ELEMENTS OF CRITICAL THINKING
By
William Cottringer, Ph.D.
One of the most important skills we can have is the one of critical thinking. The ability to think critically is essential to success in any activity. Critical thinking will help us get more complete and correct information to make better choices and wiser decisions, use our time smarter, use more sound judgment, and develop more effective strategies for getting what we want and getting to where we want to be. There is probably no better way to make the best use of what intelligence with which we were lucky enough to be born, than to learn how to think more critically. Critical thinking can make an average person smart and a smart person brilliant.
I recently came across what I think is one of the most valuable documents about critical thinking I’ve ever seen and it came from a very unlikely source- The CIA website on the Internet! This book, entitled, “The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis,” was written by Richard’s J. Heuer, Jr., a 47-year veteran administrator of the Central Intelligence Agency. This book explains our mental machinery behind the actual processes of human cognition- how we perceive, gather information, think, form beliefs, make judgments and decisions, remember and get creative. The book was designed to help CIA analysts improve critical thinking skills and the subsequent quality of American intelligence information hey could give government policy makers. However, the author’s ideas have wide applicability to help us all improve our ability to think more critically about anything, and increase chances of being more successful in what ever we are doing.
I have taken some ideas from this book and joined them with my own ideas, along with important research in cognitive psychology, to form this article. Below are some of the more important realities as to how human beings typically operate mentally- the mental machinery behind the actual processes of human cognition- how we perceive, gather information, think, form beliefs, make judgments and decisions, remember and get creative. Becoming more aware of these cognitive processes and how they actually operate will enable you to make the changes you need to make in order to start thinking more critically and get better results in what you are trying to do.
Thinking about Thinking
Our greatest challenge is to slow our minds down long enough to start thinking about thinking. This is the point at which we finally find out the quality of our thinking isn’t all that it could be. Then we can begin to uncover all the typical obstacles to being able to think critically, which are discussed below. Just like the problems caused by poor communication, thinking problems can’t be sorted out until we start talking about them. A relevant bit of advice comes from former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, who once said, “When you finally open up to admitting all that you don’t know, you start learning much.”
Most Thinking is Unconscious
The actual process of thinking is mostly unconscious, meaning that we aren’t aware of what is going on inside our heads. What we think we are thinking is only the resulting thoughts of that unconscious process. We are usually a day late and a dollar short. Critical thinking is the attempt at understanding this unconscious thinking better so that it becomes more conscious. The object is to rearrange the horse before the cart so we can stop reacting to our thoughts and start acting with them. Much of the information we have inside our heads may be wrong, but being unconscious, we can’t correct it until we know about it.
Over-simplification
Our brains are designed to simplify reality greatly so we can deal with it easier. Otherwise, we would get too overwhelmed by all the volume and complexity of what is really going on around us. (Here I am reducing libraries of 400+ page books and thousands of research projects down into a couple of pages!) In essence, we may be missing most of what is going on in any given situation because of our brain’s natural tendency toward tunnel vision.
When you fail to look below the surface, you are failing to see many of the more important core problems and real causes of the less important, simpler symptoms you see above the surface. Critical thinking makes you become more aware of your basic need to over-simplify things, realize the benefit of opening up to all the possibilities you are missing and then start looking harder. Some good advice comes from former Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I wouldn’t give a plug nickel for simplicity this side of complexity, but for simplicity just on the other side of complexity I would give my life for.”
Mirroring
One particular over-simplification habit you can get easily get caught up in is assuming that the way you think is common for everyone. You project your thinking style onto other people and interpret their behavior in terms of your own thinking manner. Critical thinking helps you to understand how different people actually are when it comes to their thinking. Peoples’ “brainprints” are as different as their fingerprints. Not only is the content of peoples’ minds different, but so is the manner in which they get and use all that content.
Certainty Obsession
The mind is poorly wired to deal effectively with uncertainty. We need to reach closure in arriving at certainty, no matter what it takes. We are driven to explain and understand everything logically and rationally. This often includes filling in the empty gaps with incorrect or incomplete information and arriving at totally artificial interpretations. Like it or not, some events are random and accidental and defy reasonable explanation. Critical thinking can help you build tolerance for ambiguity and tentativeness. It also cautions you from rushing into completing things wrongly just to get them done or explain things incorrectly just to be able to move onto something else.
