. They teach biology, but not biological thinking. They teach math, but not mathematical thinking. They expect students to do analysis, but have no clear idea of how to teach students the elements of that analysis. They want students to use intellectual standards in their thinking, but have no clear conception of what intellectual standards they want their students to use or how to articulate them. They are unable to describe the intellectual traits (dispositions) presupposed for intellectual discipline. They have no clear idea of the relation between critical thinking and creativity, problem-solving, decision-making, or communication. They do not understand the role that thinking plays in understanding content. They are often unaware that didactic teaching is ineffective. They don’t see why students fail to make the basic concepts of the discipline their own. They lack classroom teaching strategies that would enable students to master content and become skilled learners.

Most faculty have these problems, yet with little awareness that they do. The majority of college faculty consider their teaching strategies just fine, no matter what the data reveal. Whatever problems exist in their instruction they see as the fault of students or beyond their control.

Studies Reveal That Critical Thinking Is Rare in the College Classroom Research demonstrates that, contrary to popular faculty belief, critical thinking is not fostered in the typical college classroom. In a meta-analysis of the literature on teaching effectiveness in higher education, Lion Gardiner, in conjunction with ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education (1995) documented the following disturbing patterns: “Faculty aspire to develop students’ thinking skills, but research consistently shows that in practice we tend to aim at facts and concepts in the disciplines, at the lowest cognitive levels, rather than development of intellect or values."

Numerous studies of college classrooms reveal that, rather than actively involving our students in learning, we lecture, even though lectures are not nearly as effective as other means for developing cognitive skills. In addition, students may be attending to lectures only about one-half of their time in class, and retention from lectures is low.

Studies suggest our methods often fail to dislodge students’ misconceptions and ensure learning of complex, abstract concepts. Capacity for problem solving is limited by our use of inappropriately simple practice exercises.

Classroom tests often set the standard for students’ learning. As with instruction, however, we tend to emphasize recall of memorized factual information rather than intellectual challenge. Taken together with our preference for lecturing, our tests may be reinforcing our students’ commonly fact-oriented memory learning, of limited value to either them or society.

Faculty agree almost universally that the development of students’ higher-order intellectual or cognitive abilities is the most important educational task of colleges and universities. These abilities underpin our students’ perceptions of the world and the consequent decisions they make. Specifically, critical thinking – the capacity to evaluate skillfully and fairly the quality of evidence and detect error, hypocrisy, manipulation, dissembling, and bias – is central to both personal success and national needs.

A 1972 study of 40,000 faculty members by the American Council on Education found that 97 percent of the respondents indicated the most important goal of undergraduate education is to foster students’ ability to think critically.

Process-oriented instructional orientations “have long been more successful than conventional instruction in fostering effective movement from concrete to formal reasoning. Such programs emphasize students’ active involvement in learning and cooperative work with other students and de-emphasize lectures . . .”

Gardiner’s summary of the research coincides with the results of a large study (Paul, et. al. 1997) of 38 public colleges and universities and 28 private ones focused on the question: To what extent are faculty teaching for critical thinking?

The study included randomly selected faculty from colleges and universities across California, and encompassed prestigious universities such as Stanford, Cal Tech, USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the California State University System. Faculty answered both closed and open-ended questions in a 40-50 minute interview.

By direct statement or by implication, most faculty claimed that they permeated their instruction with an emphasis on critical thinking and that the students internalized the concepts in their courses as a result. Yet only the rare interviewee mentioned the importance of students thinking clearly, accurately, precisely, relevantly, or logically, etc... Very few mentioned any of the basic skills of thought such as the ability to clarify questions; gather relevant data; reason to logical or valid conclusions; identify key assumptions; trace significant implications, or enter without distortion into alternative points of view. Intellectual traits of mind, such as intellectual humility, intellectual perseverance, intellectual responsibility, etc . . . were rarely mentioned by the interviewees. Consider the following key results from the study:

• Though the overwhelming majority of faculty claimed critical thinking to be a primary objective of their instruction (89%), only a small minority could give a clear explanation of what critical thinking is (19%). Furthermore, according to their answers, only 9% of the respondents were clearly teaching for critical thinking on a typical day in class.
• Though the overwhelming majority (78%) claimed that their students lacked appropriate intellectual standards (to use in assessing their thinking), and 73% considered that students learning to assess their own work was of primary importance, only a very small minority (8%) could enumerate any intellectual criteria or standards they required of students or could give an intelligible explanation of those criteria and standards.
• While 50% of those interviewed said that they explicitly distinguish critical thinking skills from traits, only 8% were able to provide a clear conception of the critical thinking skills they thought were most important for their students to develop. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority (75%) provided either minimal or vague allusion (33%) or no illusion at all (42%) to intellectual traits of mind.
• Although the majority (67%) said that their concept of critical thinking is largely explicit in their thinking, only 19% could elaborate on their concept of thinking.
• Although the vast majority (89%) stated that critical thinking was of primary importance to their instruction, 77% of the respondents had little, limited or no conception of how to reconcile content coverage with the fostering of critical thinking.
• Although the overwhelming majority (81%) felt that their department’s graduates develop a good or high level of critical thinking ability while in their program, only 20% said that their departments had a shared approach to critical thinking, and only 9% were able to clearly articulate how they would assess the extent to which a faculty member was or was not fostering critical thinking. The remaining respondents had a limited conception or no conception at all of how to do this.

A Substantive Conception of Critical Thinking

If we understand critical thinking substantively, we not only explain the idea explicitly to our students, but we use it to give order and meaning to virtually everything we do as teachers and learners. We use it to organize the design of instruction. It informs how we conceptualize our students as learners. It determines how we conceptualize our role as instructors. It enables us to understand and explain the thinking that defines the content we teach.

When we understand critical thinking at a deep level, we realize that we must teach content through thinking, not content, and then thinking. We model the thinking that students need to formulate if they are to take ownership of the content. We teach history as historical thinking. We teach biology as biological thinking. We teach math as mathematical thinking. We expect students to analyze the thinking that is the content, and then to assess the thinking using intellectual standards. We foster the intellectual traits (dispositions) essential to critical thinking. We teach students to use critical thinking concepts as tools in entering into any system of thought, into any subject or discipline. We teach students to construct in their own minds the concepts that define the discipline. We acquire an array of classroom strategies that enable students to master content using their thinking and to become skilled learners.

The concept of critical thinking, rightly understood, ties together much of what we need to understand as teachers and learners. Properly understood, it leads to a framework for institutional change. For a deeper understanding of critical thinking see The Thinker’s Guide Series , the book, Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life , and the Foundation For Critical Thinking Library.

To exemplify my point, The Thinker’s Guide Series consists in a diverse set of contextualizations of one and the same substantive concept of critical thinking. If we truly understand critical thinking, for example, we should be able to explain its implications:

• for analyzing and assessing reasoning
• for identifying strengths and weaknesses in thinking
• for identifying obstacles to rational thought
• for dealing with egocentrism and sociocentrism
• for developing strategies that enable one to apply critical thinking to everyday life
• for understanding the stages of one’s development as a thinker
• for understanding the foundations of ethical reasoning
• for detecting bias and propaganda in the national and international news
• for conceptualizing the human mind as an instrument of intellectual work
• for active and cooperative learning
• for the art of asking essential questions
• for scientific thinking
• for close reading and substantive writing
• for grasping the logic of a discipline.

Each contextualization in this list is developed in one or more of the guides in the series. Together they suggest the robustness of a substantive concept of critical thinking. What is Critical Thinking (Stripped to its Essentials)?

The idea of critical thinking, stripped to its essentials, can be expressed in a number of ways. Here’s one:

Critical thinking is the art of thinking about thinking with a view to improving it. Critical thinkers seek to improve thinking, in three interrelated phases. They analyze thinking. They assess thinking. And they up-grade thinking (as a result). Creative thinking is the work of the third phase, that of replacing weak thinking with strong thinking, or strong thinking with stronger thinking. Creative thinking is a natural by-product of critical thinking, precisely because analyzing and assessing thinking enables one to raise it to a higher level. New and better thinking is the by-product of healthy critical thought.

A person is a critical thinker to the extent that he or she regularly improves thinking by studying and “critiquing” it. Critical thinkers carefully study the way humans ground, develop, and apply thought — to see how thinking can be improved.

The basic idea is simple: “Study thinking for strengths and weaknesses. Then make improvements by building on its strengths and targeting its weaknesses.”

    A critical thinker does not say:

“My thinking is just fine. If everyone thought like me, this would be a pretty good world.”

    A critical thinker says:

“My thinking, as that of everyone else, can always be improved. Self-deception and folly exist at every level of human life. It is foolish ever to take thinking for granted. To think well, we must regularly analyze, assess, and reconstruct thinking — ever mindful as to how we can improve it.”

Part Two: A Substantive Concept of Critical Thinking Reveals Common Denominators in all Academic Work

Substantive Critical Thinking Can be Cultivated in Every Academic Setting

By focusing on the rational capacities of students’ minds, by designing instruction so students explicitly grasp the sense, the logicalness, of what they learn, we can make all learning easier for them. Substantive learning multiplies comprehension and insight; lower order rote memorization multiplies misunderstanding and confusion. Though very little present instruction deliberately aims at lower order learning, most results in it. “Good” students have developed techniques for short term rote memorization; “poor” students have none. But few know what it is to think analytically through the content of a subject; few use critical thinking as a tool for acquiring knowledge.(see Nosich)

We often talk of knowledge as though it could be divorced from thinking, as though it could be gathered up by one person and given to another in the form of a collection of sentences to remember. When we talk in this way we forget that knowledge, by its very nature, depends on thought. Knowledge is produced by thought, analyzed by thought, comprehended by thought, organized, evaluated, maintained, and transformed by thought. Knowledge exists, properly speaking, only in minds that have comprehended it and constructed it through thought. And when we say thought we mean critical thought. Knowledge must be distinguished from the memorization of true statements. Students can easily blindly memorize what they do not understand. A book contains knowledge only in a derivative sense, only because minds can thoughtfully read it and, through this analytic process, gain knowledge. We forget this when we design instruction as though recall were equivalent to knowledge.

Every discipline — mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, and so on — is a mode of thinking. Every discipline can be understood only through thinking. We know mathematics, not when we can recite mathematical formulas, but when we can think mathematically. We know science, not when we can recall sentences from our science textbooks, but when we can think scientifically. We understand sociology only when we can think sociologically, history only when we can think historically, and philosophy only when we can think philosophically. When we teach so that students are not thinking their way through subjects and disciplines, students leave our courses with no more knowledge than they had when they entered them. When we sacrifice thought to gain coverage, we sacrifice knowledge at the same time.

In the typical history class, for example, students are often asked to remember facts about the past. They therefore come to think of history class as a place where you hear names and dates and places; where you try to memorize and state them on tests. They think that when they can successfully do this, they then “know history.”

Alternatively, consider history taught as a mode of thought. Viewed from the paradigm of a critical education, blindly memorized content ceases to be the focal point. Learning to think historically becomes the order of the day. Students learn historical content by thinking historically about historical questions and problems. They learn through their own thinking and classroom discussion that history is not a simple recounting of past events, but also an interpretation of events selected by and written from someone’s point of view. In recognizing that each historian writes from a point of view, students begin to identify and assess points of view leading to various historical interpretations. They recognize, for example, what it is to interpret the American Revolution from a British as well as a colonial perspective. They role-play different historical perspectives and master content through in-depth historical thought. They relate the present to the past. They discuss how their own stored-up interpretations of their own lives’ events shaped their responses to the present and their plans for the future. They come to understand the daily news as a form of historical thought shaped by the profit-making motivations of news collecting agencies. They learn that historical accounts may be distorted, biased, narrow, misleading.

Every Area or Domain of Thought Must Be Thought-Through to Be Learned

The mind that thinks critically is a mind prepared to take ownership of new ideas and modes of thinking. Critical thinking is a system-opening system. It works its way into a system of thought by thinking-through:

• the purpose or goal of the system
• the kinds of questions it answers (or problems it solves)
• the manner in which it collects data and information
• the kinds of inferences it enables
• the key concepts it generates
• the underlying assumptions it rests upon
• the implications embedded in it
• the point of view or way of seeing things it makes possible.

It assesses the system for clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance, and (where applicable) fairness. There is no system no subject it cannot open.

There is a Necessary Connection Between Critical Thinking and Learning

The skills in up-grading thinking are the same skills as those required in up-grading learning. The art of thinking well illuminates the art of learning well. The art of learning well illuminates the art of thinking well. Both require intellectually skilled metacognition. For example, to be a skilled thinker in the learning process requires that we regularly note the elements of our thinking/learning:

• What is my purpose?
• What question am I trying to answer?
• What data or information do I need?
• What conclusions or inferences can I make (based on this information)?
• If I come to these conclusions, what will the implications and consequences be?
• What is the key concept (theory, principle, axiom) I am working with?
• What assumptions am I making?
• What is my point of view?

There is a Necessary Connection Between Critical Thinking and Skilled Reading and Writing

The reflective mind improves its thinking by reflectively thinking about it. Likewise, it improves its reading by reflectively thinking about how it is reading. It improves its writing by analyzing and assessing each draft it creates. It moves back and forth between thinking and thinking about thinking. It moves forward a bit, then loops back upon itself to check its own operations. It checks its inferences. It makes good its ground. It rises above itself and exercises oversight on itself.

