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.
Valuing rationality
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 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.