1.3 Psychology Develops Your Critical Thinking Skills

Critical Thinking Helps You Evaluate Information Before taking a psychology course, many students accept information they hear about mental activity, behavior, and the brain without stopping to inspect and evaluate that information. Indeed, recent research shows that the majority of students accept websites at face value without considering the information more critically (Breakstone et al., 2019). For this reason, a main goal of this textbook is to teach you to think critically and to become an informed consumer of psychological information.

When you engage in critical thinking, you systematically evaluate information to reach conclusions based on the evidence that is presented. Thinking critically about psychological claims will be very useful in your daily life. For example, do you want to choose methods of reducing anger and frustration that actually work instead of harming you? Thinking critically will also help you improve your academic abilities. Indeed, one study found that students who use critical thinking skills complete an introductory psychology course with a more accurate understanding of the subject than do students who complete the same course without using critical thinking skills (Kowalski & Taylor, 2004).

How can you improve your critical thinking skills? As summarized in the Learning Tip on page 11, research indicates that the following three steps can help you think more critically about psychological information or any other topic (McGrew at el., 2019). Let’s examine each step in more detail.

Step 1 in Critical Thinking: Is the Source of the Claim Believable? When you come across a claim, you should keep an open mind about it but not accept it at face value. This combination of openness and caution allows you to receive new information but not accept everything that comes your way as being of equal value.

The first step in critical thinking is determining who is providing information about the claim. The Learning Tip lists a few questions that will help you determine whether the source of the information is believable. If you cannot identify the source at all, then you should approach the claim with great caution. Even if you can identify the person, organization, or company that is presenting the claim, you still need to decide whether the source is credible and believable. Credible sources in psychology are usually experts with an advanced degree in psychology and good standing at an academic institution, clinical group, or research organization. In addition, professionally published scientific journals (Figure 1.4) can provide credible information.

More information

The page has a login button, a search button, and a Join A P S button at the top. It has links to News, Research Topics, Meetings and Events, Journals, Observer Magazine, Funding and Policy, Members, Employment, Podcasts, and About. The journals are categorized into the following: Psychological Science, Current Directions in Psychological Science, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Clinical Psychological Science, and Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.

LEARNING TIP Developing Critical Thinking Skills

Throughout this textbook, Evaluating Psychology in the Real World features will help you develop your critical thinking skills. Each time you read one of these features, answer the questions below to evaluate the claim being made. You should accept claims only if you can answer “yes” to every question.

Questions to Ask Yourself	Answer
	No	Unclear	Yes
1. Is the source of the claim believable? Is the source known? Is the source reputable? Is the source an expert on the topic? Does the source avoid conflicts of interest in motives or funding?
2. Is there strong evidence for the claim? Is the evidence empirical? Does high-quality evidence support the claim? Is the evidence complete?
3. Do other believable sources agree about the claim? Are other sources also believable (that is, are they objective experts)? Do other sources agree about the empirical evidence? Is there no need for more evidence or better evidence?
Conclusions

An important part of evaluating a source is determining whether it has an ulterior motive in providing the information. For example, it may twist information to further a personal or political goal. Or the source may have received funding from an organization with a specific agenda.

Now let’s consider the source of the claim in Figure 1.3 that rage rooms may be good for your mental health. The source is clearly identified on the website: the news outlet USA Today. However, research indicates that although Americans trust several major news outlets, many people do not trust USA Today, regardless of their political affiliation (Pew Research Center, 2019). In addition, the story quotes the owners of rage room businesses, whose likely motive is to get customers to visit a rage room. In fact, the article quotes only one expert in psychology. His view represents a very small portion of the information presented, and it appears near the end of the piece. If you are thinking critically, then your answer to the question “Is the source of the claim believable?” should probably be “unclear” because we cannot say for certain whether these sources are credible.

Step 2 in Critical Thinking: Is There Strong Evidence for the Claim?The Learning Tip lists a few questions that will help you consider the quality of the evidence related to the claim. Remember that psychology is a science and, therefore, the only acceptable evidence comes from empirical research.