One of the most important abilities that a thinker can have is the ability to monitor and assess his or her own thinking while processing the thinking of others. In reading, the reflective mind monitors how it is reading while it is reading. The foundation for this ability is knowledge of how the mind functions when reading well. For example, if I know that what I am reading is difficult for me to understand, I intentionally slow down. I put the meaning of each passage that I read into my own words. Knowing that one can understand ideas best when they are exemplified, then, when writing, I give my readers examples of what I am saying. As a reader, I look for examples to better understand what a text is saying. Learning how to read closely and write substantively are complex critical thinking abilities. When I can read closely, I can take ownership of important ideas in a text. When I can write substantively, I am able to say something worth saying about something worth saying something about. Many students today cannot.

• Teaching Tips

A Brief Guide for Teaching and Assessing Critical Thinking in Psychology

In my first year of college teaching, a student approached me one day after class and politely asked, “What did you mean by the word ‘evidence’?” I tried to hide my shock at what I took to be a very naive question. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that this was actually a good question, for which the usual approaches to teaching psychology provided too few answers. During the next several years, I developed lessons and techniques to help psychology students learn how to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of scientific and nonscientific kinds of evidence and to help them draw sound conclusions. It seemed to me that learning about the quality of evidence and drawing appropriate conclusions from scientific research were central to teaching critical thinking (CT) in psychology.

In this article, I have attempted to provide guidelines to psychol­ogy instructors on how to teach CT, describing techniques I devel­oped over 20 years of teaching. More importantly, the techniques and approach described below are ones that are supported by scientific research. Classroom examples illustrate the use of the guidelines and how assessment can be integrated into CT skill instruction.

Overview of the Guidelines

Confusion about the definition of CT has been a major obstacle to teaching and assessing it (Halonen, 1995; Williams, 1999). To deal with this problem, we have defined CT as reflective think­ing involved in the evaluation of evidence relevant to a claim so that a sound or good conclusion can be drawn from the evidence (Bensley, 1998). One virtue of this definition is it can be applied to many thinking tasks in psychology. The claims and conclusions psychological scientists make include hypotheses, theoretical state­ments, interpretation of research findings, or diagnoses of mental disorders. Evidence can be the results of an experiment, case study, naturalistic observation study, or psychological test. Less formally, evidence can be anecdotes, introspective reports, commonsense beliefs, or statements of authority. Evaluating evidence and drawing appropriate conclusions along with other skills, such as distin­guishing arguments from nonarguments and finding assumptions, are collectively called argument analysis skills. Many CT experts take argument analysis skills to be fundamental CT skills (e.g., Ennis, 1987; Halpern, 1998). Psychology students need argument analysis skills to evaluate psychological claims in their work and in everyday discourse.

Some instructors expect their students will improve CT skills like argument analysis skills by simply immersing them in challenging course work. Others expect improvement because they use a textbook with special CT questions or modules, give lectures that critically review the literature, or have students complete written assignments. While these and other traditional techniques may help, a growing body of research suggests they are not sufficient to efficiently produce measurable changes in CT skills. Our research on acquisition of argument analysis skills in psychology (Bensley, Crowe, Bernhardt, Buchner, & Allman, in press) and on critical reading skills (Bensley & Haynes, 1995; Spero & Bensley, 2009) suggests that more explicit, direct instruction of CT skills is necessary. These results concur with results of an earlier review of CT programs by Chance (1986) and a recent meta-analysis by Abrami et al., (2008).

Based on these and other findings, the following guidelines describe an approach to explicit instruction in which instructors can directly infuse CT skills and assessment into their courses. With infusion, instructors can use relevant content to teach CT rules and concepts along with the subject matter. Directly infus­ing CT skills into course work involves targeting specific CT skills, making CT rules, criteria, and methods explicit, providing guided practice in the form of exercises focused on assessing skills, and giving feedback on practice and assessments. These components are similar to ones found in effective, direct instruc­tion approaches (Walberg, 2006). They also resemble approaches to teaching CT proposed by Angelo (1995), Beyer (1997), and Halpern (1998). Importantly, this approach has been successful in teaching CT skills in psychology (e.g., Bensley, et al., in press; Bensley & Haynes, 1995; Nieto & Saiz, 2008; Penningroth, Despain, & Gray, 2007). Directly infusing CT skill instruction can also enrich content instruction without sacrificing learning of subject matter (Solon, 2003). The following seven guidelines, illustrated by CT lessons and assessments, explicate this process.

Seven Guidelines for Teaching and Assessing Critical Thinking

1. Motivate your students to think critically

Critical thinking takes effort. Without proper motivation, students are less inclined to engage in it. Therefore, it is good to arouse interest right away and foster commitment to improving CT throughout a course. One motivational strategy is to explain why CT is important to effective, professional behavior. Often, telling a compelling story that illustrates the consequences of failing to think critically can mo­tivate students. For example, the tragic death of 10-year-old Candace Newmaker at the hands of her therapists practicing attachment therapy illustrates the perils of using a therapy that has not been supported by good empirical evidence (Lilienfeld, 2007).

Instructors can also pique interest by taking a class poll posing an interesting question on which students are likely to have an opinion. For example, asking students how many think that the full moon can lead to increases in abnormal behavior can be used to introduce the difference between empirical fact and opinion or common sense belief. After asking students how psychologists answer such questions, instructors might go over the meta-analysis of Rotton and Kelly (1985). Their review found that almost all of the 37 studies they reviewed showed no association between the phase of the moon and abnormal behavior with only a few, usually poorly, controlled studies supporting it. Effect size over all stud­ies was very small (.01). Instructors can use this to illustrate how psychologists draw a conclusion based on the quality and quantity of research studies as opposed to what many people commonly believe. For other interesting thinking errors and misconceptions related to psychology, see Bensley (1998; 2002; 2008), Halpern (2003), Ruscio (2006), Stanovich (2007), and Sternberg (2007).

Attitudes and dispositions can also affect motivation to think critically. If students lack certain CT dispositions such as open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, and skepticism, they will be less likely to think critically even if they have CT skills (Halpern, 1998). Instructors might point out that even great scientists noted for their powers of reasoning sometimes fail to think critically when they are not disposed to use their skills. For example, Alfred Russel Wallace who used his considerable CT skills to help develop the concept of natural selection also believed in spiritualistic contact with the dead. Despite considerable evidence that mediums claiming to contact the dead were really faking such contact, Wallace continued to believe in it (Bensley, 2006). Likewise, the great American psychologist William James, whose reasoning skills helped him develop the seeds of important contemporary theories, believed in spiritualism despite evidence to the contrary.

2. Clearly state the CT goals and objectives for your class

Once students are motivated, the instructor should focus them on what skills they will work on during the course. The APA task force on learning goals and objectives for psychology listed CT as one of 10 major goals for students (Halonen et al., 2002). Under critical thinking they have further specified outcomes such as evaluating the quality of information, identifying and evaluating the source and credibility of information, recognizing and defending against think­ing errors and fallacies. Instructors should publish goals like these in their CT course objectives in their syllabi and more specifically as assignment objectives in their assignments. Given the pragmatic penchant of students for studying what is needed to succeed in a course, this should help motivate and focus them.

To make instruction efficient, course objectives and lesson ob­jectives should explicitly target CT skills to be improved. Objectives should specify the behavior that will change in a way that can be measured. A course objective might read, “After taking this course, you will be able to analyze arguments found in psychological and everyday discussions.” When the goal of a lesson is to practice and improve specific microskills that make up argument analysis, an assignment objective might read “After successfully completing this assignment, you will be able to identify different kinds of evidence in a psychological discussion.” Or another might read “After suc­cessfully completing this assignment, you will be able to distinguish arguments from nonarguments.” Students might demonstrate they have reached these objectives by showing the behavior of correctly labeling the kinds of evidence presented in a passage or by indicating whether an argument or merely a claim has been made. By stating objectives in the form of assessable behaviors, the instructor can test these as assessment hypotheses.

Sometimes when the goal is to teach students how to decide which CT skills are appropriate in a situation, the instructor may not want to identify specific skills. Instead, a lesson objective might read, “After successfully completing this assignment, you will be able to decide which skills and knowledge are appropriate for criti­cally analyzing a discussion in psychology.”

3. Find opportunities to infuse CT that fit content and skill requirements of your course

To improve their CT skills, students must be given opportunities to practice them. Different courses present different opportunities for infusion and practice. Stand-alone CT courses usually provide the most opportunities to infuse CT. For example, the Frostburg State University Psychology Department has a senior seminar called “Thinking like a Psychologist” in which students complete lessons giving them practice in argument analysis, critical reading, critically evaluating information on the Internet, distinguishing science from pseudoscience, applying their knowledge and CT skills in simula­tions of psychological practice, and other activities.

In more typical subject-oriented courses, instructors must find specific content and types of tasks conducive to explicit CT skill instruction. For example, research methods courses present several opportunities to teach argument analysis skills. Instructors can have students critically evaluate the quality of evidence provided by studies using different research methods and designs they find in PsycINFO and Internet sources. This, in turn, could help students write better critical evaluations of research for research reports.

A cognitive psychology teacher might assign a critical evalu­ation of the evidence on an interesting question discussed in text­book literature reviews. For example, students might evaluate the evidence relevant to the question of whether people have flashbulb memories such as accurately remembering the 9-11 attack. This provides the opportunity to teach them that many of the studies, although informative, are quasi-experimental and cannot show causation. Or, students might analyze the arguments in a TV pro­gram such as the fascinating Nova program Kidnapped by Aliens on people who recall having been abducted by aliens.

4. Use guided practice, explicitly modeling and scaffolding CT.

Guided practice involves modeling and supporting the practice of target skills, and providing feedback on progress towards skill attainment. Research has shown that guided practice helps student more efficiently acquire thinking skills than unguided and discovery approaches (Meyer, 2004).

Instructors can model the use of CT rules, criteria, and proce­dures for evaluating evidence and drawing conclusions in many ways. They could provide worked examples of problems, writing samples displaying good CT, or real-world examples of good and bad thinking found in the media. They might also think out loud as they evaluate arguments in class to model the process of thinking.

To help students learn to use complex rules in thinking, instruc­tors should initially scaffold student thinking. Scaffolding involves providing product guidelines, rules, and other frameworks to support the process of thinking. Table 1 shows guidelines like those found in Bensley (1998) describing nonscientific kinds of evidence that can support student efforts to evaluate evidence in everyday psychologi­cal discussions. Likewise, Table 2 provides guidelines like those found in Bensley (1998) and Wade and Tavris (2005) describing various kinds of scientific research methods and designs that differ in the quality of evidence they provide for psychological arguments.

In the cognitive lesson on flashbulb memory described earlier, students use the framework in Table 2 to evaluate the kinds of evidence in the literature review. Table 1 can help them evaluate the kinds of evidence found in the Nova video Kidnapped by Aliens . Specifically, they could use it to contrast scientific authority with less credible authority. The video includes statements by scientific authorities like Elizabeth Loftus based on her extensive research contrasted with the nonscientific authority of Bud Hopkins, an artist turned hypnotherapist and author of popular books on alien abduction. Loftus argues that the memories of alien abduction in the children interviewed by Hopkins were reconstructed around the suggestive interview questions he posed. Therefore, his conclu­sion that the children and other people in the video were recalling actual abduction experiences was based on anecdotes, unreliable self-reports, and other weak evidence.

Modeling, scaffolding, and guided practice are especially useful in helping students first acquire CT skills. After sufficient practice, however, instructors should fade these and have students do more challenging assignments without these supports to promote transfer.

5. Align assessment with practice of specific CT skills

Test questions and other assessments of performance should be similar to practice questions and problems in the skills targeted but differ in content. For example, we have developed a series of practice and quiz questions about the kinds of evidence found in Table 1 used in everyday situations but which differ in subject matter from practice to quiz. Likewise, other questions employ research evidence examples corresponding to Table 2. Questions ask students to identify kinds of evidence, evaluate the quality of the evidence, distinguish arguments from nonarguments, and find assumptions in the examples with practice examples differing in content from assessment items.

6. Provide feedback and encourage students to reflect on it

Instructors should focus feedback on the degree of attainment of CT skill objectives in the lesson or assessment. The purpose of feedback is to help students learn how to correct faulty thinking so that in the future they monitor their thinking and avoid such problems. This should increase their metacognition or awareness and control of their thinking, an important goal of CT instruction (Halpern, 1998).

Students must use their feedback for it to improve their CT skills. In the CT exercises and critical reading assignments, students receive feedback in the form of corrected responses and written feedback on open-ended questions. They should be advised that paying attention to feedback on earlier work and assessments should improve their performance on later assessments.

7. Reflect on feedback and assessment results to improve CT instruction

Instructors should use the feedback they provide to students and the results of ongoing assessments to ‘close the loop,’ that is, use these outcomes to address deficiencies in performance and improve instruction. In actual practice, teaching and assessment strategies rarely work optimally the first time. Instructors must be willing to tinker with these to make needed improvements. Reflec­tion on reliable and valid assessment results provides a scientific means to systematically improve instruction and assessment.

