Robert J. Sternberg - Critical Thinking in Psychology

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Diane F. Halpern and Robert J. Sternberg

Scott O. Lilienfeld, Candice Basterfield, Shauna M. Bowes and Thomas H. Costello

Jonathan Baron

D. Alan Bensley

Douglas A. Bernstein

Jason L. G. Braasch and Arthur C. Graesser

Heather A. Butler and Diane F. Halpern

Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams

Gerd Gigerenzer

Jane S. Halonen and Dana S. Dunn

Henry L. Roediger, III and Jeremy K. Yamashiro

John Ruscio and Kevin Brady

Robert J. Sternberg

Anthony R. Pratkanis

Robert J. Sternberg and Diane F. Halpern

More than a decade ago, we coedited with Henry Roediger, III, a volume on Critical Thinking in Psychology, published by Cambridge University Press. The goal then, as now, was to promote critical thinking in the field of psychology. But the world has changed greatly in the past twelve years:

• Students rely much more on unedited Internet content than they did in the past. Often, they accept what they read without thinking about it critically.

• At the same time, students rely much less on carefully edited and fact-vetted textbooks than they did before. Indeed, the textbook industry is in something of a turmoil because it has become so hard to sell books. Some students, it appears, read hardly at all.

• Despite some textbooks claiming to emphasize critical thinking, the reading levels of textbooks continue on a downward trend. (The average adult in the US reads at a 7th or 8th grade level.)

• Students of psychology need to learn to think in a different way. A decade ago, terms like registered replications, preregistration of hypotheses and data analyses, results-free reviewing, and the like either did not exist or were not relevant to the life of a psychologist, whether a student or a professional. HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known) was standard practice. So-called p -hacking (collecting data as needed to reach a hoped-for p value) was not only common, but in many institutions, encouraged. Critical thinking today thus is not even quite the same as what it was back then.

• The results of uncritical thinking today are in some ways more severe. In the past, at worst, one was privately excoriated by confidential journal or grant reviewers. Today, there is an active industry of bloggers and other psychological scientists who go after and sometimes attack those whose work they believe does not represent sound critical thinking. Sometimes, the blogs themselves represent thinking that is less than critical.