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Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Matters

Defining critical thinking dispositions and why they’re crucial..

Posted September 23, 2024 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

Another way to think about and measure critical thinking is to include aspects of motivational dispositions.
Dispositions include open-mindedness and a willingness to be reflective when evaluating information.
People scoring low in critical thinking dispositions tend to “keep it simple” when something is complex.
Critical thinking dispositions help individuals avoid oversimplification and can facilitate awareness of bias.

Critical thinking springs from the notion of reflective thought proposed by Dewey (1933), who borrowed from the work of philosophers such as William James and Charles Peirce. Reflective thought was defined as the process of suspending judgment, remaining open-minded, maintaining a healthy skepticism, and taking responsibility for one’s own development (Gerber et al., 2005; Stoyanov & Kirshner, 2007).

Kurland (1995) suggested, “Critical thinking is concerned with reason, intellectual honesty, and open-mindedness, as opposed to emotionalism, intellectual laziness, and closed-mindedness. Thus, critical thinking involves… considering all possibilities… being precise; considering a variety of possible viewpoints and explanations; weighing the effects of motives and biases; being concerned more with finding the truth than with being right…being aware of one’s own prejudices and biases” (p. 3). Thus, being able to perspective-take and becoming conscious of one’s own biases are potential benefits of critical thinking capacities.

Reviews of the critical thinking literature (e.g., Bensley, 2023) suggest that the assessment of this construct ought to include aspects of motivational dispositions. Numerous frameworks of critical thinking dispositions have been proposed (e.g., Bensley, 2018; Butler & Halpern, 2019; Dwyer, 2017); some commonly identified dispositions are open-mindedness, intellectual engagement, and a proclivity to take a reflective stance or approach to evaluating information and the views and beliefs of both oneself and others. Demir (2022) posited that critical thinking dispositions reflect persons’ attitudes toward and routine ways of responding to new information and diverging ideas, willingness to engage in nuanced and complex rather than either/or reductionistic thinking, and perseverance in attempts to understand and resolve complex problems.

Other examples of dispositions are inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, tolerance for ambiguity, thinking about thinking, honesty in assessing or evaluating biases, and willingness to reconsider one’s own views and ways of doing things (Facione et al., 2001). Individual personality attributes associated with these proclivities include a need for cognition (a desire for intellectual stimulation), which is positively associated with critical thinking, and the need for closure (a motivated cognitive style in which individuals prefer predictability, firm answers, and rapid decision making ) and anti-intellectualism (a resentment of “the life of the mind” and those who represent it), both negatively associated with critical thinking.

Further, an ideological component that can impede critical thinking is dogmatism . In addition, rigid, dichotomous thinking impedes critical thinking in that it oversimplifies the complexity of social life in a pluralistic society (Bensley, 2023; Cheung et al., 2002; Halpern & Dunn, 2021) and tries to reduce complicated phenomena and resolve complex problems via “either/or” formulations and simplistic solutions.

In other words, folks with low critical thinking dispositions would tend to “keep it simple” when something is really quite complicated, and think it absolute terms and categories rather than seeing “the gray” in between the black and white extremes.

In sum, critical thinking dispositions are vitally important because they may help individuals avoid oversimplifying reality; they also permit perspective-taking and can facilitate their awareness of diversity and systematic biases, such as racial or gender bias . Some research has indicated that critical thinking dispositions uniquely contribute to academic performance beyond general cognition (Ren et al., 2020), and may help to reduce unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy beliefs (Bensley, 2023; Lantian et al., 2021).

But before we can study the potential impact of critical thinking dispositions, it is necessary to have a reliable, valid, and hopefully brief measure for this construct. I will discuss the development and validation of a measure of critical thinking dispositions in another post.

Bensley, D.A. ( 2023.) Critical thinking, intelligence, and unsubstantiated beliefs: An integrative review. Journal of Intelligence, 1 , 207. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence11110207

Bensley, D.A. (2018). Critical thinking in psychology and everyday life: A guide to effective thinking . New York: Worth Publishers.

Butler, H.A., & Halpern, D.F. (2019). Is critical thinking a better model of intelligence? In Robert J. Sternberg (Ed.) The Nature of Intelligence (pp. 183–96). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cheung, C.-K, Rudowicz. E., Kwan, A., & Yue, X.. (2002). Assessing university students’ general and specific criticalthinking. College Student Journal, 36 , 504 – 25.

