What Is… Critical Thinking

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is critical thinking.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says that, while there are various different definitions, the basic underlying idea is “careful thinking directed to a goal.” Wikipedia describes critical thinking as “the analysis of facts to form a judgment,” involving “rational, skeptical, unbiased analysis, or evaluation of factual evidence.”

The concept has been around since Ancient Greek times and the teachings of Socrates, but American philosopher John Dewey was a major influence in bringing it into modern education in the early 1900s.

What critical thinking is

Dewey identified 5 processes involved in critical thinking:

• identifying possibilities
• intellectualizing the issue into a problem to solve
• selecting a hypothesis to guide the collection of information
• applying reasoning
• testing the hypothesis

It’s kind of like applying the scientific method on a personal level to dealing with problems, in the sense that it involves questioning and testing things out before making an evaluation.

Critical thinking isn’t a single thought process. It involves a number of specific mental acts, including:

• observation
• feeling
• inferring
• drawing on stored knowledge
• experimenting
• consulting
• judging
• deciding

Thinking critically comes from a mix of natural predisposition and skills developed over time. Attitudes that can help include self-confidence, open-mindedness, attentiveness, and truth-seeking. Helpful skills include problem-solving, decision-making, rationality, and metacognition (being aware of one’s own thinking processes).

Skepticism

Skepticism is conducive to critical thinking, but that’s not the same as being unwilling to believe. Someone we might think of as a vaccine skeptic probably wouldn’t be willing to entertain information that’s inconsistent with their beliefs, but someone taking a critical thinking approach would explore and evaluate the individual merits and weaknesses of different pieces of information and their sources.

Similarly, someone with paranoia (in a non-delusional sense) might only be willing to believe information unless from specific sources that are trusted based on personal beliefs, while a critical thinker would evaluate the reliability of sources based on an evaluation of merits and weaknesses.

Applying critical thinking

Critical thinking is an important part of media literacy. We’re bombarded with all kinds of messaging, and the explosion of available information online isn’t that helpful without an effective way to separate the useful from the crap. For all that critical thinking is supposed to be taught in schools, it doesn’t seem like that’s translating into practical world application.

A 2018 article by the Provost at the University of Washington said that “Democracies live and die by the ability of their people to access information and engage in robust discussions based upon facts.” He argued that teaching critical thinking, including skills in accessing and questioning data, is essential for the future of democracy. Granted, that’s coming through his filter as an educator, but the point’s still valid.

Speaking of filters, everything that we’re presented with comes through some sort of filter, whether that’s bias stemming from the source or from the medium. Bias isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but failure to recognize it can be a problem. For example, it’s one thing to choose to watch Fox News and recognize that it’s coming through a filter with a certain bias, and it’s a whole other can of tuna to assume that messaging is unbiased. I watch a couple of late-night comedy shows that I’m well aware are biased to the left, and acknowledging that bias is helpful in contextualizing the information they present in terms of the bigger picture.

Are you a critical thinker?

I’m logically minded to begin with, and the schooling I’ve done has had a huge impact on how I evaluate new information. I’ve certainly got my own biased filter, but I have confidence in my ability to look things up, plus I trust my BS detector.

Monash University has a 3-question quiz to tell you if you’re a critical thinker or not. It’s not enough to tell you much of anything about anything, but it calls me a “critical maestro.”

Do you think our society could use more critical thought? If so, how might we be able to foster that?

Useful resources

• CRAAP test: how to evaluate relevance based on currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose
• Develop Your Critical Thinking course from OpenClassrooms
• Logical and Critical Thinking course from The University of Auckland on FutureLearn
• MediaSmarts: Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy
• Medical Library Association: tips on finding good health information
• NAMLE: National Association for Media Literacy Education
• Office for Science and Society: this McGill University group’s aim is “separating sense from nonsense”
• Pew Research Fact Tank: nonpartisan public opinion research and analysis
• Quackwatch.org: maintained by Stephen Barrett MD, with an extensive range of articles on quacky practices
• Verification Handbook: this free book designed for journalists is a guide to detecting inauthentic and manipulated content online

References

• Baldasty, J. (2018). Fake news and misinformation: Why teaching critical thinking is crucial for democracy. University of Washington Office of the Provost.
• Hitchcock, D. (2018). Critical thinking. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• MediaSmarts: Media literacy fundamentals
• Monash University Learn HQ: Critical thinking