Instructors may find the direct infusion approach as summarized in the seven guidelines to be efficient, especially in helping students acquire basic CT skills, as research has shown. They may especially appreciate how it allows them to take a scientific approach to the improvement of instruction. Although the direct infusion approach seems to efficiently promote acquisition of CT skills, more research is needed to find out if students transfer their skills outside of the class­room or whether this approach needs adjustment to promote transfer.

Table 1. Strengths and Weaknesses of Nonscientific Sources and Kinds of Evidence

Table 2. Strengths and Weaknesses of Scientific Research Methods/Designs Used as Sources of Evidence

Abrami, P. C., Bernard, R. M., Borokhovhovski, E., Wade, A., Surkes, M. A., Tamim, R., et al., (2008). Instructional interventions affecting critical thinking skills and dispositions: A stage 1 meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 4 , 1102–1134.

Angelo, T. A. (1995). Classroom assessment for critical thinking. Teaching of Psychology , 22(1), 6–7.

Bensley, D.A. (1998). Critical thinking in psychology: A unified skills approach. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Bensley, D.A. (2002). Science and pseudoscience: A critical thinking primer. In M. Shermer (Ed.), The Skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience. (pp. 195–203). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC–CLIO.

Bensley, D.A. (2006). Why great thinkers sometimes fail to think critically. Skeptical Inquirer, 30, 47–52.

Bensley, D.A. (2008). Can you learn to think more like a psychologist? The Psychologist, 21, 128–129.

Bensley, D.A., Crowe, D., Bernhardt, P., Buckner, C., & Allman, A. (in press). Teaching and assessing critical thinking skills for argument analysis in psychology. Teaching of Psychology .

Bensley, D.A. & Haynes, C. (1995). The acquisition of general purpose strategic knowledge for argumentation. Teaching of Psychology, 22 , 41–45.

Beyer, B.K. (1997). Improving student thinking: A comprehensive approach . Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Chance, P. (1986) Thinking in the classroom: A review of programs . New York: Instructors College Press.

Ennis, R.H. (1987). A taxonomy of critical thinking dispositions and abilities. In J. B. Baron & R. F. Sternberg (Eds.). Teaching thinking skills: Theory and practice (pp. 9–26). New York: Freeman.

Halonen, J.S. (1995). Demystifying critical thinking. Teaching of Psychology, 22 , 75–81.

Halonen, J.S., Appleby, D.C., Brewer, C.L., Buskist, W., Gillem, A. R., Halpern, D. F., et al. (APA Task Force on Undergraduate Major Competencies). (2002) Undergraduate psychology major learning goals and outcomes: A report. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Retrieved August 27, 2008, from http://www.apa.org/ed/pcue/reports.html .

Halpern, D.F. (1998). Teaching critical thinking for transfer across domains: Dispositions, skills, structure training, and metacognitive monitoring. American Psychologist , 53 , 449–455.

Halpern, D.F. (2003). Thought and knowledge: An introduction to critical thinking . (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Lilienfeld, S.O. (2007). Psychological treatments that cause harm. Perspectives on Psychological Science , 2 , 53–70.

Meyer, R.E. (2004). Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery learning? The case for guided methods of instruction. American Psychologist , 59 , 14–19.

Nieto, A.M., & Saiz, C. (2008). Evaluation of Halpern’s “structural component” for improving critical thinking. The Spanish Journal of Psychology , 11 ( 1 ), 266–274.

Penningroth, S.L., Despain, L.H., & Gray, M.J. (2007). A course designed to improve psychological critical thinking. Teaching of Psychology , 34 , 153–157.

Rotton, J., & Kelly, I. (1985). Much ado about the full moon: A meta-analysis of lunar-lunacy research. Psychological Bulletin , 97 , 286–306.

Ruscio, J. (2006). Critical thinking in psychology: Separating sense from nonsense. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Solon, T. (2007). Generic critical thinking infusion and course content learning in introductory psychology. Journal of Instructional Psychology , 34(2), 972–987.

Stanovich, K.E. (2007). How to think straight about psychology . (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Sternberg, R.J. (2007). Critical thinking in psychology: It really is critical. In R. J. Sternberg, H. L. Roediger, & D. F. Halpern (Eds.), Critical thinking in psychology. (pp. 289–296) . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2005) Invitation to psychology. (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Walberg, H.J. (2006). Improving educational productivity: A review of extant research. In R. F. Subotnik & H. J. Walberg (Eds.), The scientific basis of educational productivity (pp. 103–159). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Williams, R.L. (1999). Operational definitions and assessment of higher-order cognitive constructs. Educational Psychology Review , 11 , 411–427.

Excellent article.

Interesting and helpful!

APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines .

Please login with your APS account to comment.

About the Author

D. Alan Bensley is Professor of Psychology at Frostburg State University. He received his Master’s and PhD degrees in cognitive psychology from Rutgers University. His main teaching and research interests concern the improvement of critical thinking and other cognitive skills. He coordinates assessment for his department and is developing a battery of instruments to assess critical thinking in psychology. He can be reached by email at [email protected] Association for Psychological Science December 2010 — Vol. 23, No. 10

Student Notebook: Five Tips for Working with Teaching Assistants in Online Classes

Sarah C. Turner suggests it’s best to follow the golden rule: Treat your TA’s time as you would your own.

Teaching Current Directions in Psychological Science

Aimed at integrating cutting-edge psychological science into the classroom, Teaching Current Directions in Psychological Science offers advice and how-to guidance about teaching a particular area of research or topic in psychological science that has been

European Psychology Learning and Teaching Conference

The School of Education of the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg is hosting the next European Psychology Learning and Teaching (EUROPLAT) Conference on September 18–20, 2017 in Salzburg, Austria. The main theme of the conference

Privacy Overview

• Choosing Effective Vocabulary
• How to Fill a Page (When You Have Nothing to Say)
• Resources – Books
• Critical Thinking and Reading Skills
• Key Terms and the Inference Continuum
• Bad Inferences – Fallacies and Biases
• Application: Inferences and History
• An Aside: Strong Inferences vs. Ghosts
• Eight Types of Evidence – Strengths and Weaknesses
• Bad Evidence – Fallacies and Poor Appeals
• Value Conflicts and Key Terms
• Tragic Application of Values
• Common Value Systems
• Fallacies and a Few Fun Techniques
• Donna Hicks’s Essential Elements of Dignity
• Fundamental Needs
• Mapping Classroom Culture – Support and Humiliation
• The Dignity Pledge
• Separation and Segregation
• Stripping Away Resources and Protections
• Violence and Intimidation
• Murder and Elimination
• Toxic Mythologies and Deep Narratives
• Scapegoating and Conspiracy Theories
• Caricature and Stereotypes
• Denial and Willful Ignorance
• Conclusion and FAQs

Eight Types of Evidence – Strengths and Weaknesses

Overview: The ability to distinguish sources of evidence allows students to better evaluate and generate information in support of arguments.

Evidence is a huge component of reasoning and argument. Understanding how evidence works and how it might be questioned, probed, or attacked, significantly boosts students’ reasoning ability. The following material offers a vocabulary that can operate as a toolkit for use on any task that requires analysis or generation of evidence.

1. Personal Experience – It happened to you. You know what bronchitis feels like because you had it last year, and it was terrible.

Strengths – Emotionally intense and relevant, collected by your very own senses.

Weaknesses  – The way you interpret your own experiences is very personal and based on your own expectations and biases. Also, your senses have all sorts of flaws, as does your memory. You remember events and moments that are bizarre, intense, or otherwise of interest to you, which is a small sliver of the world around you.

2. Personal Observation – You saw or measured the event. You haven’t had a migraine, but your mom gets them and you have witnessed how painful and awful they can be.

Strengths – Collected by the senses, scientific measurement techniques can carefully and cleverly isolate the information you are seeking.

Weaknesses – The same as Personal Experience, scientific measurements can be corrupted by factors you didn’t anticipate.

3. Testimonial – The experience or observation of someone else; a witness. My friend saw a guy with pink eye yesterday. He said it was pretty gross.

Strengths – They were there, emotional weight of hearing someone’s story or claim. We want to believe one another because lying is so dangerous to our social fabric.

Weaknesses – The person might be mistaken (see weaknesses of Personal Experience), lying, or leaving out important details.

4. Appeal to Authority – The experience or observations of a learned and/or respected person; an expert. My brother is a doctor and treated a guy with a broken arm. He told me that broken bones don’t always hurt as much as you would expect.

Strengths – This person presumably has a lot of access to information, a depth of experience, and a professional reputation on the line.

Weaknesses – Same as Testimonial, the person’s expertise could be based on a depth of experience in field separate from the one we’re dealing with. (See Appeal to Questionable Authority Fallacy).

5. Case Examples – Historical, literary, or other recorded examples. They could be the statements of witnesses or experts, or they could be more general events that we cite to support our claim. War is terrible for soldiers on the ground. You can read all about it in many Civil War diaries.

Strengths – Same data available to everyone, you can carefully seek out and find examples that support your claim (see Confirmation Bias), emotional weight of vivid examples.

Weaknesses – Examples might be isolated and/or unrepresentative of “normal” experience (see Hasty Generalization ).

6. Research Studies   – Large sample of carefully gathered  information scrutinized with statistical tools and peer-reviewed by other experts.

Strengths – Large samples protect against Hasty Generalizations, the same data is available to everyone.

Weaknesses  – There is a long list of potential pitfalls to good research. They include poor design, poor data gathering, and poor data analysis. There are conflicting studies which cite different parts of the same data, and there are weak studies published to push a political agenda.

7. Analogy – Citing a similar circumstance; if it worked in that ugly situation, it will work in this ugly situation. If cigarettes give mice cancer, they probably give humans cancer.

Strengths – Much of life follows general rules; if something works in one place, there’s a pretty good chance it will work in another place.

Weaknesses – Places can be different! You have to look at salient details (a.k.a the details that actually contribute to whatever it is you are looking at). If a flying squirrel can fall from a tall building and survive, I should be able to do the same thing. We are both mammals! (See Bad Analogy Fallacy.)

8. Intuition – Your gut feeling, presumably based on years of experience. It feels true. The inferences that pop into your head first are likely to be based on intuition rather than research studies or other types of evidence. If you hear a bump in the night, the weight of your experience will offer a causal inference, and if that inference isn’t dangerous (“it was just the wind!”), you will likely just go back to sleep.

Strengths  – For most issues, our experience is a good guide to life. We have built a pretty good picture of the world, and we can generally rely on it to stay consistent. Malcolm Gladwell explains the power of quick inferences in his book Blink , and Daniel Kahneman describes it as “fast thinking” in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow .

Weaknesses – Your experience is personal and unique. Other people have had different experiences and will therefore have different gut feelings. There is no way to prove that your intuition is correct. If people trust it, it’s because you have been right many times in the past and will therefore trust you to be right again (see Appeal to Questionable Authority). All of the fallacies and biases that lead us to make weak inferences are relevant here.

Again, this list is adapted from Asking the Right Questions  by Neil Browne and Stuart Keeley, which offers a more in-depth look at each type of evidence. I’ve simplified and adapted their work to serve as an introduction to students new to this approach.

Share this:

Leave a comment cancel reply.

• Search for:

• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• Manage subscriptions

Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts

2023 Update Peter A. Facione, Ph.D.

The late George Carlin worked “critical thinking” into one of his comedic monologue rants on the perils of trusting our lives and fortunes to the decision-making of people who were gullible, uninformed, and unreflective. Had he lived to experience the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009, he would have surely added more to his caustic but accurate assessments regarding how failing to anticipate the consequences of one’s decisions often leads to disastrous results not only for the decision maker, but for many other people as well.

After years of viewing higher education as more of a private good which benefits only the student, we are again beginning to appreciate higher education as being also a public good which benefits society. Is it not a wiser social policy to invest in the education of the future workforce, rather than to suffer the financial costs and endure the fiscal and social burdens associated with economic weakness, public health problems, crime, and avoidable poverty? Perhaps that realization, along with its obvious advantages for high level strategic decision making, is what led the Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to comment on critical thinking in his commencement address to a graduating class of military officers.

Teach people to make good decisions and you have equipped them to improve their own futures and become contributing members of society, rather than burdens on society. Becoming educated and practicing good judgment does not absolutely guarantee a life of happiness, virtue, or economic success, but it surely offers a better chance at those things. And it is clearly better than enduring the consequences of making bad decisions and better than burdening friends, family, and all the rest of us with the unwanted and avoidable consequences of those poor choices.

Defining “Critical Thinking”

Yes, surely, we have all heard business executives, policy makers, civic leaders, and educators talking about critical thinking. At times we found ourselves wondering exactly what critical thinking was and why it is considered so useful and important. This essay takes a deeper look at these questions.

But rather than beginning with an abstract definition – as if critical thinking were about memorization, which is not the case – give this thought experiment a try: Imagine you were invited to a movie by a friend. But it is not a movie you want to see. So, your friend asks you why. You give your honest reason. The movie offends your sense of decency. Your friend asks you to clarify your reason by explaining what bothers you about the film. You reply that it is not the language used or the sexuality portrayed, but you find the violence in the film offensive.

