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• What Is Critical Thinking? | Definition & Examples

What Is Critical Thinking? | Definition & Examples

Published on May 30, 2022 by Eoghan Ryan . Revised on May 31, 2023.

Critical thinking is the ability to effectively analyze information and form a judgment .

To think critically, you must be aware of your own biases and assumptions when encountering information, and apply consistent standards when evaluating sources .

Critical thinking skills help you to:

• Identify credible sources
• Evaluate and respond to arguments
• Assess alternative viewpoints
• Test hypotheses against relevant criteria

Table of contents

Why is critical thinking important, critical thinking examples, how to think critically, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about critical thinking.

Critical thinking is important for making judgments about sources of information and forming your own arguments. It emphasizes a rational, objective, and self-aware approach that can help you to identify credible sources and strengthen your conclusions.

Critical thinking is important in all disciplines and throughout all stages of the research process . The types of evidence used in the sciences and in the humanities may differ, but critical thinking skills are relevant to both.

In academic writing , critical thinking can help you to determine whether a source:

• Is free from research bias
• Provides evidence to support its research findings
• Considers alternative viewpoints

Outside of academia, critical thinking goes hand in hand with information literacy to help you form opinions rationally and engage independently and critically with popular media.

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Critical thinking can help you to identify reliable sources of information that you can cite in your research paper . It can also guide your own research methods and inform your own arguments.

Outside of academia, critical thinking can help you to be aware of both your own and others’ biases and assumptions.

Academic examples

However, when you compare the findings of the study with other current research, you determine that the results seem improbable. You analyze the paper again, consulting the sources it cites.

You notice that the research was funded by the pharmaceutical company that created the treatment. Because of this, you view its results skeptically and determine that more independent research is necessary to confirm or refute them. Example: Poor critical thinking in an academic context You’re researching a paper on the impact wireless technology has had on developing countries that previously did not have large-scale communications infrastructure. You read an article that seems to confirm your hypothesis: the impact is mainly positive. Rather than evaluating the research methodology, you accept the findings uncritically.

Nonacademic examples

However, you decide to compare this review article with consumer reviews on a different site. You find that these reviews are not as positive. Some customers have had problems installing the alarm, and some have noted that it activates for no apparent reason.

You revisit the original review article. You notice that the words “sponsored content” appear in small print under the article title. Based on this, you conclude that the review is advertising and is therefore not an unbiased source. Example: Poor critical thinking in a nonacademic context You support a candidate in an upcoming election. You visit an online news site affiliated with their political party and read an article that criticizes their opponent. The article claims that the opponent is inexperienced in politics. You accept this without evidence, because it fits your preconceptions about the opponent.

There is no single way to think critically. How you engage with information will depend on the type of source you’re using and the information you need.

However, you can engage with sources in a systematic and critical way by asking certain questions when you encounter information. Like the CRAAP test , these questions focus on the currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose of a source of information.

When encountering information, ask:

• Who is the author? Are they an expert in their field?
• What do they say? Is their argument clear? Can you summarize it?
• When did they say this? Is the source current?
• Where is the information published? Is it an academic article? Is it peer-reviewed ?
• Why did the author publish it? What is their motivation?
• How do they make their argument? Is it backed up by evidence? Does it rely on opinion, speculation, or appeals to emotion ? Do they address alternative arguments?

Critical thinking also involves being aware of your own biases, not only those of others. When you make an argument or draw your own conclusions, you can ask similar questions about your own writing:

• Am I only considering evidence that supports my preconceptions?
• Is my argument expressed clearly and backed up with credible sources?
• Would I be convinced by this argument coming from someone else?

If you want to know more about ChatGPT, AI tools , citation , and plagiarism , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• ChatGPT vs human editor
• ChatGPT citations
• Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
• Using ChatGPT for your studies
• What is ChatGPT?
• Chicago style
• Paraphrasing

 Plagiarism

• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Consequences of plagiarism
• Common knowledge

Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

Critical thinking skills include the ability to:

You can assess information and arguments critically by asking certain questions about the source. You can use the CRAAP test , focusing on the currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose of a source of information.

Ask questions such as:

• Who is the author? Are they an expert?
• How do they make their argument? Is it backed up by evidence?

A credible source should pass the CRAAP test  and follow these guidelines:

• The information should be up to date and current.
• The author and publication should be a trusted authority on the subject you are researching.
• The sources the author cited should be easy to find, clear, and unbiased.
• For a web source, the URL and layout should signify that it is trustworthy.

Information literacy refers to a broad range of skills, including the ability to find, evaluate, and use sources of information effectively.

Being information literate means that you:

• Know how to find credible sources
• Use relevant sources to inform your research
• Understand what constitutes plagiarism
• Know how to cite your sources correctly

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search, interpret, and recall information in a way that aligns with our pre-existing values, opinions, or beliefs. It refers to the ability to recollect information best when it amplifies what we already believe. Relatedly, we tend to forget information that contradicts our opinions.