Demir, E. (2022). An examination of high school students’ critical thinking dispositions and analytical thinking skills. Journal of Pedagogical Research, 6 , 190–200. https://doi.org/10.33902/JPR.202217357

Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process . Lexington: Heath and Company.

Dwyer, C. P. (2017). Critical thinking: Conceptual perspectives and practical guidelines . Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Facione, P., Facione, N,C,, & Giancarlo, C.A.F. (2001(. California Critical Disposition Inventory . Millbrae: California Academic Press.

Gerber, S., Scott, L., Clements, D.H., & Sarama, J. (2005). Instructor influence on reasoned argument in discussion boards. Educational Technology, Research & Development, 53 , 25–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02504864

Halpern, D. F., & Dunn, D.S. (2021). Critical thinking: A model of intelligence for solving real-world problems. Journal of Intelligence, 9 , 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence9020022

Kurland, D. (1995). I know what it says… What does it mean? Critical skills for critical reading . Belmont: Wadsworth.

Lantian, A., Bagneux, V., Delouvee, S., & Gauvrit, N. (2021). Maybe a free thinker but not a critical one: High conspiracybelief is associated with low critical thinking ability. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 35 , 674 – 84. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3790

Ren, X., Tong, Y., Peng, P. & Wang, T. (2020). Critical thinking predicts academic performance beyond general cognitiveability: Evidence from adults and children. Intelligence, 82 , 101487. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2020.101487

Stoyanov, S., & Kirschner, P. ( 2007). Effect of problem solving support and cognitive styles on idea generation:Implications for technology-enhanced learning. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 40 , 49–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2007.10782496

Kyle D. Killian, Ph.D., LMFT is the author of Interracial Couples, Intimacy and Therapy: Crossing Racial Borders.

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Critical Thinking vs. Common Sense

Common sense, as defined by several scholars, is inborn rational thinking that happens naturally in rational humans. Common sense incorporates problem-solving , and thinking skills developed from natural logic, intuition and the human capability to observe various events and absorb lessons and information from them.

These observations allow people to learn from experience and therefore improve and implement reasonable judgment. People incorporate common sense approach and try to solve issues in day-to-day life. All human beings acquire and utilize common sense to apply honest, responsible and impartial logical decisions.

On the other hand, critical thinking happens when people intentionally assess situations on the basis of their own philosophies and knowledge. Critical thinking integrates judging a scenario on the basis of studied reasoning, where the individual consciously and purposely focuses on a subject. The quality of critical thinking is founded on how reasonable the ultimate judgment of a scenario is. Critical thinking enables for planning, assessing, calculating and explaining; it is utilized in scenes that need a significant degree of deliberation and concentration.

In this article, you will learn more about the similarities and differences between common sense and critical thinking .

Differences between Common Sense and Critical Thinking

Common sense is seen as a sensible conclusion from the definition above. On the other hand, critical thinking can be either sensible or insensible. It is common for people to make mistakes logically when thinking critically. Their preconceptions can somehow color the conclusions made by critics because they are not always right.

Another notable difference is founded on the level of awareness at which both critical thinking and common sense operate. Critical thinking typically happens at a conscious level while common sense occurs on a liminal level of thought.

Most individuals see critical thinking as part of common sense, or possibly as an advanced version of common sense. For instance, common sense advises people not to jump into conclusions; it says that you need to meet a couple of Chinese in order to say that ‘Chinese people are short.’

Critical thinking typically means possessing both a set of skills and attitude that can make people think sensibly. Therefore, with regards to this, a critical thinker will always have the habit of avoiding jumping into instant conclusions.

If you learn more about critical thinking , you will study several common errors of reasoning and learn to outline them and avoid them. For example, with regard to the example given above, you will discover that jumping into a conclusion is also seen as making a hurried generalization. You will discover that apart from generalization being a useful type of argumentation, it can also be a subject to error.

By doing this, you will learn more about various specific rules of thumbs. For example, the rule denotes that the more diverse a category (of things, people, whatever) is expected to be, the more cautious people need to be about when generalizing this category. Contrariwise, if individuals of a category are prospective to be similar, then people do not require much data for them to speculate. Indeed, this is something that sounds like common sense, but for several individuals, it only looks this way after being pointed out.