Determining whether there is strong evidence for the claim can be difficult because many people are tempted to accept a claim that fits with their intuition, beliefs, or opinions. But this is exactly why you need to be so cautious. For example, if you agreed with the claim earlier in the chapter that seeing the calories for each menu item will help people make healthier food choices, then you may have accepted the claim based on your intuition. Intuition is a personal, instinctive, gut feeling about something, but it is not scientific. Similarly, if you go to a rage room to work out your anger, then your choice of activity reveals your belief that a rage room will help you relieve stress. Beliefs are personal but not necessarily factually accurate. Finally, before reading this chapter you may have agreed with the idea that rereading and cramming are good study methods. Based on your experiences or beliefs, you may have formed opinions. Opinions are your personal judgments about a topic that are not necessarily based on scientific evidence. Always remember that intuitions, beliefs, and opinions are personal and may not be factually true. Thus, they are never considered to be evidence for any claims in psychology.

If the evidence presented comes from empirical research, you should see thorough descriptions of the studies that describe the participants, research designs, ethical issues, and conclusions. In addition, the research results will have been reviewed and approved by other scientists with similar expertise in a process called peer review. However, even in the case of empirical research, you must still think critically to determine whether the research method is unclear or has flaws, the analyses are suspicious, the evidence is incomplete, or the conclusions are overblown.

Now let’s answer the question “Is there strong evidence to support the claim in Figure 1.3?” Much of the information in the article comes from the owners of rage rooms and the customers who use them. For example, one customer describes her personal experiences in using a rage room as “cathartic” (that is, an emotional release) that resulted in tears. Here, the woman is describing her personal belief that the room was effective for her. However, a close reading of the article reveals that no empirical evidence supports the claim that rage rooms have positive mental health benefits for people in general. Clearly, research is needed to explore this issue. If you are thinking critically, your answer to the second question should be a resounding “no” because there is no empirical evidence to support the claim.

Step 3 in Critical Thinking: Do Other Believable Sources Agree About the Claim?As the Learning Tip shows, the last step in thinking critically is finding other reliable, credible sources that confirm or disconfirm the claim. Why? You may have read the only source that provides support for a certain claim!

How do you go about finding additional reputable and believable sources? The source you are reading may list additional sources either in the body of the article or at the end in a references section. But you must proceed with caution. If your source lists additional sources that support the claim, with no mention of support for competing claims, then you should be somewhat skeptical. A claim actually becomes stronger and more believable when it acknowledges different perspectives and then shows the weaknesses in those perspectives.

If the original source does not include information from other believable sources, you must search for it, perhaps by exploring trustworthy news sites, using the Google Scholar search engine, or searching through scholarly journals that you can access through your college library’s database. As you identify other believable sources, you should continue to look for empirical evidence that is either consistent with or different from the claim presented in the original source. The goal here is to get the bigger picture of whether the claim stands up in the face of different perspectives. If it does, then your answer to the “Do other believable sources agree about the claim?” question may be “yes.” If it does not, then you should either reject the claim outright or remain cautious about it.

Let’s return one last time to the claim in Figure 1.3 on page 9. As you read the article, the fact that no other sources are cited should immediately make you skeptical about the claim that rage rooms are good for your mental health. In addition, the one statement from an expert, a clinical psychologist, seems to refute the claim. He states, “It is not particularly therapeutic for people who have anger problems.” To test the claim with other believable sources, you could do a search on Google Scholar using the search phrase “Is venting healthy?” This phrase will yield several recent results from respected scholarly journals. Just by reviewing a few summaries you may start to get an idea of the answer. For example, a study by Lohr et al. (2007, p. 53) states, “Psychological research has shown virtually no support for the beneficial effects of venting and instead suggests that venting increases the likelihood of anger expression and its negative consequences.” Based on your information search, you may decide that more empirical research is needed to determine whether rage rooms are good for a person’s mental health. But, in regard to whether venting is healthy overall, your verdict for the final question should be a resounding “no” because there is no strong evidence for that claim across a variety of credible sources.

Throughout this book, you will have the opportunity to use your critical thinking skills in the Evaluating Psychology in the Real World features, which ask you to use critical thinking to evaluate claims found in the mainstream news and social media.