Although selective recall is a component of confirmation bias, it should not be confused with recall bias.

On the other hand, recall bias refers to the differences in the ability between study participants to recall past events when self-reporting is used. This difference in accuracy or completeness of recollection is not related to beliefs or opinions. Rather, recall bias relates to other factors, such as the length of the recall period, age, and the characteristics of the disease under investigation.

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7.2 Critical Thinking

Imagine someone asked you to share the best way to approach a colleague about a behaviour that is bothering them. What would you say? How did you come to your response? If you asked and someone told you their answer, what would you think or feel about their response? How did you come to the reaction you had to their response? Recalling the role of perception from an earlier chapter, we know that our communication is always shaped by a perspective we hold based on our experiences. What happens when you don’t know the answer or you don’t like the option someone else provided? How do you re-approach the question to come up with a response? When searching for information on how to answer a question, how do we select the best information? Communication competence is achieved by the ability to pay critical attention to how information is being perceived, selected, and communicated by ourselves and others. This is especially challenging in increasingly diverse, complex, and information-filled environments.

So, what are our strategies? In reality, there are many different strategies to critically attend to the messages we send and receive. In this section, we will explore a three-strategy approach: critical listening , critical thinking , and critical ignoring .

In the scenario above in which a co-worker asks you to share the best way to approach a colleague about a behaviour that is bothering them, what would your immediate response be? Your immediate response might be an effective solution, but that’s not what we’re trying to figure out. Whatever your immediate response was, we want to learn to employ strategies to actively seek other possible solutions and explore them in depth. Your immediate response to the question may also indicate your own bias, which is what we want to avoid when choosing and communicating a response. Bias is “an outlook … based on a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgement and/or an instance of such prejudice” (Merriam-Webster, 2023a). Perhaps you consciously recall personal experiences of how you’ve approached co-workers in the past, and your immediate response has been shaped by those experiences. Your response is biased because it is based on personal experience. Sometimes we are consciously aware of our bias when we communicate; however, implicit bias can also exist. Implicit bias is “a bias or prejudice that is present but not consciously held or recognized” (Merriam-Webster, 2023b). Shaping our response according to our experiences is natural and helps us make decisions quickly. At the same time, relying only on our own experiences limits us to the options we already know.

If competent communication is our goal, competent communicators can understand, choose from, and perform a wide range of behaviours (Adler et al., 2021, pp. 16–19). Knowing about conscious and implicit bias, we can start to listen to ourselves and others communicate and possibly become consciously aware. Listening to all communication can help us become more reasoned communicators and allow us to connect better with others as we acknowledge diverse perspectives alongside our own. Bias can turn into reason when more information is gathered, other possible solutions are identified, and all the information is analyzed to determine a reasoned response or action.

Ultimately, using strategies to critically attend to information helps us to do the following:

• Challenge our assumptions
• Avoid information overload
• Avoid the communication of biased or irrelevant information
• Develop an understanding of and empathy for different perspectives
• Explore options to make an informed decision
• Connect with diverse audiences.

Strategy 1: Critical Listening

Many different ways of listening are described in literature. Three listening types are commonly discussed:

• Informational listening
• Comprehensive and evaluative listening
• Empathic listening

Each type of listening serves a different purpose, can be used in isolation or simultaneously, and can help us perceive, select and/or evaluate information to use orally or in writing. Each of the listening styles can be used when attending to external information being given to us and can also serve as an introspective approach to listening to ourselves.

Informational listening involves gathering new information and facts, then identifying key points. This is followed by recording the information so that we can access it later by committing it to memory and/or taking physical notes.

Comprehensive and evaluative listening is a combination of listening styles that does not attempt to decide if information is right or wrong. Instead, this listening style determines the main message the information is trying to send and how similar or different the information is to our existing knowledge and beliefs. It is through this listening style that we decide what we have learned. This process is an active approach that uses the following steps;

• Seeks to understand and organize the information gathered; uses paraphrasing and questioning communication skills
• Seeks to align the new information with what we already know or believe

Empathic listening is an active listening style that seeks to identify and understand the feelings and emotions behind the information being presented. You may ask questions, gently requesting that the speaker discuss their feelings and emotions. You will also use paraphrasing, and seek clarification to help understand whether you have truly heard the other person’s perspective. This listening style helps to create connection and trust between the listener and speaker.

Consider the following scenario: Your workplace team is trying to decide whether cellphones should be banned whenever interactions with clients take place. The discussion has been raised several times and there are many different opinions and perspectives on the question.

When you ask yourself the question, listen to your own reaction and internal communication. When you imagine this discussion taking place with your workplace team, imagine the range of opinions and perspectives. When you imagine yourself doing any kind of research to gather information about the topic, imagine the information you might find.

