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To think critically, you have to be both analytical and motivated


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2017 Nov 16, 12:55pm   998 views  0 comments

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In a world where accusations of "fake news" are thrown around essentially at random, critical thinking would seem to be a must. But this is also a world where the Moon landings are viewed as a conspiracy and people voice serious doubts about the Earth's roundness. Critical thinking appears to be in short supply at a time we desperately need it.

One of the proposed solutions to this issue is to incorporate more critical thinking into our education system. But critical thinking is more than just a skill set; you have to recognize when to apply it, do so effectively, and then know how to respond to the results. Understanding what makes a person effective at analyzing fake news and conspiracy theories has to take all of this into account. A small step toward that understanding comes from a recently released paper, which looks at how analytical thinking and motivated skepticism interact to make someone an effective critical thinker.

The work comes courtesy of the University of Illinois at Chicago's Tomas Ståhl and Jan-Willem van Prooijen at VU Amsterdam. This isn't the first time we've heard from Ståhl; last year, he published a paper (link to the paper below) on what he termed "moralizing epistemic rationality." In it, he looked at people's thoughts on the place critical thinking should occupy in their lives. The research identified two classes of individuals: those who valued their own engagement with critical thinking, and those who viewed it as a moral imperative that everyone engage in this sort of analysis.

In this new paper, Ståhl and van Prooijen look into how well this sort of critical thinking protects people from bizarre beliefs. They focused on a mixture of actual conspiracy theories—the Moon landing was a hoax, the US knew the 9-11 attacks were coming—to more general conspiratorial thinking, like “there are secret organizations that greatly influence political decisions.” They also added a series of questions about paranormal beliefs, like astrology and ESP.

In the first survey, more than 300 people answered these questions and took a test to determine whether they tended to approach problems critically, termed an "analytic cognitive style." They also were evaluated based on Ståhl's earlier work to determine if they personally valued critical thinking or viewed doing so as a moral requirement for everyone.

Overall, a tendency for analytical thinking did provide consistent protection against conspiratorial thinking and other irrational beliefs, but only if it was accompanied by a belief in the value of critical thinking. The moralizing version of this belief, where you think everyone should be approaching things critically, didn't seem to have any influence on holding irrational ideas.

More: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/to-think-critically-you-have-to-be-both-analytical-and-motivated/?comments=1
Paper Cited in the Paragraph Three:

Outraged by the election? It could be because you moralize rationality

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/outraged-by-the-election-it-could-be-because-you-moralize-rationality/

#SciTech #CriticalThinking


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