The Importance Of Critical Thinking

Personally speaking, critical thinking is an undervalued and underutilized tool. When confronted by a problem with another person, most people just react. In these situations, I have learned to take a step back, take an objective look at the situation, and make an informed judgment/decision. By applying critical thinking to my personal life, friendships, marriage, and my relationship with my children will have a greater chance of success and less negative confrontation.

According to Paul & Elder, “critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a vision of improving it.” Their argument for the need to utilize critical thinking is the fact that without focus, most of the thinking done by people is partial, many times uninformed, biased, distorted, and prejudiced. What is not easily recognized is the fact that the very fabric of life is

However, three of the most prominent in this area are the anchoring heuristic, the representativeness heuristic, and the availability heuristic. Each of these biases provide a way for people to make judgments very quickly. Although they often work, they can also be a source for error because people, in making quick judgments, tend to make generalizations about others that are sometimes accurate, but not always. In considering decision making skills, research has demonstrated that people tend to think more highly of themselves, both morally and in their capabilities, than others. This inflated self view can cause people to greatly overestimate their own capabilities while grossly underestimating the capabilities of others. People's overconfidence can lead them to make inaccurate decisions and to choose the wrong course of action: they tend to give more attention and weight to their own insights rather than to objective information.

Critical Thinking: How Perspective Can Resolve Conflict People are more likely to make rational decisions when they are not blinded by emotion. This intangible decision making tool is called critical thinking. It is one’s ability to recognize a conflict or opportunity, and evaluate all the possible circumstances before proceeding. That is how individuals establish their perspective of the world and the people living in it. In the absence of critical thinking, one may impose a single-minded approach to any situation, which, at times, can result in conflict.

Critical thinking is described as unbiased, clear and factual thought process that helps any student with any decision-making process. Critical thinking is an essential tool that every student will need to master to continue academic success. There are multiple phases of critical thinking as described by Benjamin Bloom which include remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. The critical thinking process starts by remembering. If we can remember what we read and apply key facts we will be able to move forward to understand what decisions we need to make. From there we can then apply the facts to the decision we have to make and innovate, or create, as needed.

One of the fundamental requirements behind critical thinking is the need to identify and understand our own personal bias. Dr. Paul states,

Critical thinking helps me to make the right decision in my daily life. Every time that I have to decide something in my life, I first brainstorm to make the right choice. Every decision I make in life, it can make a change on it. One of the best ways I can relate it with my personal life is when I was going to move to Canada.

In any decision we make in society today we highly analyze and reflect on the judgement we are going to make. “That is, judgement that is both purposeful and reflective” (Think Critically p. 2). Our mind is capable of withstanding evidence, conceptualizations, methods and contexts all at one time. The ability of doing so is called “Critical Thinking.” We all do this but not all of us are aware. Sometimes we fail to think long enough and end up making mistakes or bad decisions but if we are patient with ourselves and analyze every situation fully, “Think Critically” in the end, it can cause us to have positive results with our judgement we have decided upon.

Dietrich, Cindy. "Decision Making: Factors that Influence Decision Making, Heuristics Used, and Decision Outcomes." Student Pulse 2.02 (2010).

Another type of hindrance to the critical thinking process would be Assumption. This method would be assuming information about a situation or even prejudging without actually thinking about all possibilities before making your decision. The best way to avoid this hindrance would be to not prejudge anything and use your knowledge and critical thinking to base your final decision.

A crucial skill in critical thinking is learning to distinguish inference from assumption. An inference is an act of concluding that something is true or seems to be true. An assumption is an act of assuming something based on previous beliefs. Everyone has their own point of view, therefore, they have different assumptions about what the see. For example, if two people see an overweight person at the gym, one might infer, "There's a lazy person." The other might infer, "That person is taking control of their health." These inferences are based on different assumptions about the conditions under which overweight people end up in the gym; these assumptions are connected to the point of view about people that each has formed. The first person

Decisions, decisions, decisions. Everything in life entails making decisions, whether it be the decision to go back to school to pursue a higher education, deciding to eat cereal in the morning, or even reading this paper. Everything we do is based on decisions. Now, if you’re a computer, making decisions may be an objective task solely based on logic, but since we are humans, there are many factors that affect our decisions. These factors may be external, like the weather, but many are internal and may make an even bigger impact on our decisions than the external factors. Biases and errors are prime examples of influential internal factors and beliefs that affect the decision making process. This week our group discussed such biases and errors in decision making. We delved into the biases that affect us personally, like Anchoring Bias, Hindsight Bias, and Overconfidence Bias, as well as a few other biases.

Bassham, G., Irwin, W., Nardone, H., & Wallace, J. (2002). Critical Thinking. [University of Phoenix Custom Edition e-text]. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies Publishing. Retrieved August 25, 2004 from University of Phoenix, Resource, MGT/350–Critical Thinking: Strategies in Decision Making Web site: https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/resource/resource.asp

Considering myself to be an intelligent human being I am going to explain my thought process and how I made decisions before the reading of Critical Thinking. A personal problem arises in my life. I first look at where it came from and make sure I know the source of where it came from. If it is a negative problem I recount in my mind if we have been around this mountain before determining what type of response they will receive from me. If it is a new issue I will try to handle it where both parties will be in a win win situation. If nothing can be resolved, then I do not want to try due to fear of being rejected and failing.

What is critical thinking to you? To some it may mean making wiser choices, taking time to critically analyze a situation, or to just put greater thought in your everyday life. According to Dr. Linda Elder and Dr. Richard Pauls’ article, “Becoming a Critic Of Your Thinking”, critical thinking is defined as the disciplined art of ensuring that you use the best thinking you are capable of in any set of circumstances. To us, critical thinking is a very important aspect of life and something we can all improve on. It allows us to think outside the box and put ourselves in others shoes and really look at things differently. We made sure to think about our own thinking habits while discussing these articles and to notice if we were ever being close-minded.