Sure, that should be a good enough answer. But suppose your friend, perhaps being a bit philosophically inclined or simply curious or argumentative, pursues the matter further by asking you to define what you mean by “offensive violence.”

Take a minute and give it a try. How would you define “offensive violence” as it applies to movies? Can you write a characterization which captures what this commonly used concept contains? Take care, though, we would not want to make the definition so broad that all movie violence would be automatically “offensive.” And check to be sure your way of defining “offensive violence” fits with how the rest of the people who know and use English would understand the term. Otherwise, they will not be able to understand what you mean when you use that expression.

Did you produce a definition that works? How do you know?

What you just did with the expression “offensive violence” is very much the same as what had to be done with the expression “critical thinking.” At one level we all know what “critical thinking” means — it means good thinking, almost the opposite of illogical, irrational, thinking. But when we test our understanding further, we run into questions. For example, is critical thinking the same as creative thinking, are they different, or is one part of the other? How do critical thinking and native intelligence or scholastic aptitude relate? Does critical thinking focus on the subject matter or content that you know or on the process you use when you reason about that content?

It might not hurt at all if you formed some tentative preliminary ideas about the questions we just raised. We humans learn better when we stop frequently to reflect, rather than just plowing from the top of the page to the bottom without coming up for air.

Back to critical thinking – let us ask ourselves to generate possible examples of strong critical thinking? How about the adroit and clever questioning of Socrates or a good attorney or interviewer? Or, what about the clever investigative approaches used by police detectives and crime scene analysts? Would we not want to also include people working together to solve a problem as they consider and discuss their options? How about someone who is good at listening to all sides of a dispute, considering all the facts, and then deciding what is relevant and what is not, and then rendering a thoughtful judgment? And maybe too, someone who can summarize complex ideas clearly with fairness to all sides, or a person who can come up with the most coherent and justifiable explanation of what a passage of written material means? Or the person who can readily devise sensible alternatives to explore, but who does not become defensive about abandoning them if they do not work? And the person who can explain exactly how a particular conclusion was reached, or why certain criteria apply?

Or, considering the concept of critical thinking from the opposite direction, we might ask what the consequences of failing to use our critical thinking might be. Imagine for a moment what could happen when a person or a group of people decides important matters without pausing first to think things through.

Expert Opinion

An international group of experts was asked to try to form a consensus about the meaning of critical thinking. One of the first things they did was to ask themselves the question: Who are the best critical thinkers we know and what is it about them that leads us to consider them the best? So, who are the best critical thinkers you know? Why do you think they are strong critical thinkers? Can you draw from those examples a description that is more abstract? For example, consider effective trial lawyers, apart from how they conduct their personal lives or whether their client is guilty or innocent, just look at how the lawyers develop their cases in court. They use reasons to try to convince the judge and jury of their client’s claim of guilt or innocence. They offer evidence and evaluate the significance of the evidence presented by the opposition lawyers. They interpret testimony. They analyze and evaluate the arguments advanced by the other side.

Now, consider the example of a team of people trying to solve a problem. The team members, unlike the courtroom’s adversarial situation, try to collaborate. The members of an effective team do not compete against each other. They work together, like colleagues, for the common goal. Unless they solve the problem, none of them has won. When they find the way to solve the problem, they all have won. So, from analyzing just two examples we can generalize something especially important: critical thinking is thinking that has a purpose (proving a point, interpreting what something means, solving a problem), but critical thinking can be a collaborative, noncompetitive endeavor. And, by the way, even lawyers collaborate. They can work together on a common defense or a joint prosecution, and they can also cooperate with each other to get to the truth so that justice is done.

We will come to a more precise definition of critical thinking soon enough. But first, there is something else we can learn from paradigm examples. When were you thinking about “offensive violence” did you come up with any examples that were tough to classify? Borderline cases, as it were — an example that one person might consider offensive, but another might reasonably regard as non-offensive. Yes, well, so did we. This is going to happen with all abstract concepts. It happens with the concept of critical thinking as well. There are people of whom we would say, on certain occasions, this person is a good thinker, clear, logical, thoughtful, attentive to the facts, open to alternatives, but, wow, at other times, look out! When you get this person on such-and-such a topic, well it is all over then. You have pushed some kind of button, and the person does not want to hear what anybody else has to say. The person’s mind is made up ahead of time. New facts are pushed aside. No other point of view is tolerated.

Do you know any people that might fit that general description?

Now, formulate a list of cases — people that are clearly strong critical thinkers and clearly weak critical thinkers and some who are on the borderline. Considering all those cases, what is it about them that led you to decide which were which? Suggestion: What can the strong critical thinkers do (what mental abilities do they have), that the weak critical thinkers have trouble doing? What skills or approaches do the strong critical thinkers habitually seem to exhibit which the weak critical thinkers seem not to possess?

Core Critical Thinking Skills

Above we suggested you look for a list of mental skills and habits of mind, the experts, when faced with the same problem you are working on, refer to their lists as including cognitive skills and dispositions .

Quoting from the consensus statement of the national panel of experts: interpretation is “to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules, procedures, or criteria.” [1] Interpretation includes the sub-skills of categorization, decoding significance, and clarifying meaning. Can you think of examples of interpretation? How about recognizing a problem and describing it without bias? How about reading a person’s intentions in the expression on her face; distinguishing a main idea from subordinate ideas in a text; constructing a tentative categorization or way of organizing something you are studying; paraphrasing someone’s ideas in your own words; or, clarifying what a sign, chart or graph means? What about identifying an author’s purpose, theme, or point of view? How about what you did above when you clarified what “offensive violence” meant?

Again, from the experts: analysis is “to identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation intended to express belief, judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions.” The experts include examining ideas, detecting arguments, and analyzing arguments as sub-skills of analysis. Again, can you come up with some examples of analysis? What about identifying the similarities and differences between two approaches to the solution of a given problem? What about picking out the main claim made in a newspaper editorial and tracing back the reasons the editor offers in support of that claim? Or, what about identifying unstated assumptions; constructing a way to represent a main conclusion and the reasons given to support or criticize it; sketching the relationship of sentences or paragraphs to each other and to the main purpose of the passage? What about graphically organizing this essay, in your own way, knowing that its purpose is to give a preliminary idea about what critical thinking means?

The experts define evaluation as meaning “to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person’s perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation.” Your examples? How about judging an author’s or speaker’s credibility, comparing the strengths and weaknesses of alternative interpretations, determining the credibility of a source of information, judging if two statements contradict each other, or judging if the evidence at hand supports the conclusion being drawn? Among the examples the experts propose are these: “recognizing the factors which make a person a credible witness regarding a given event or a credible authority with regard to a given topic,” “judging if an argument’s conclusion follows either with certainty or with a high level of confidence from its premises,” “judging the logical strength of arguments based on hypothetical situations,” “judging if a given argument is relevant or applicable or has implications for the situation at hand.”

Do the people you regard as strong critical thinkers have the three cognitive skills described so far? Are they good at interpretation, analysis, and evaluation? What about the next three? And your examples of weak critical thinkers, are they lacking in these cognitive skills? All, or just some?

To the experts, inference means “to identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions; to form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information and to reason to the consequences flowing from data, statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation.” As sub-skills of inference the experts list querying evidence, conjecturing alternatives, and drawing conclusions. Can you think of some examples of inference? You might suggest things like seeing the implications of the position someone is advocating. Or drawing out or constructing meaning from the elements in a reading. You may suggest predicting what will happen next based on what is known about the forces at work in a given situation. Or formulating a synthesis of related ideas into a coherent perspective. How about this: after judging that it would be useful to you to resolve a given uncertainty, developing a workable plan to gather that information? Or, when faced with a problem, developing a set of options for addressing it. What about conducting a controlled experiment scientifically and applying the proper statistical methods to attempt to confirm or disconfirm an empirical hypothesis?

Beyond being able to interpret, analyze, evaluate, and infer, strong critical thinkers can do two more things. They can explain what they think and how they arrived at that judgment. And they can apply their powers of critical thinking to themselves and improve on their previous opinions. These two skills are called “explanation” and “self-regulation.”

The experts define explanation as being able to present in a cogent and coherent way the results of one’s reasoning. This means to be able to give someone a full look at the big picture: both “to state and to justify that reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, and contextual considerations upon which one’s results were based; and to present one’s reasoning in the form of cogent arguments.” The sub-skills under explanation are describing methods and results, justifying procedures, proposing, and defending with good reasons one’s causal and conceptual explanations of events or points of view, and presenting full and well-reasoned, arguments in the context of seeking the best understandings possible. Your examples first, please… Here are some more: to construct a chart which organizes one’s findings, to write down for future reference your current thinking on some important and complex matter, to cite the standards and contextual factors used to judge the quality of an interpretation of a text, to state research results and describe the methods and criteria used to achieve those results, to appeal to established criteria as a way of showing the reasonableness of a given judgment, to design a graphic display which accurately represents the subordinate and super-ordinate relationship among concepts or ideas, to cite the evidence that led you to accept or reject an author’s position on an issue, to list the factors that were considered in assigning a final course grade.

Maybe the most remarkable cognitive skill of all, however, is this next one. This one is remarkable because it allows strong critical thinkers to improve their own thinking. In a sense this is critical thinking applied to itself. Because of that some people want to call this “meta-cognition,” meaning it raises thinking to another level. But “another level” really does not fully capture it, because at that next level up what self-regulation does is look back at all the dimensions of critical thinking and double check itself. Self-regulation is like a recursive function in mathematical terms, which means it can apply to everything, including itself. You can monitor and correct an interpretation you offered. You can examine and correct an inference you have drawn. You can review and reformulate one of your own explanations. You can even examine and correct your ability to examine and correct yourself! How? It is as simple as stepping back and saying to yourself, “How am I doing? Have I missed anything important? Let me double check before I go further.”

The experts define self-regulation to mean “self-consciously to monitor one’s cognitive activities, the elements used in those activities, and the results educed, particularly by applying skills in analysis, and evaluation to one’s own inferential judgments with a view toward questioning, confirming, validating, or correcting either one’s reasoning or one’s results.” The two sub-skills here are self-examination and self-correction. Examples? Easy — to examine your views on a controversial issue with sensitivity to the possible influences of your personal biases or self-interest, to check yourself when listening to a speaker in order to be sure you are understanding what the person is really saying without introducing your own ideas, to monitor how well you seem to be understanding or comprehending what you are reading or experiencing, to remind yourself to separate your personal opinions and assumptions from those of the author of a passage or text, to double check yourself by recalculating the figures, to vary your reading speed and method mindful of the type of material and your purpose for reading, to reconsider your interpretation or judgment in view of further analysis of the facts of the case, to revise your answers in view of the errors you discovered in your work, to change your conclusion in view of the realization that you had misjudged the importance of certain factors when coming to your earlier decision. [2]

The Delphi Research Method

The panel of experts we keep referring to included forty-six men and women from throughout the United States and Canada. They represented many different scholarly disciplines in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and education. They participated in a research project that lasted two years and was conducted on behalf of the American Philosophical Association. Their work was published under the title Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction . The executive summary is available from www.insightassessment.com

You might be wondering how such a large group of people could collaborate on this project over that long a period and at those distances and still come to a consensus. Good question. Remember we are talking the days before e-mail.

Not only did the group have to rely on snail mail during their two-year collaboration; they used a method of interaction, known as the Delphi Method, which was developed precisely to enable experts to think effectively about something over large spans of distance and time. In the Delphi Method a central investigator organizes the group and feeds them an initial question. [In this case it had to do with how college level critical thinking should be defined so that people teaching at that level would know which skills and dispositions to cultivate in their students.] The central investigator receives all responses, summarizes them, and transmits them back to all the panelists for reactions, replies, and additional questions.

Wait a minute! These are all well-known experts, so what do you do if people disagree? And what about the possible influence of a big-name person? Good points. First, the central investigator takes precautions to remove names so that the panelists are not told who said what. They know who is on the panel, of course. But that is as far as it goes. After that each experts’ argument must stand on its own merits. Second, an expert is only as good as the arguments she or he gives. So, the central investigator summarizes the arguments and lets the panelists decide if they accept them or not. When consensus appears to be at hand, the central investigator proposes this and asks if people agree. If not, then points of disagreement among the experts are registered. We want to share with you one important example of each of these. First, we will describe the expert consensus view of the dispositions which are vital to strong critical thinking. Then we will note a point of separation among the experts.

The Disposition Toward Critical Thinking

What kind of a person would be apt to use their critical thinking skills? The experts poetically describe such a person as having “a critical spirit.” Having a critical spirit does not mean that the person is always negative and hypercritical of everyone and everything.

The experts use the metaphorical phrase critical spirit in a positive sense. By it they mean “a probing inquisitiveness, a keenness of mind, a zealous dedication to reason, and a hunger or eagerness for reliable information. ”

Almost sounds like Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor or Sherlock Holmes The kind of person being described here is the kind that always wants to ask “Why?” or “How?” or “What happens if?”. The one key difference, however, is that in fiction Sherlock always solves the mystery, while in the real world there is no guarantee. Critical thinking is about how you approach problems, questions, issues. It is the best way we know of to get to the truth. But! There still are no guarantees — no answers in the back of the book of real life. Does this characterization, that strong critical thinkers possess a “critical spirit, a probing inquisitiveness, a keenness of mind…” fit with your examples of people you would call strong critical thinkers?