The Conservative Mind
The human mind is basically conservative and resists change, especially anything, that causes unsettling disruption. We tend to keep on using older solutions that have worked well in the past long after they have become obsolete, solely because they are comfortable and familiar. Critical thinking allows you to learn new and valuable information from surprise. Critical thinking evaluates change fairly instead of automatically rejecting it.
The Lazy Mind
Along with this conservative nature, the mind is also lazy. There is much ‘half-thinking” that goes on. Examples are: “satisficing,” or the tendency to select the first identified alternative that appears good enough, the failure to generate a full range of potential answers, the failure to look for disconfirming evidence, and the failure to consider the different values of different evidence. Critical thinking takes you from just sitting down and thinking about a problem to really analyzing a problem.
Biased Perception
We take in new information through the act of perception. This process is dominated by many influential biases, which distort this incoming information. Information can be over-flavored by cultural values, education, expectations, personal needs, upbringing, past experiences, etc. Critical thinking helps you separate yourself from these biases so that you can begin to see things more the way they are rather than how you want, need or expect them to be. This is extremely difficult to do, but in order to ever arrive at an objective opinion or make a fair judgment, you have to be able to put aside perceptual biases.
Reality-limiting Viewpoints
One of the most important outcomes of our perception process is the formation of a viewpoint. This is our perspective of reality. Something to be aware of though, is that this viewpoint is more a function of the location from where we are looking, rather than what we are seeing. People kept thinking the world was flat until they kept moving locations without ever finding the edge. Critical thinking helps you become more aware of the influence of the perspective from which you are looking at a situation, so that you don’t become the dog being wagged by the tail. When you become able to question your own major viewpoints, you open yourself up to whole new worlds. This is how most great inventions and discoveries occur.
Unsubstantiated Beliefs
Some of the most important information we have is in the form of beliefs. It normally takes very little information or facts to form a belief, but it takes tons of proof to undo one. We actually search out new information that confirms what we already know or believe, and we reject any new information that disputes what we think to be true . Critical thinking helps us realize how we may just be perpetuating wrong information this way and helps us to gradually unlock our close-mindedness to evaluate new information more fairly. Critical thinking also guides us to the principle of inclusion, or trying to discover what points of agreement contained in a different viewpoint can be included in our own perspective.
Unverified Assumptions
Much of what we believe to be true or decide to act on is based on underlying assumptions that we either don’t see or see and don’t verify. These assumptions are just the brain’s lazy way of answering questions our mouths should be asking. Critical thinking helps us spot these assumptions and ask more questions, before we act on wrong information. This simple maneuver can double our chances of being successful.
Over-generalizing
We can be quick to over-generalize results from a very small sample of “proof." A brief personal experience quickly becomes a universal law, unless it gets questioned by critical thinking. Critical thinking seeks reasonable proof.
Quantify over Quality
Getting more information may not always help improve the correctness of your judgment though. It may just serve to increase your confidence in that judgment. You usually have enough information way before you think you do, but just haven’t analyzed it in the right way. Or, there may just be one assumption you need to check out. Critical thinking helps improve the quality of your thinking about the information you already have and then be able make the right decisions and predictions without requiring you to waste time trying to gather more information. Critical thinking is smarter thinking, not just more thinking.
Concrete over Abstract
Information that is vivid, concrete and personal has greater impact on our thinking than second-hand, more abstract information that may actually have substantially greater value as evidence. Critical thinking makes us aware of the value of this distinction and frees us to see the right evidence for its true value.
Linear Cause & Effects
We have an especially hard time with evaluating causes and effects accurately and completely. We overestimate the importance of the internal personal characteristics, attitudes and personality of individuals and underestimate the importance of external or situational determinants of a person’s behavior such as incentives and constraints, role requirements, social pressures and other forces outside an individual’s control. We overestimate our own importance of being a cause or a target of others’ behavior and we often perceive relationships that do not in fact exist. Critical thinking expands our viewing area to catch all these biases and even lets us see that some effects are actually causes in disguise. Things are not always the way they first appear.
