Critical Thinking Guidelines

For example, most people assume that second-place winners feel happier than third-place winners do.But when physiologists questioned this assumption, they found that the opposite is true.This is because a second-place winner compares himself to the first-place winner. They are unhappy that they did not become the winner.

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Psychology students need argument analysis skills to evaluate psychological claims in their work and in everyday discourse.

Some instructors expect their students will improve CT skills like argument analysis skills by simply immersing them in challenging course work.

Others expect improvement because they use a textbook with special CT questions or modules, give lectures that critically review the literature, or have students complete written assignments.

While these and other traditional techniques may help, a growing body of research suggests they are not sufficient to efficiently produce measurable changes in CT skills.

Evaluating evidence and drawing appropriate conclusions along with other skills, such as distin­guishing arguments from nonarguments and finding assumptions, are collectively called argument analysis skills.

Many CT experts take argument analysis skills to be fundamental CT skills (e.g., Ennis, 1987; Halpern, 1998).

The first is to Ask Questions: Be willing to wonder (Wade & Travis, 2008 p.8). ” Unfortunately, as children grow up, they tend to stop asking “why” questions. Vincent Ruggiero (1988) observed, “The trigger mechanism for creative thinking is the disposition to be curious, to wonder, to Several popular books have asserted, without any evidence that most women suffer from it.

Young children may ask questions such as, “Why is the sky blue Mommy? However, the evidence shows that many women do have physical symptoms associated with menstruation including cramps, breast tenderness, and water retention, although many women vary in this regard.

Overview of the Guidelines Confusion about the definition of CT has been a major obstacle to teaching and assessing it (Halonen, 1995; Williams, 1999).

To deal with this problem, we have defined CT as reflective think­ing involved in the evaluation of evidence relevant to a claim so that a sound or good conclusion can be drawn from the evidence (Bensley, 1998).