But you might say, I know people who have skills but do not use them. We cannot call someone a strong critical thinker just because she or he has these cognitive skills, however important they might be, because what if they just do not bother to apply them?

One response is to say that it is hard to imagine an accomplished dancer who never dances. After working to develop those skills it seems such a shame to let them grow weak with lack of practice. But dancers get tired. And they surrender to the stiffness of age or the fear of injury. In the case of critical thinking skills, we might argue that not using them once you have them is hard to imagine. It’s hard to imagine a person deciding not to think.

Considered as a form of thoughtful judgment or reflective decision-making, in a very real sense critical thinking is pervasive . There is hardly a time or a place where it would not seem to be of potential value. As long as people have purposes in mind and wish to judge how to accomplish them, as long as people wonder what is true and what is not, what to believe and what to reject, strong critical thinking is going to be necessary.

And yet weird things happen, so it is probably true that some people might let their thinking skills grow dull. It is easier to imagine times when people are just too tired, too lax, or too frightened. But imagine it you can, Young Skywalker, so there must be more to critical thinking than just the list of cognitive skills. Human beings are more than thinking machines. And this brings us back to those all-important attitudes which the experts called “dispositions.”

The experts were persuaded that critical thinking is a pervasive and purposeful human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker can be characterized not merely by her or his cognitive skills but also by how she or he approaches life and living in general. This is a bold claim. Critical thinking goes way beyond the classroom. In fact, many of the experts fear that some of the things people experience in school are harmful to the development and cultivation of strong critical thinking. Critical thinking came before schooling was ever invented; it lies at the very roots of civilization. It is a cornerstone in the journey humankind is taking from beastly savagery to global sensitivity. Consider what life would be like without the things on this list and we think you will understand.

The approaches to life and living which characterize critical thinking include:

* inquisitiveness regarding a wide range of issues,

* concern to become and remain well-informed,

* alertness to opportunities to use critical thinking,

* trust in the processes of reasoned inquiry,

* self-confidence in one’s own abilities to reason,

* open-mindedness regarding divergent world views,

* flexibility in considering alternatives and opinions

* understanding of the opinions of other people,

* fair-mindedness in appraising reasoning,

* honesty in facing one’s own biases, prejudices, stereotypes, or egocentric tendencies,

* prudence in suspending, making, or altering judgments,

* willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest reflection suggests that change is warranted.

What would someone be like who lacked those dispositions?

It might be someone who does not care about much of anything, is not interested in the facts, prefers not to think, mistrusts reasoning as a way of finding things out or solving problems, holds his or her own reasoning abilities in low esteem, is close-minded, inflexible, insensitive, cannot understand what others think, is unfair when it comes to judging the quality of arguments, denies his or her own biases, jumps to conclusions or delays too long in making judgments, and never is willing to reconsider an opinion. Not someone prudent people would want to ask to manage their investments!

The experts went beyond approaches to life and living in general to emphasize that strong critical thinkers can also be described in terms of how they approach specific issues, questions, or problems. The experts said you would find these sorts of characteristics:

* clarity in stating the question or concern,

* orderliness in working with complexity,

* diligence in seeking relevant information,

* reasonableness in selecting and applying criteria,

* care in focusing attention on the concern at hand,

* persistence though difficulties are encountered,

* precision to the degree permitted by the subject and the circumstances.

So, how would a weak critical thinker approach specific problems or issues? Obviously, by being muddle-headed about what he or she is doing, disorganized and overly simplistic, spotty about getting the facts, apt to apply unreasonable criteria, easily distracted, ready to give up at the least hint of difficulty, intent on a solution that is more detailed than is possible, or being satisfied with an overly generalized and uselessly vague response. Remind you of anyone you know?

Someone positively disposed toward using critical thinking would probably agree with statements like these:

“I hate talk shows where people shout their opinions but never give any reasons at all.”“Figuring out what people really mean by what they say is important to me.”

“I always do better in jobs where I’m expected to think things out for myself.”

“I hold off making decisions until I have thought through my options.”

“Rather than relying on someone else’s notes, I prefer to read the material myself.”

“I try to see the merit in another’s opinion, even if I reject it later.”

“Even if a problem is tougher than I expected, I will keep working on it.”

“Making intelligent decisions is more important than winning arguments.”

A person disposed to be averse or hostile toward using critical thinking would probably disagree with the statements above but be likely to agree with these:

“I prefer jobs where the supervisor says exactly what to do and exactly how to do it.”“No matter how complex the problem, you can bet there will be a simple solution.”

“I don’t waste time looking things up.”

“I hate when teachers discuss problems instead of just giving the answers.”

“If my belief is truly sincere, evidence to the contrary is irrelevant.”

“Selling an idea is like selling cars, you say whatever works.”

We used the expression “strong critical thinker” to contrast with the expression “weak critical thinker.” But you will find people who drop the adjective “strong” (or “good”) and just say that someone is a “critical thinker” or not. It is like saying that a soccer (European “football”) player is a “defender” or “not a defender”, instead of saying the player’s skills at playing defense are strong or weak. People use the word “defender” in place of the phrase “is good at playing defense.” Similarly, people use “critical thinker” in place of “is a strong critical thinker” or “has strong critical thinking skills.” This is not only a helpful conversational shortcut, it suggests that to many people “critical thinker” has a laudatory sense. The word can be used to praise someone at the same time that it identifies the person, as in “Look at that play. That’s what I call a defender!”

“If we were compelled to make a choice between these personal attributes and knowledge about the principles of logical reasoning together with some degree of technical skill in manipulating special logical processes, we should decide for the former.”

John Dewey, How We Think , 1909. Republished as How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educational Process . D. C. Heath Publishing. Lexington, MA. 1933.

We said the experts did not come to full agreement on something. That thing has to do with the concept of a “strong critical thinker.” This time the emphasis is on the word “good” because of the crucial ambiguity it contains. A person can be good at critical thinking, meaning that the person can have the appropriate dispositions and be adept at the cognitive processes, while still not being a good (in the moral sense) critical thinker. For example, a person can be adept at developing arguments and then, unethically, use this skill to mislead and exploit a gullible person, perpetrate a fraud, or deliberately confuse and confound, and frustrate a project.

The experts were faced with an interesting problem. Some, a minority, would prefer to think that critical thinking, by its very nature, is inconsistent with the kinds of unethical and deliberately counterproductive examples given. They find it hard to imagine a person who was good at critical thinking not also being good in the broader personal and social sense. In other words, if a person were “really” a “strong critical thinker” in the procedural sense and if the person had all the appropriate dispositions, then the person simply would not do those kinds of exploitive and aggravating things.

What We All Need Most Right Now

The large majority, however, hold the opposite judgment.

The majority are firm in the view that strong critical thinking has nothing to do with any given set of political or religious tenets, ethical values, cultural mores, orthodoxies, or ideologies of any kind. Rather, the commitment one makes as a strong critical thinker is to always seek the truth with objectivity, integrity, and fair-mindedness. Most experts maintain that critical thinking conceived of as we have described it above, is, regrettably, consistent with abusing one’s knowledge, skills, or power. There have been people with superior thinking skills and strong habits of mind who, unfortunately, have used their talents for ruthless, horrific, and immoral purposes. Would that it was not so! Would that experience, knowledge, mental horsepower, and ethical virtues were all the same. But from the time of Socrates, if not thousands of years before that, humans have known that many of us have one or more of these without having the full set.

Any tool, any approach to situations, can go either way, ethically speaking, depending on the character, integrity, and principles of the persons who possess them. So, in the final analysis most experts maintained that we cannot say a person is not thinking critically simply because we disapprove ethically of what the person is doing. The majority concluded that, “what ‘critical thinking’ means, why it is of value, and the ethics of its use are best regarded as three distinct concerns.”

Perhaps this realization forms part of the basis for why people these days are demanding a broader range of learning outcomes from our schools and colleges. “Knowledge and skills,” the staples of the educational philosophy of the mid-twentieth century, are not sufficient. We must look to a broader set of outcomes including habits of mind and dispositions, such as civic engagement, concern for the common good, and social responsibility.

“Thinking” in Popular Culture

We have said so many good things about critical thinking that you might have the impression that “critical thinking” and “good thinking” mean the same thing. But that is not what the experts said. They see critical thinking as making up part of what we mean by good thinking, but not as being the only kind of good thinking. For example, they would have included creative thinking as part of good thinking.

Creative or innovative thinking is the kind of thinking that leads to new insights, novel approaches, fresh perspectives, whole new ways of understanding and conceiving of things. The products of creative thought include some obvious things like music, poetry, dance, dramatic literature, inventions, and technical innovations. But there are some not so obvious examples as well, such as ways of putting a question that expand the horizons of viable solutions, or ways of conceiving of relationships which challenge presuppositions and lead one to see the world in imaginative and different ways.

The experts working on the concept of critical thinking wisely left open the entire question of what the other forms good thinking might take. Creative thinking is only one example. There is a kind of purposive, kinetic thinking that instantly coordinates movement and intention as, for example, when an athlete dribbles a soccer ball down the field during a match. There is a kind of meditative thinking which may lead to a sense of inner peace or to profound insights about human existence. In contrast, there is a kind of hyper-alert, instinctive thinking needed by soldiers in battle. In the context of popular culture, one finds people proposing all kinds of thinking or this kind of intelligence or that kind of intelligence. Sometimes it is hard to sort out science from pseudo-science – the kernel of enduring truth from the latest cocktail party banter.

“Thinking” in Cognitive Science

Theories emerging from more scientific studies of human thinking and decision-making in recent years propose that thinking is more integrated and less dualistic than the notions in popular culture suggest. We should be cautious about proposals suggesting oversimplified ways of understanding how humans think. We should avoid harsh, rigid dichotomies such as “reason vs. emotion,” “intuitive vs. linear,” “creativity vs. criticality,” “right brained vs. left brained,” “as on Mars vs. as on Venus.”

There is often a kernel of wisdom in popular beliefs, and perhaps that gem this time is the realization that sometimes we decide things very quickly almost as spontaneous, intuitive, reactions to the situation at hand. Many accidents on the freeways of this nation are avoided precisely because drivers can see and react to dangerous situations so quickly. Many good decisions which feel intuitive are really the fruit of expertise. Decisions good drivers make in those moments of crisis, just like the decisions which practiced athletes make in the flow of a game or the decisions that a gifted teacher makes as she or he interacts with students, are borne of expertise, training, and practice.

Recent integrative models of human decision-making propose that the thinking processes of our species is not best described as a conflictive duality as in “intuitive vs. reflective” but rather an integrative functioning of two mutually supportive systems “intuitive and reflective.” These two systems of thinking are present in all of us and can act in parallel to process cognitively the matters over which we are deciding.

One system is more intuitive, reactive, quick and holistic. So as not to confuse things with the notions of thinking in popular culture, cognitive scientists often name this system, “System 1.” The other (yes, you can guess its name) is more deliberative, reflective, computational and rule governed. You are right, it is called “ System 2 .”

In System 1 thinking, one relies heavily on several heuristics (cognitive maneuvers), key situational characteristics, readily associated ideas, and vivid memories to arrive quickly and confidently at a judgment. System 1 thinking is particularly helpful in familiar situations when time is short and immediate action is required.

While System 1 is functioning, another powerful system is also at work, that is, unless we shut it down by abusing alcohol or drugs, or with fear or indifference. Called “ System 2 ,” this is our more reflective thinking system. It is useful for making judgments when you find yourself in unfamiliar situations and have more time to figure things out. It allows us to process abstract concepts, to deliberate, to plan, to consider options carefully, to review and revise our work in the light of relevant guidelines or standards or rules of procedure. While System 2 decisions are also influenced by the correct or incorrect application of heuristic maneuvers, this is the system which relies on well-articulated reasons and more fully developed evidence. It is reasoning based on what we have learned through careful analysis, evaluation, explanation, and self-correction. This is the system which values intellectual honesty, analytically anticipating what happens next, maturity of judgment, fair-mindedness, elimination of biases, and truth-seeking. This is the system which we rely on to carefully think trough complex, novel, high-stakes, and highly integrative problems. [3]

Educators urge us to improve our critical thinking skills and to reinforce our disposition to use those skills because that is perhaps the best way to develop and refine our System 2 reasoning.

Cognitive heuristics are thinking maneuvers which, at times, appear to be almost hardwired into our species. They influence both systems of thinking, the intuitive thinking of System 1 and the reflective reasoning of System 2. Five heuristics often seem to be operating more frequently in our System 1 reasoning are known as availability, affect, association, simulation, and similarity .

Availability , the coming to mind of a story or vivid memory of something that happened to you or to someone close to you, inclines a person to make inaccurate estimates of the likelihood of that thing’s happening again. People tell stories of things that happened to themselves or their friends all the time as a way of explaining their own decisions. The stories may not be scientifically representative, the events may be mistaken, misunderstood, or misinterpreted. But all that aside, the power of the story is to guide, often in a good way, the decision toward one choice rather than another.