Uncreativity
Developing creativity is the best way to undo the many mental ruts we unknowingly engage in that lead to incorrect or incomplete information, poor judgment, wrong decisions and costly mistakes. Developing creativity is more of an attitude than a skill and it can certainly be acquired. Creative thinking is enabled by deferring our tendency to be prematurely judgmental, lifting any self-imposed constraints, and realizing that quantity of ideas will eventually lead to quality. Creativity can also be developed by experimenting with using old information in new and unusual ways, thinking backwards, analogizing to other fields and perspectives different from our own, questioning basic assumptions and working in environments that value creativity.
Thinking and Feeling Confusion
Thinking and feeling are constantly interactive and sometimes we have a difficult time separating one from the other or knowing which is driving the other. Sometimes we feel a certain way and then have disturbing thoughts about that feeling and other times we think a certain thing and then end up feeling a certain way about that thought. Separating our thinking from our emotions is a challenge but what we usually find out from doing this is that many beliefs and things we think are true are based more on emotions than cold hard facts.
Furthermore, responding to another person’s emotionality with your own emotions can only result in uproar. This is when you must separate your thoughts and feelings. Critical thinking can help you uncover all these tendencies, especially when they are working against you or otherwise keeping you from seeing the truth or getting desired results.
Not Acknowledging Being Part of the Cause
Probably the most important thing critical thinking can help us realize is the fact that we are always an active player in any situation of which we are part. There is no such thing as an impartial, objective, passive observer and there is rarely a single cause, which produces a single effect. Things are always already going on. You will always have some influence in changing any situation you are in.
You are often already part of an ongoing situation before you know it. When you interview employees, your style of asking questions will influence their answers and when you are conducting an investigation, your approach to the evidence will help determine the outcome of the investigation. You really can’t do much to change this reality, but just being aware of your active role in any given situation, is a big step in critical thinking. to limit any causal effects you don’t want to bring about.
Dualistic Thinking Trap
The greatest challenge of critical thinking is to rise above the trap of dualistic thinking where we are convinced of the rightness or wrongness of something without allowing any varying shades of gray in the middle. This dualistic thinking is a major way that the brain simplifies reality for us. Everything is either yes or no, up or down, in or out. It can't get any simpler than that. But is that really the way it is?
Interestingly, an extended quantity of this either-or thinking finally takes us to seemingly unsolvable problems in the form of paradoxes. This is where we get stuck and frustrated and make no progress until we get uncomfortable enough to do something about the situation. These paradoxes, however, are not problems but rather symptoms of the real problem of dualistic thinking. Paradoxes cannot be solved with the same kind of thinking which created them in the beginning. Critical thinking helps us to separate the surface meaning of the words that define the paradox from those of its implied meaning. Then we can decide what to include from both, rather than excluding one or the other in a continued dualistic fashion. In other words, the only way out of this dilemma is to figure out how you can "eat your cake and have it too."
It seems you're generalizing too much here, purposefully ignoring religion and ideology. For instance born-again Christians accept the Bible as being literal. With this sort of attitude, you can't do any critical thinking. Education and creativity actually become the enemy.
Born-agains deny that the New Testament wasn't compiled until the fourth century when Constantine became a Christian. Bishop Iraneus and others then decided what would go into their creed, completely ignoring the Gnostic gospels (which were more humanistic). The same thing happens with politics. It's fashionable these days for conservative politicians to refuse to negotiate; hence we wound up with less than 200 laws passed in the House, many of those being symbolic. You're not going to get any critical thinking when those you're addressing are against thinking period.
The words of King Solomon are so true: "For in the abundance of wisdom there is an abuncance of vexation, so that the increase of knowledge increases pain." Ecclesiastes 1:18
Whatever we can do to improve critical thinking is very important because as time goes on and technology progresses, problems become more complex and ambiguous and the need for critical thinking becomes more important because these problems cannot be easily dealt with or solved with simplistic thinking. And they can't be ignored.
Ron
PS. By some quirk of paradox, my first comment, when submitted, was interrupted by an AD announcement of a "temporary repair." My comment went into a black hole, and, with my short term memory being what it is, disappeared forever. Trust me, it was better than the above.