Critical thinking is when a person knows a problem, situation, case A and you know the problem, situation, case B and when presented with some criteria a person can compare them. However, a person is cautious about subtext and often utilizes the entire knowledge of various fields of study by mixing mathematics and physics or social studies and philosophy for instance. Critical thinking is often seen as solving a puzzle, but all solutions accompanied by a reasonable explanation are precise.

Common sense is typically a cultural thing and varies on the basis of many different aspects. It is not even necessary to offer a single criterion to compare things. Common sense can be categorized as a personal opinion but in a significant sense on the basis of upbringing, belief, and standards of people under study.

Common sense possesses an intuitive factor to it while critical thinking is solely mental analyzing. Common sense also looks at a scenario and sees or feels what requires to be carried out. Critical thinking is incorporated with common sense to see all or many probabilities, and then it’s intuition or feeling that ties the steps together in the appropriate manner. Common sense is indeed never wrong when its common sense.

Albert Einstein, the famous philosopher, outlined that common sense is a collection of preconceptions acquired by the age of eighteen. The sole purpose of common sense is to allow people to function well inside the society. This purpose offers individuals a framework for making the right decisions when faced with frequently-occurring issues or problems. As seen above, common sense is, therefore, locale-specific and highly cultural since the whole purpose of it is to ensure that the life of individuals inside a community is as smooth as possible. Consequently, it tends to be a collection of ‘works best’ estimates, rather than some logical context for an assumption of the truth.

On the other hand, critical thinking is a field of logic where a context of principles has been developed to discover the cause, motivation, as well as possible outcomes of a scenario. This context typically focuses on factual events and utilizes the theories of logical analysis and assumption to guess why something happened, and what the probable effects are of different responses to the issue or problem.

Critical thinking can and should take into account the cultural and emotional effect of an outcome, but is not solely driven by these considerations. However, common sense is primarily driven by these two considerations. Besides, common sense typically supports that the theory that for each problem, there exists an appropriate solution. Thinking critically is not about finding the proper solution since ‘appropriate’ is almost impossible to define logically in this field. As an alternative, critical thinking is all about discovering the actual benefits and costs of various solutions. Critical thinking does not show a choice of the solution but is rather rationally projected to an informed decision.

In the end, common sense is seen as a ‘dictator’ of actions, while critical thinking is viewed as an ‘adviser’ of action. Common sense informs people what to do in a situation while critical thinking tells people about the consequences of a range of responses.

Similarities between Common Sense and Critical Thinking

Though common sense and critical thinking need various levels of consciousness and awareness to function, both methods of reasoning are rational in their arguments (or to the least tries to be rational). Also, both strategies of thinking should follow various logical requirements and logical form.

Why having common sense is essential

Having common sense is necessary for various reasons. One reason is that it helps people understand the essence of what others say. Another reason is to allow people to take what others have to say, and why they say it. In some scenarios, it is essential to look at why people say something and not how they say it. It is also typical for people to mix up two different common senses. Sometimes people do not listen to the words themselves but listen to the soul of the words. For instance, individuals may mix up punishment with revenge. It translates that when a person does something ethically wrong, he or she will get punished, but it does not mean that the person should take revenge because it is also morally wrong. It is thus essential to possess the common sense to have the ability to know what an individual is attempting to say and why.

In most cases, there are two factors a form, and a base which is same as a type or category. With this, prior to forming becoming an idea, the base has to determine the form. Things should not be established without a base to be distinctive.

Why critical thinking is crucial

Everything that you need requires thinking critically to acquire something. Whatever people want, they will have to acquire it by thinking critically. At all times, people want the best chance of gaining what they need. For instance, if you are starting a business, it is essential to think critically to ascertain that the business is thriving. Every discovery made is due to people thinking critically:

• You think about what your objective is

• How can this objective be attained; understand how to achieve it

Critical thinking is indeed an insurance policy against any deceit and manipulation. Those who do not think critically are always subject to the impulses of whatever sounds good. There exist individuals who take advantage of the simple-mindedness that people possess.

Lastly, thinking critically is essential before performing a necessary task. In this world, individuals filter things to understand them much better. Nonetheless, the danger of comparing and contrasting events X and Y and seeing them as equal is a hypothesis. A critical thinker aims to assess to what extent hypothesis and earlier scenarios will continue to hold as usual. By doing this, any adverse outcomes in the future will be significantly lowered.

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