The Affect heuristic operates when you have an immediate positive or a negative reaction to some idea, proposal, person, object, whatever. Sometimes called a “gut reaction” this affective response sets up an initial orientation in us, positive or negative, toward the object. It takes a lot of System 2 reasoning to overcome a powerful affective response to an idea, but it can be done. And at times it should be, because there is no guarantee that your gut reaction is always right.

The Association heuristic is operating when one word or idea reminds us of something else. For example, some people associate the word “cancer” with “death.” Some associate “sunshine” with “happiness.” These kinds of associational reasoning responses can be helpful at times, as for example if associating cancer with death leads you not to smoke and to go in for regular checkups. At other times the same association may influence a person to make an unwise decision, as for example if associating “cancer” with “death” were to lead you to be so fearful and pessimistic that you do not seek diagnosis and treatment of a worrisome cancer symptom until it was really too late to do anything.

The Simulation heuristic works when you are imagining how various scenarios will unfold. People often imagine how a conversation will go, or how they will be treated by someone else when they meet the person, or what their friends or boss or lover will say and do when they must address some difficult issue. These simulations, like movies in our heads, help us prepare and do a better job when the difficult moment arrives. But they can also lead us to have mistaken expectations. People may not respond as we imagined, things may go much differently. Our preparations may fail us because the ease of our simulation misled us into thinking that things would have to go as we had imagined them. And they did not.

The Similarity heuristic operates when we notice some way in which we are like someone else and infer that what happened to that person is therefore more likely to happen to us. The similarity heuristic functions much like an analogical argument or metaphorical model. The similarity we focus on might be fundamental and relevant, which would make the inference more warranted. For example, the boss fired your coworker for missing sales targets, and you draw the reasonable conclusion that if you miss your sales target, you will be fired too. Or the similarity that comes to mind might be superficial or not connected with the outcome, which would make the inference unwarranted. For example, you see a TV commercial showing trim-figured young people enjoying fattening fast foods and infer that because you are young too you can indulge your cravings for fast foods without gaining a lot of excess unsightly poundage.

Heuristics and biases often appearing to be somewhat more associated with System 2 thinking include: satisficing, risk/loss aversion, anchoring with adjustment, and the illusion of control.

CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS MAP ON TO LEADERSHIP DECISION MAKING

Successful professionals with leadership responsibilities, like those in business or the military, apply all their critical thinking skills to solve problems and to make sound decisions. At the risk of oversimplifying all the ways that our critical thinking intersects with problem solving and leadership decision making, here are some of the more obvious connecting points:

• Analyze the strategic environment, identify its elements and their relationships
• Interpret events and other elements in the strategic environment for signs of risk, opportunity, weakness, advantage
• Infer , given what is known with precision and accuracy within the strategic environment, the logical and most predictable consequences of various courses of action
• Infer , given the range of uncertainty and risk in the strategic environment, the full range of the possible and probable consequences of each possible course of action
• Evaluate anticipated results for positive and negative impacts
• Evaluate risks, opportunities, options, consequences
• Explain the rationale (evidence, methodology, criteria, theoretical assumptions, and context) for deciding on the integrated strategic objectives and for the planning and action parameters that compose the strategy
• Double Check Everything: At every step review one’s own thinking and make necessary corrections.

© 2013 Measured Reasons LLC, Hermosa Beach, CA. From Jan 2013 briefing “Critical and Creative Thinking” for Joint Special Operations Forces Senior Enlisted Academy, MacDill AFB.

Satisficing occurs as we consider our alternatives. When we come to one which is good enough to fulfill our objectives, we often regard ourselves as having completed our deliberations. We satisficed. And why not? The choice is, after all, good enough. It may not be perfect, it may not be optimal, it may not even be the best among the options available. But it is good enough. Time to decide and move forward.

The running mate of satisficing is temporizing. Temporizing is deciding that the option which we have come to is “good enough for now.” We often move through life satisficing and temporizing. At times we look back on our situations and wonder why it is that we have settled for far less than we might have. If we had only studied harder, worked out a little more, taken better care of ourselves and our relationships, perhaps we would not be living as we are now. But, at the time each of the decisions along the way was “good enough for the time being.”

We are by nature a species that is averse to risk and loss . We often make decisions based on what we are too worried about losing, rather than based on what we might gain. This works out to be a rather serviceable approach in many circumstances. People do not want to lose control, they do not want to lose their freedom, they do not want to lose their lives, their families, their jobs, their possessions. High stakes gambling is best left to those who can afford to lose the money. Las Vegas did not build all those multi-million-dollar casino hotels because vacationers are winning all the time! And so, in real life, we take precautions. We avoid unnecessary risks. The odds may not be stacked against us, but the consequences of losing at times are so great that we would prefer to forego the possibilities of gain in order not to lose what we have. And yet, on occasion this can be a most unfortunate decision too. History has shown time and time again that businesses which avoid risks often are unable to compete successfully with those willing to move more boldly into new markets or into new product lines.

Any heuristic is only a maneuver, perhaps a shortcut or impulse to think or act in one way rather than another, but certainly not a failsafe rule. It may work out well much of the time to rely on the heuristic, but it will not work out for the best all the time.

For example, people with something to lose tend toward conservative choices politically as well as economically. Nothing wrong with that necessarily. Just an observation about the influence of Loss Aversion heuristic on actual decision making. We are more apt to endure the status quo, even as it slowly deteriorates, than we are to call for “radical” change. Regrettably, however, when the call for change comes, it often requires a far greater upheaval to make the necessary transformations, or, on occasion, the situation has deteriorated beyond the point of no return. In those situations, we find ourselves wondering why we waited so long before doing something.

The heuristic known as Anchoring with Adjustment is operative when we find ourselves making evaluative judgments. The natural thing for us to do is to locate or anchor our evaluation at some point along whatever scale we are using. For example, a professor says that the student’s paper is a C+. Then, as other information comes our way, we may adjust that judgment. The professor, for example, may decide that the paper is as good as some others that were given a B-, and so adjust the grade upward. The interesting thing about this heuristic is that we do not normally start over with a fresh evaluation. We have dropped anchor, and we may drag it upward or downward a bit, but we do not pull it off the bottom of the sea to relocate our evaluation. First impressions, as the saying goes, cannot be undone. The good thing about this heuristic is that it permits us to move on. We have done the evaluation; there are other papers to grade, other projects to do, other things in life that need attention. We could not endure long if we had to constantly reevaluate everything anew. The unfortunate thing about this heuristic is that we sometimes drop anchor in the wrong place; we have a tough time giving people a second chance at making a good first impression.

The heuristic known as Illusion of Control is evident in many situations. Many of us overestimate our abilities to control what will happen. We make plans for how we are going to do this or that, say this or that, manipulate the situation this way or that way, share or not share this information or that possibility, all the time thinking that somehow our petty plans will enable us to control what happens. We function as if others are dancing on the ends of the strings that we are pulling, when the influences our words or actions have on future events may be quite negligible. At times we do have some measure of control. For example, we may exercise, not smoke, and watch our diet to be more fit and healthy. We are careful not to drink if we are planning to drive so that we reduce the risks of being involved in a traffic accident. But at times we simply are mistaken about our ability to exercise full control over a situation. Sadly, we might become ill even if we do work hard to take care of ourselves. Or we may be involved in an accident even if we are sober. Our business may fail even if we work hard to make it a success. We may not do as well on an exam as we might hope even if we study hard.

Related to the Illusion of Control heuristic is the tendency to misconstrue our personal influence or responsibility for past events. This is called Hindsight Bias. We may overestimate the influence our actions have had on events when things go right, or we may underestimate our responsibility or culpability when things go wrong. We have all heard people bragging about how they did this and how they did that and, as a result, such and such wonderful things happened. We made these great plans and look at how well our business did financially. Which may be true when the economy is strong but not when the economy is failing. It is not clear how much of that success came from the planning and how much came from the general business environment. Or, we have all been in the room when it was time to own up for something that went wrong and thought to ourselves, hey, I may have had some part in this, but it was not entirely my fault. “It was not my fault the children were late for school! Hey, I was dressed and ready to go at the regular time.” As if seeing that the family was running late, I had no responsibility to take some initiative and help.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome.”

Albert Einstein

Research on our shared heuristic patterns of decision-making does not aim to evaluate these patterns as necessarily good or bad patterns of thinking. I fear that my wording of them may not have been as entirely neutral and descriptive as perhaps it should have been. In truth, reliance on heuristics can be an efficient way of deciding things, given how complicated our lives are. We cannot devote maximal cognitive resources to every single decision we make.

Those of us who study these heuristic thinking phenomena are simply trying to document how we humans do think. There are many useful purposes for doing this. For example, if we find that people repeatedly make a given kind of mistake when thinking about a commonly experienced problem, then we might find ways to intervene and to help ourselves not repeat that error repeatedly.

This research on the actual patterns of thinking used by individuals and by groups might prove particularly valuable to those who seek interventions which could improve how we make our own heath care decisions, how we make business decisions, how we lead teams of people to work more effectively in collaborative settings, and the like.

Popular culture offers one other myth about decision-making which is worth questioning. And that is the belief that when we make reflective decisions, we carefully weigh each of our options, giving due consideration to all of them in turn, before deciding which we will adopt. Although perhaps it should be, research on human decision-making shows that this simply is not what happens. [4] When seeking to explain how people decide on an option with such conviction that they stick to their decision over time and with such confidence that they act on that decision, the concept that what we do is build a Dominance Structure has been put forth.

In a nutshell this theory suggests that when we settle on a particular option which is good enough, we tend to elevate its merits and diminish its flaws relative to the other options. We raise it up in our minds until it becomes for us the dominant option. In this way, as our decision takes shape, we gain confidence in our choice and we feel justified in dismissing the other options, even though the objective distance between any of them and our dominant option may not be very great at all. But we become invested in our dominant option to the extent that we can put the other possibilities aside and act based on our choice. In fact, it comes to dominate the other options in our minds so much that we can sustain our decision to act over time, rather than going back to re-evaluate or reconsider constantly. Understanding the natural phenomenon of dominance structuring can help us appreciate why it can be so difficult for us to get others to change their minds, or why it seems that our reasons for our decisions are so much better than any of the objections which others might make to our decisions. This is not to say that we are right or wrong. Rather, this is only to observe that human beings are capable of unconsciously building up defenses around their choices which can result in the warranted or unwarranted confidence to act based on those choices.

Realizing the power of dominance structuring, one can only be more committed to the importance of education and critical thinking. We should do all that we can to inform ourselves fully and to reflect carefully on our choices before we make them, because we are, after all, human and we are as likely as the next person to believe that we are right and they are wrong once the dominance structure begins to be erected. Breaking through that to fix bad decisions, which is possible, can be much harder than getting things right in the first place.

There are more heuristics than only those mentioned above. There is more to learn about dominance structuring as it occurs in groups as well as in individuals, and how to mitigate the problems which may arise by prematurely settling on a “good enough” option, or about how to craft educational programs or interventions which help people be more effective in their System 1 and System 2 thinking. There is much to learn about human thinking and how to optimize it in individuals of different ages; how to optimize the thinking of groups of peers and groups where organizational hierarchies influence interpersonal dynamics. And, happily, there is a lot we know today about human thinking and decision-making that we did not know a few years ago.

Why critical thinking?

Let us start with you first. Why would critical thinking be of value to you to have the cognitive skills of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation?

Apart from, or maybe in light of, what we said at the beginning of this essay about the utility of positive critical thinking and about the problems that failures of critical thinking contribute to, why would it be of value to you to learn to approach life and to approach specific concerns with the critical thinking dispositions listed above? Would you have greater success in your work? Would you get better grades?

The answer to the grades question, scientifically speaking, is very possibly Yes! A study of over 1100 college students shows that scores on a college level critical thinking skills test significantly correlated with college GPA. [5] It has also been shown that critical thinking skills can be learned, which suggests that as one learns them one’s GPA might well improve. In further support of this hypothesis is the significant correlation between critical thinking and reading comprehension. Improvements in one are paralleled by improvements in the other. Now if you can read better and think better, you probably will do better in your classes, learn more, and get higher grades. It is, to say the least, very plausible.

Learning, Critical Thinking, and Our Nation’s Future

“The future now belongs to societies that organize themselves for learning… nations that want high incomes and full employment must develop policies that emphasize the acquisition of knowledge and skills by everyone, not just a select few.”

Ray Marshall & Marc Tucker, Thinking For A Living: Education And The Wealth of Nations , Basic Books. New York. 1992.

But what a limited benefit — better grades. Who really cares in the long run? Two years after college, five years out, what does GPA really mean? These days a college level technical and professional program has a half-life of about four years, which means that the technical content is expanding so fast and changing so much that in about four years after graduation your professional training will be in serious need of renewal. So, if the only thing a college is good for is to get the entry level training and the credential needed for a particular job, then college would be a time-limited value.

