Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a term that has many different definitions. It may be “whole thinking” or “complete thinking.”

For our purposes, let’s use the definition of critical thinking as a process of gathering relevant information, processing that information, and making the best decisions based on the information available.

By approaching critical thinking as a process, we can break apart its different components and see how they work together.

To make effective decisions, we must be able to question the issues. The issues we face every day as individuals and communities are often extremely complex. It is often easier to just “go with the flow.” However, in order to be engaged in our communities, our work, and our own lives, we need to be willing to challenge our understanding.

Some areas that we must be sure that we understand with almost any issue include:

• What are the facts? How many people are involved? How much does something cost? What has happened in the past?
• What is the trend right now?
• Who are the stakeholders? Who is involved? Who stands to lose something? Who stands to gain something?
• How do we feel about it? What are our values?
• What should we do about it? How have others solved this same problem? Have past solutions been effective? Are there unintended consequences?

Take, for example, a common contemporary issue: Bike lanes.

Bike lanes tend to be polarizing in communities for a variety of reasons. People have immediate and strong reactions to the idea, but often these responses, both for and against, are not well informed.

If you live in a community that is considering adding bike lanes to some streets, some questions may come to mind: Where would bike lanes be the most effective? Who would use these lanes? How would bike lanes affect car traffic? Would they be safe? How much would they cost? Would they be difficult to maintain?

As often is the case, some of these questions may lead to contradictory or even contentious answers. For example, the questions of safety and effects on traffic get into our values. Most people value a commute to work that is safe and quick. Does installing a bike lane build-in more safety and convenience for one type of commuter (on a bike) at the expense of forcing car drivers into cramped, slow, traffic? The assumption is often “yes,” but this may not actually be true in application.

These questions we are developing are largely becoming research questions, and ones that we would need to answer before recommending our local city council to adopt or reject the idea.

There are some common issues that we must be aware of as we search for the answers to these questions. 

To make effective decisions, we must make sure that we have the most accurate information. We have all made the mistake of jumping to conclusions. When this happens, we put a plan into action thinking we understand the problem only to find that we had no idea what was happening and then we usually cobble things up even worse.

Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias occurs when we accept information that supports what we already know and reject information that contradicts what we think we know. However, this doesn’t lead to effective critical thinking.

For example, if you doubt that people would use bike lanes, it would be easy to look around and say that nobody seems to bike in your community.

The issue with this is bias. If we are assuming nobody bikes, then we are likely to not notice anyone cycling or forget to question why nobody seems to be riding a bike. If we assume that everyone would embrace the opportunity, we are going to see cyclists, or potential cyclists, everywhere.

Sources

To help us avoid confirmation bias, we need some solid evidence. But where do we get data on who may use a bicycle lane? We could ask the city for the number of people who register a bike. The issue with this is if registration is not legally required or is largely ignored, as it is in many communities, then we don’t have effective data. Even if we had this data, how would we know how many of those bike owners would actually use bike lanes?

We could make questionnaires and ask people if they would commute using a bicycle if there were protected bike lanes. We could have community meetings and ask people in small groups if they would use bike lanes We could even go door-to-door and poll people. All these methods could add to our understanding, but these are all also subjective measures: They are open to people’s thoughts and feelings, not necessarily how they actually behave.

Another possible resource would be studies of what has happened in other, similar, communities that have adopted bike lanes.

The point is, we need to take the time to gather as much information as we can from as many sources as we can. Then we can decide which information is valuable in helping us to make decisions.

Once we have our information, we need to do something with it. However, we need to be aware of some common issues when dealing with information so we can make the best decisions.

Beware of bias

We have already addressed confirmation bias, but there are other types of bias as well. For example, slanting is when a source has an agenda and so they use positive language to discuss their argument, but then only use negative comments when discussing other ideas. Illusory truth effect, often called “truthiness” is the mistake of believing or agreeing with something because it is easy to understand and has been repeated often. The information seems true even if it may, in fact, be false.

As we will see when we explore the reading process and the writing process, having a set method of approaching information can help us to better understand that information and avoid bias. Information, in itself, can be overwhelming, but an effective approach can help us to understand that information better.

Think about impact

Accounting for all possible outcomes of a decision is almost impossible, but we need to be aware. Who are the stakeholders and how will they be affected? In our example of bike lanes, there are many stakeholders, including taxpayers, drivers, cyclists, children, pedestrians, city employees, business owners, wildlife, and many more. We need to balance the needs of all of these stakeholders in making effective decisions.

In the end, the goal of effective critical thinking must be to make the best decision based on the best information available at the time.

Based on all of what is included in making civic decisions about bike lanes, a city may decide that bike lanes are just not worth the hassle of reorganizing traffic while committing to the costs of construction and maintenance. Or they may decide that bike lanes on certain streets in certain neighborhoods are an effective method of reducing traffic while increasing commuting safety. The point is that there is no one correct answer. The community has to make the best decision based on its needs.