The APA Delphi Report, Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction 1990 ERIC Doc. NO.: ED 315423

Is that the whole story? A job is a good thing, but is that what a college education is all about? Just getting started in a job? Maybe some cannot see its further value, but many do. A main purpose, if not the main purpose, of the collegiate experience, at either the two-year or the four-year level, is to achieve what people have called a “liberal education.” Not liberal in the sense of a smattering of this and that for no particular purpose except to fulfill the unit requirement. But liberal in the sense of “liberating.” And who is being liberated? You! Liberated from a kind of slavery. But from whom?

From professors. From dependence on professors so that they no longer stand as infallible authorities delivering opinions beyond our capacity to challenge, question, and dissent. In fact, this is exactly what the professors want. They want their students to excel on their own, to go beyond what is currently known, to make their own contributions to knowledge and to society. [Being a professor is a curious job — the more effective you are as a teacher, less your students require your aid in learning.]

Liberal education is about learning to learn, which means learning to think for yourself on your own and in collaboration with others.

Liberal education leads us away from naive acceptance of authority, above self-defeating relativism, and beyond ambiguous contextualism. It culminates in principled reflective judgment. Learning critical thinking, cultivating the critical spirit, is not just a means to this end, it is part of the goal itself. People who are weak critical thinkers, who lack the dispositions and skills described, cannot be said to be liberally educated, regardless of the academic degrees they may hold.

Yes, there is much more to a liberal education than critical thinking. There is an understanding of the methods, principles, theories, and ways of achieving knowledge which are proper to the different intellectual realms. There is an encounter with the cultural, artistic, and spiritual dimensions of life. There is the evolution of one’s decision making to the level of principled integrity and concern for the common good and social justice. There is the realization of the ways all our lives are shaped by global as well as local political, social, psychological, economic, environmental, and physical forces. There is the growth that comes from the interaction with cultures, languages, ethnic groups, religions, nationalities, and social classes other than one’s own. There is the refinement of one’s humane sensibilities through reflection on the recurring questions of human existence, meaning, love, life, and death. There is the sensitivity, appreciation, and critical appraisal of all that is good and all that is bad in the human condition. As the mind awakens and matures, and the proper nurturing and educational nourishment is provided, these others central parts of a liberal education develop as well. Critical thinking plays an essential role in achieving these purposes.

Anything else? What about going beyond the individual to the community?

The experts say critical thinking is fundamental to, if not essential for, “a rational and democratic society.” What might the experts mean by this?

Well, how wise would democracy be if people abandoned critical thinking? Imagine an electorate that did not care for the facts. An electorate that did not wish to consider the pros and cons of the issues. Or, worse, had neither the education nor the brain power to do so. Imagine your life and the lives of your friends and family placed in the hands of juries and judges who let their political allegiance, biases and stereotypes govern their decisions, who do not attend to the evidence, who are not interested in reasoned inquiry, who do not know how to draw an inference or evaluate one. Without critical thinking, people could easily be exploited not only politically but economically.

The impact of abandoning critical thinking would not be confined to the micro-economics of the household checking account. Suppose the people involved in international commerce were lacking in critical thinking skills, they would be unable to analyze and interpret the market trends, evaluate the implications of interest fluctuations, or explain the potential impact of those factors which influence large scale production and distribution of goods and materials. Suppose these people were unable to draw the proper inferences from the economic facts, or unable to evaluate the claims made by the unscrupulous and misinformed. In such a situation, serious economic mistakes would be made. Whole sectors of the economy would become unpredictable and large-scale economic disaster would become extremely likely. So, given a society that does not value and cultivate critical thinking, we might reasonably expect that in time the judicial system and the economic system would collapse. And, in such a society, one that does not liberate its citizens by teaching them to think critically for themselves, it would be madness to advocate democratic forms of government.

Is it any wonder that business and civic leaders are maybe even more interested in critical thinking than educators? Critical thinking employed by an informed citizenry is a necessary condition for the success of democratic institutions and for competitive free-market economic enterprise. These values are so important that it is in the national interest that we should try to educate all citizens so that they can learn to think critically. Not just for their personal good, but for the good of the rest of us too.

Look at what has happened around the world in places devastated by economic embargoes, one-sided warfare, or the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Or, consider the problem of global climate change, and how important it is for all of us to cooperate with efforts to curtail our use of fossil fuels to reduce emissions of harmful greenhouse gases.

Consider the “cultural revolutions” undertaken by totalitarian rulers. Notice how in virtually every case absolutist and dictatorial despots seek ever more severe limitations on free expression. They label “liberal” intellectuals “dangers to society” and expel “radical” professors from teaching posts because they might “corrupt the youth.” Some use the power of their governmental or religious authority to crush not only their opposition but the moderates as well — all in the name of maintaining the purity of their movement. They intimidate journalists and those media outlets which dare to comment “negatively” on their political and cultural goals or their heavy-handed methods.

The historical evidence is there for us to see what happens when schools are closed or converted from places of education to places for indoctrination. We know what happens when children are no longer being taught truth-seeking, the skills of good reasoning, or the lessons of human history and basic science: Cultures disintegrate; communities collapse; the machinery of civilization fails; massive numbers of people die; and sooner or later social and political chaos ensues.

Or, imagine a media, a religious or political hegemony which cultivated, instead of critical thinking, all the opposite dispositions? Or consider if that hegemony reinforced uncritical, impulsive decision making and the “ready-shoot-aim” approach to executive action. Imagine governmental structures, administrators, and community leaders who, instead of encouraging critical thinking, were content to make knowingly irrational, illogical, prejudicial, unreflective, short-sighted, and unreasonable decisions.

How long might it take for the people in this society which does not value critical thinking to be at serious risk of foolishly harming themselves and each other?

The news too often reports about hate groups, wanton shooting, terrorists, and violently extreme political, ideological, or religious zealots. Education which includes a good measure of critical thinking skills and dispositions like truth-seeking and open-mindedness, is a problem for terrorists and extremists of every stripe because terrorists and extremists want to control of what people think. They are ideologists of the worst kind. Their methods include indoctrination, intimidation, and the strictest authoritarian orthodoxy. In the “black-and-white” world of “us vs. them” a good education would mean that the people might begin to think for themselves. And that is something these extremists do not want.

History shows that assaults on learning, whether by book burning, exile of intellectuals, or regulations aimed at suppressing research and frustrating the fair-minded, evidence-based, and unfettered pursuit of knowledge, can happen wherever and whenever people are not vigilant defenders of open, objective, and independent inquiry.

Does this mean that society should place an extremely high value on critical thinking?

Absolutely!

Does this mean society has the right to force someone to learn to think critically?

Maybe. But, really, should we have to?

EXPERT CONSENSUS STATEMENT REGARDING CRITICAL THINKING AND THE IDEAL CRITICAL THINKER

NEW! For Students and Professionals

Online mini-courses strengthen critical thinking in as little as 1 hour.

• Correctly analyze problems and develop effective problem-solving strategies
• Interpret information correctly to make informed decisions
• Draw sound and reasonable inferences
• Evaluate arguments and credibility of sources for robust decision-making
• Persuasively explain reasoning for your point of view,
• Enhancing your analytical and interpretive communication skills
• Make more thoughtful decisions in your personal and professional life
• Protect yourself from being misled by rhetorical deceptions and fallacies
• Strengthening your ability to reason well with quantitative information
• Learn how to evaluate comparative, ideological, and scientific reasoning
• Discover the benefits and the risks of both reactive and reflective thinking

www.insightbasecamp.com

Critical Thinking Skill Builders Mindset Boosters Deep Dives into How Humans Reason Self Quizzes

With Insight Basecamp’s expert-led online courses, students and professionals can strengthen their critical thinking skills and mindset. Choose from a wide range of courses to help you come to well-reasoned judgments, analyze problems correctly, draw sound inferences, and make thoughtful decisions.

Our lifelong learning opportunities are designed for students and professionals from various industries, providing relevant and applicable knowledge. Whether you are advancing your career or building your learning and decision-making skills, our courses are designed to meet your needs.

Tactics for Training, Triggering, and Teaching Critical Thinking

. Images in this white paper are copyrighted from keynote presentations and professional development workshops.

Contact the author at Measured Reasons LLC for more information.

“Critical Thinking for Life: Valuing, Measuring, and Training Critical Thinking in All its Forms,” describes the work of Drs. Peter A. and Noreen C. Facione. The essay can be found in the Spring 2013 issue of Inquiry (Vol. XXVIII, No.1).

They and their co-investigators have been engaged in research and teaching about reasoning, decision-making, and effective individual and group thinking processes since 1967. Over the years they developed instruments to measure the core skills and habits of mind of effective thinking, these instruments are now in use in many different languages throughout the world. Since 1992 they have presented hundreds of workshops about effective teaching for thinking and about leadership, decision-making, leadership development, planning and budgeting, and learning outcomes assessment at national and international professional association meetings, business organizations, military bases, healthcare agencies, and on college and university throughout the nation.

READINGS and REFERENCES

American Philosophical Association, Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. “The Delphi Report,” Committee on Pre-College Philosophy. (ERIC Doc. No. ED 315 423). 1990

Brookfield, Stephen D. : Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Thinking and Acting . Josey-Bass Publishers. San-Francisco, CA. 1987.

Browne, M. Neil, and Keeley, Stuart M.: Asking the Right Questions . Prentice-Hall Publishers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 2003.

Costa, Arthur L., & Lowery, l Lawrence F.: Techniques for Teaching Thinking. Critical Thinking Press and Software. Pacific Grove, CA. 1989.

Facione, Noreen C, and Facione Peter A..: Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgment in the Health Sciences – An International Teaching Anthology . The California Academic Press, Millbrae CA. 2008.

Facione, Noreen C. and Facione, Peter A.: Critical Thinking Assessment and Nursing Education Programs: An Aggregate Data Analysis . The California Academic Press. Millbrae, CA 1997.

Facione, Noreen. C., and Facione, Peter A., Analyzing Explanations for Seemingly Irrational Choices, International Journal of Applied Philosophy , Vol. 15 No. 2 (2001) 267-86.

Facione, Peter A and Noreen C.: Thinking and Reasoning in Human Decision Making. The California Academic Press. Millbrae CA, 2007

Facione, Peter A and Giddens C. A.: Think Critically , Pearson Education: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2016.

Facione, P.A., Facione, N.C., Talking Critical Thinking, Change: The Magazine of Higher Education , March-April. 2007.

Facione, P.A., Facione N. C., and Giancarlo, C: The Disposition Toward Critical Thinking: Its Character, Measurement, and Relationship to Critical Thinking Skills, Journal of Informal Logic, Vol. 20 No. 1 (2000) 61-84.

Gilovich, Thomas; Griffin, Dale; and Kahneman, Daniel: Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment . Cambridge University Press. 2002.

Goldstein, William, and Hogarth, Robin M. (Eds.): Research on Judgment and Decision Making . Cambridge University Press. 1997.

Esterle, John, and Clurman, Dan: Conversations with Critical Thinkers . The Whitman Institute. San Francisco, CA. 1993.

Janis, I.L. and Mann, L: Decision-Making . The Free Press, New York. 1977.

Kahneman, Daniel; Slovic, Paul; and Tversky, Amos: Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases . Cambridge University Press. 1982.

Kahneman Daniel: Knetsch, J.L.; and Thaler, R.H.: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives . 1991, 5;193-206.

King, Patricia M. & Kitchener, Karen Strohm: Developing Reflective Judgment. Josey-Bass Publishers. San Francisco, CA. 1994

Kurfiss, Joanne G., Critical Thinking: Theory, Research, Practice and Possibilities, ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report # 2, Washington DC, 1988.

Marshall, Ray, and Tucker, Marc, Thinking for a Living: Education and the Wealth of Nations , Basic Books. New York, NY. 1992.

Resnick, L. W., Education and Learning to Think, National Academy Press, 1987.

Rubenfeld, M. Gaie, & Scheffer, Barbara K., Critical Thinking in Nursing: An Interactive Approach . J. B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia PA, 1995.

Siegel, Harvey: Educating Reason: Rationality, CT and Education. Routledge Publishing. New York. 1989.

Sternberg, Robert J.: Critical Thinking: Its Nature, Measurement, and Improvement. National Institute of Education, Washington DC, 1986.

Toulmin, Stephen: The Uses of Argument . Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Wade, Carole, and Tavris, Carol: Critical & Creative Thinking: The Case of Love and War . Harper Collins College Publisher. New York. NY 1993.

GOVERNMENT REPORTS

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) Documents National Assessment of College Student Learning: Getting Started, A Summary of Beginning Activities. NCES 93-116.

National Assessment of College Student Learning: Identification of the Skills to Be Taught, Learned, and Assessed, A Report on the Proceedings of the Second Design Workshop, November 1992. NCES 94-286.

National Assessment of College Student Learning: Identifying College Graduates’ Essential Skills in Writing, Speech and Listening, and Critical Thinking. NCES 95-001.

• The findings of expert consensus cited or reported in this essay are published in Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. Peter A. Facione, principal investigator, The California Academic Press, Millbrae, CA, 1990. (ERIC ED 315 423). In 1993/94 the Center for the Study of Higher Education at The Pennsylvania State University studied 200 policymakers, employers, and faculty members from two-year and four-year colleges to determine what this group took to be the core critical thinking skills and habits of mind. The Pennsylvania State University Study, under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Jones, was funded by the US Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Instruction. The Penn State study findings, published in 1994, confirmed the expert consensus described in this paper. ↑
• The California Critical Thinking Skills Test , the Test of Everyday Reasoning , the Health Science Reasoning Test , the Military and Defense Reasoning Profile , The Business Critical Thinking Skills Test , and Educate Insight Series for K-12, and the INSIGHT Series for employers and business, health, legal, first responder, educator, science and engineering, and defense professionals and executives. along with other testing instruments authored by Dr. Facione and his research team for people in K-12, college, and graduate / professional work target the core critical thinking skills identified here. These instruments are published in English and several authorized translations exclusively by Insight Assessment. ↑
• Chapters 10 and 11 of Think Critically , Pearson Education, locate critical thinking within this integrative model of thinking. The cognitive heuristics, which will be described next, and the human capacity to derive sustained confidence decisions (right or wrong), — known as “dominance structuring,” – are presented there too. There are lots of useful exercises and examples in that book. You may also wish to consult the references listed at the end of this essay. The material presented in this section is derived from these books and related publications by many of these same authors and others working to scientifically explain how humans make decisions. ↑
• Henry Montgomery, “From cognition to action: The search for dominance in decision making.” In Process and Structure in Human Decision-Making , Montgomery H, Svenson O (Eds). John Wiley & Sons: Chichester, UK, 1989. For a more accessible description along with reflective exercises on how to avoid becoming “locked in” to a poor decision prematurely, see chapter 11 of Think Critically . ↑
• (Findings regarding the effectiveness of critical thinking instruction, and correlations with GPA and reading ability are reported in “Technical Report #1, Experimental Validation and Content Validity” (ERIC ED 327 549), “Technical Report #2, Factors Predictive of CT Skills” (ERIC ED 327 550), and “Gender, Ethnicity, Major, CT Self-Esteem, and the California Critical Thinking Skills Test” (ERIC ED 326 584). These findings remain consistent in research using the tools in the California Critical Thinking Skills Test family of instruments published by Insight Assessment.) ↑

• My Account |
• StudentHome |
• TutorHome |
• IntranetHome |
• Contact the OU Contact the OU Contact the OU |
• Accessibility Accessibility
• Postgraduate
• International
• News & media
• Business & apprenticeships

Personal Blogs

Critical thinking

What is critical thinking?

To think critically is to examine ideas and weigh them up them against what you already know. You need to be able to consider different viewpoints and reach a logical conclusion.  The aim of critical thinking is to be objective. When you think critically, you weigh up all sides of an argument and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. So, critical thinking skills entail: 

• Thinking about all sides of an argument 
• testing the soundness of the claims made 
• testing the soundness of the evidence used to support the claims.

You need an open mind and to be prepared to question the author’s claims. How you do this and the questions you ask will vary depending on what – and why – you are reading (for example, you might be responding to an assignment question). 

The reason critical thinking is a skill - and not just an automatic thought process - is because most people think “uncritically,” and make decisions based on personal biases, self-interest, or irrational emotions. 

These contributions are from my colleagues Robert Craw and Nicky Mee

• The Open University
• Guest user / Sign out
• Study with The Open University

My OpenLearn Profile

Personalise your OpenLearn profile, save your favourite content and get recognition for your learning

About this free course

Become an ou student, download this course, share this free course.

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

1 Barriers to critical thinking

First, let’s briefly examine some barriers to critical thinking.

Take another look at the visual summary below on critical and analytical thinking, which was introduced at the end of Session 3. Note the warning sign next to the ‘black pit’ to the lower right of this figure.

This figure shows a visual summary of critical and analytical thinking. It includes phrases such as ‘objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement’, ‘abilities’, ‘dispositions’ and ‘questioning’.

We have provided you with a larger version of this image in PDF format [ Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. ( Hide tip ) ] .

What are the common pitfalls or barriers to thinking critically and analytically? Some of these were highlighted in the visual summary, and include:

• Misunderstanding . This can arise due to language or cultural differences, a lack of awareness of the ‘processes’ involved, or a misunderstanding that critical thinking means making ‘negative’ comments (as discussed in Sessions 3 and 4).
• Reluctance to critique the ‘norm’ or experts in a field and consider alternative views (feeling out of your ‘comfort zone’ or fearful of being wrong).
• Lack of detailed knowledge . Superficial knowledge (not having read deeply enough around the subject).
• Wanting to know the answers without having to ask questions .

Why do you think being aware of these potential pitfalls is important?

As a critical and reflective thinker, you will need to be aware of the barriers, acknowledge the challenges they may present, and overcome these as best you can. This starts with an understanding of expectations. Some students feel anxious about questioning the work of experts. Critical thinking does not mean that you are challenging someone’s work or telling them that they are wrong, but encourages a deeper understanding, a consideration of alternative views, and engagement in thought, discourse or research that informs your independent judgement. At postgraduate level you will also need to read widely around a subject in order to engage effectively with critical and analytical thinking, and to ask questions: there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers, only supported arguments. This is at the heart of postgraduate study.

Critical thinking encourages you to be constructive, by considering the strengths and weaknesses of a claim and differing sides to an argument. It helps you to clarify points, encourages deeper thought, and allows you to determine whether information that you come across is accurate and reliable. This helps you to form your own judgement, and drives research forward.

People can find it difficult to think critically, irrespective of their education or intellectual ability. The key to understanding critical thinking is not only knowing and making sure that you understand the process, but also being able to put this into practice by applying your knowledge.

Critical and reflective thinking are complex and lifelong skills that you continue to develop as part of your personal and professional growth. In your everyday life, you may also come across those who do not exercise critical thinking, and this might impact on decisions that affect you. It is important to recognise this, and to use critical and reflective thinking to ensure that your own view is informed by reasoned judgement, supported by evidence.

Take another look at the visual summary. You will see two aspects to critical thinking: one focusing on the disposition of the person engaged in critical and reflective thinking, and the other concerning their abilities. Let’s focus here on dispositions. At a personal level, barriers to critical thinking can arise through:

• an over-reliance on feelings or emotions
• self-centred or societal/cultural-centred thinking (conformism, dogma and peer-pressure)
• unconscious bias, or selective perception
• an inability to be receptive to an idea or point of view that differs from your own (close-mindedness)
• unwarranted assumptions or lack of relevant information
• fear of being wrong (anxious about being taken out of your ‘comfort zone’)
• poor communication skills or apathy
• lack of personal honesty.

Be aware that thinking critically is not simply adhering to a formula. For example, reflect on the following questions:

• How can you communicate with those who do not actively engage with critical thinking and are unwilling to engage in a meaningful dialogue?
• How would you react or respond when you experience a lack of critical thinking in the media, amongst your own family members, colleagues at work, or on your course?

• Type a title or code for matches
• No quick matches found
• Search for keyword results

Critical Thinking

Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems.

Examples of this skill at different levels:

More From Forbes

3 critical thinking skills you need in 2024.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Critical thinking skills help you improve diversity and inclusion within your team

In 2018, a Hart survey revealed that out of over 500 business executives interviewed, 78% agreed that critical thinking is the most essential skill they desire to see demonstrated in their employees. However, astonishingly, a mere 34% of college graduates were equipped with this in-demand skill.

Today, critical thinking remains one of the most essential skill sets you need to succeed in today's workforce and experience a thriving career. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs 2023 report confirmed just how essential critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills are in 2024, placing this skill set at the top of its list.

In an earlier report from the Forum, it most notably pointed out:

“Skills gaps continue to be high as in-demand skills across jobs change in the next five years. The top skills and skill groups which employers see as rising in prominence in the lead up to 2025, include groups such as critical thinking and analysis as well as problem-solving."

This is hardly surprising, given the fact that we continue to be bombarded with the spread of misinformation everyday, from social media, to conspiracy groups, to the prevalent usage of AI which can generate misleading and potentially harmful information if not developed and used ethically. This makes it of the utmost important that we take deliberate effort to develop the habit of critically analysis, everything instead of taking at face value and accepting things for what they are.

Netflix s Best New Show Arrives With A Perfect 100 Critic Score

Google suddenly reveals better than iphone update for pixel users, priest stabbed during livestream in second sydney knife attack.

Through developing critical thinking skills, you can prevent the advancement of misinformation, become a trusted an reliable source within your network and industry, and gain access to exciting career opportunities including promotions.

But how can you develop critical thinking and analysis skills?

First, let's unpack what critical thinking actually is.

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking, in simple terms, is the process of objectively analyzing data, and using your reflections and observations from multiple sources to arrive at conclusions, decisions, or judgements.

What Are Some Critical Thinking Skills?

To develop critical thinking for your career success, consider building the following skills:

1. Curiosity

Innovation comes through being curious enough to keep probing and digging for information. Challenge your own assumptions, and those of others. As you do this, you will notice that it will help pave the way for the removal of unconscious bias within the workplace. When never you do receive information, regardless of the source or format, seek clarification before accepting it as fact.

2. Evaluation

To evaluate others' conclusions and supporting arguments, research their background, credentials, reputation, possible influencing factors, and experience. This will help you assess just how reliable, relevant, and credible they are.

3. Diversity

Last but not least, it's essential to keep an open mind to a wide variety of sources. The greater the variety, the higher the quality of your conclusion. For example, as a leader or manager, you should seek to foster inclusivity and diversity within your team by creating processes whereby all team members can feel involved in your decision-making or policy creation process.

This helps to ensure that the final solution is reflective of those it is intended to serve and is well adapted to everyone's needs and preferences.

Through developing critical thinking skills, you can help stay the spread of misinformation and be ... [+] recognized as a credible industry expert

Practice these three essential critical thinking skills every time you read a new item of information online, when browsing through social media, watching the news, in a meeting, or when studying for your professional development. The more you practice, the more you'll refine and strengthen your critical thinking skills over time.

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Weighing the Strengths and Shortcomings of China’s Education System

By Javier C. Hernández

• Aug. 5, 2016

Nothing stirs passions quite like the debate over the Chinese school system. Critics say it is a test-obsessed bureaucracy that produces students who excel at reciting facts but not much else. Others argue that it is equipping children with exceptionally strong skills , particularly in math and science. Scott Rozelle , a Stanford University economist who runs a rural education program in China, is an author of a new study that challenges popular conceptions of Chinese schools. In a recent conversation, he discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese education system, as well as the advice he would offer the country’s leaders.

Your study finds that Chinese students begin college with some of the strongest critical thinking skills in the world, far outpacing their peers in the United States and Russia. But they lose that advantage after two years. What is going on?

It’s a good news, bad news story. The good news: Whatever the heck they do in high school, whether you like it or not, they are teaching massive numbers of kids math, physics and some type of critical thinking skills. What drives me crazy is they’re not learning anything in college. There are no incentives for the kids to work hard. Everyone graduates.

Why are high schools doing a better job than colleges?

In high school, parents provide oversight. If they don’t think their kid’s being pushed hard, they’re the first ones on the phone, the first ones standing at the teacher’s desk. From the teacher’s view, they have a huge incentive to get their students through the curriculum and get through the tests.

Say you are appointed to lead a university in China. What is the first thing you change?

In the United States, we get rewarded for good teaching. Your promotions and salary raises depend on you getting good evaluations from students, on performing well in the classroom and winning awards. That’s every bit as important as publishing research. In China, that’s not happening. The professors we work with say, “Why should we push the kids if they’re going to graduate anyway?”

A lot of criticism inside and outside of China focuses on the gaokao , the national exam that Chinese students spend years cramming for because it is the main criterion for getting into college. Some people say it is killing creativity. Is it time for change?

We plan to study creativity in our next round of exams, and it will be very interesting to see how the Chinese and the other East Asian students perform. A lot of people would say the gaokao is a fair system. Some reforms are needed for the one-test-score-does-all model. We need to reduce the pressure somewhat and to focus teaching on producing better-rounded children.

If you were in a room with China’s top leaders, what advice would you give them about the education system?

I’d ask: “Why isn’t everybody going to high school? How do we get everybody to go to high school?” It’s a rural problem. Then you ask yourself, “Why aren’t these rural kids going to high school?” Well, it’s because 10, 15, 20 percent of them drop out of junior high school. They aren’t even finishing junior high.

What is happening in middle school?

This isn’t India, where half the teachers are absent, or Africa, where they haven’t been able to improve the quality of teaching. In China, you’ve got good facilities and good teachers. The curriculum in rural areas is the same as the best that’s taught to the city kids. So what is it?

What our work shows very clearly is that it’s really the matter of the individual kids in rural areas. They’re sick. They’ve got uncorrected myopia, malnutrition, anemia and intestinal worms. Forty percent of children in our sample in Guizhou have worms in their stomach. How do you study in elementary school if you’ve got worms in your stomach?

At the same time, prosperity is rising and China has become more urban.

This is the irony. They have the fastest-growing economy in terms of wealth in Asia. But the kids are a victim of China’s own success. China really grew so fast, and they’ve invested in resources and teachers. But they’ve left behind the human element.

Follow Javier C. Hernández on Twitter @HernandezJavier .

Get news and analysis from Asia and around the world delivered to your inbox every day with the Today’s Headlines: Asian Morning newsletter. Sign up here .