How would you use each of the listening styles above? Imagine the possible information you might gather from each listening style. Imagine the possible emotions and feelings that may need to be managed. What might be the benefits and challenges from using each listening style?

Gathering information is usually the first step in any situation that requires critically attending to information, but it doesn’t end there, and you may revisit the critical listening strategy at any point in your approach. Nonetheless, after gathering information, you’ll need to do something with it, and there may be a lot of information to sort through. This is where the next two strategies come into play.

Strategy 2: Critical Thinking

The concept of critical thinking does not have a single definition; instead, definitions range from simple to complex but capture a common theme of analyzing information to gain a better understanding.

Here are a few definitions to consider:

• Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action (Foundation for Critical Thinking, 2019).
• For some, critical thinking has a lot to do with understanding one’s own perspective and those of others.
• Critical thinking is the mental process involved in processing information for the purpose of problem solving, decision making, and thinking critically (Drew, 2023).
• Critical thinking is the means of assessing the accuracy, authenticity, plausibility, or sufficiency of all information (Beyer 1995).
• Critical thinking is developing the ability to think in alignment with the original idea or different from the original idea.

Not surprisingly, several critical-thinking models or frameworks are commonly used. Each approaches the process of analyzing and understanding information in a different way and for a different purpose. Some examples of critical-thinking models are listed in the table below.

Table 7.1. Examples of Critical-Thinking Models or Frameworks

Consider the previous scenario where your workplace team is trying to decide whether cellphones should be banned whenever interactions with clients take place. The discussion has been raised several times, and there are many different opinions and perspectives on the question. Choose one or two of the critical-thinking models in the table above to explore and click on the links. Use the steps in each model to answer the question “Should cellphones be banned whenever interactions with clients take place?”

In their own unique way, each model will ask you to gather more information from sources of information such as books, articles, or other people. You will then compare and analyze the information and perspectives you gather, considering possible courses of action and their possible outcomes and impacts. This gathering, sorting, and analyzing of information is essential to making a final decision based on reason instead of personal bias. However, as you may have already felt, the process can be overwhelming if there are a lot of facts, perspectives, and resulting options and consequences. We can understand why personal bias becomes the more attractive and easily accessible option.

Strategy 3: Critical Ignoring

The third and find strategy in moving towards communication competence, critical ignoring , helps us navigate the sea of information and decide what to keep and what to discard. As you consider your own response and that of others to the question “Should cellphones be banned whenever interactions with clients take place?” you may think of some strong opinionated responses that might be communicated or find some compelling evidence for or against the issue when you research the topic. The degree to which you feel overwhelmed by the information indicates your natural capacity for taking in information, and you may have already started to ignore some of the information you have come across.

This means you are already engaging in critical ignoring , which is choosing what to ignore, learning how to resist misleading information, and deciding where to invest your attention (Kozyreva et al., 2023). You may now be asking how critical ignoring is not biased. Critical ignoring is not biased because the choice of what information is ignored is based on assessing the quality of the information and is not based on personal opinions and perspectives. Note that although critical ignoring is designed for online sources of information, it is possible to apply the same approach to human sources of information.

The following three steps are involved in critical ignoring:

• Self-nudging: This is ignoring temptations by removing them. For example, you know that a particular website or social media platform tends to post a lot of information that grabs your attention but isn’t usually helpful because of its lack of objective facts and supporting evidence. You turn off notifications from these sources or remove them. Then you turn your attention to the high-quality sources of information that usually do provide information that stands up to reason. Self-nudging provides a sense of control, enabling you to access the best sources of information in diverse and complex environments.
• Lateral reading: This is determining how trustworthy a source and its information is by investigating the background of the website and author, and by comparing the information across a wide variety of sources. For example, you click on an article with an attention-grabbing title that is connected to a problem you’ve recently been discussing with colleagues. The information sounds excellent and helpful, but how to be sure? Investigating the author of the article reveals that they have credentials and experience related to the topic. A close look at the organization that runs the website reveals that they are selling one of the products mentioned in the article, which casts doubt on the quality of the information. Last but not least, you search for other articles on the same topic, and almost all the articles from different sources agree with the information presented in the original article. You assess the article’s information to be of reasonable quality and forward it to your colleagues to consider. Lateral reading is initially time consuming, but with practice, it can develop into a quick and easy method of investing in the highest-quality information.
• Do not feed the trolls—ignoring malicious actors: This involves learning how to ignore the people who spread misinformation or harass others using multiple platforms, or those who create debate or argument where there is none to be had. Because online statements can be emotionally charged, deliberately personal, or polarizing, we as humans tend to have just as emotional a response, and it is difficult not to react or try to defend the cause or individual being attacked. “Feeding the trolls” by directly engaging with them is tempting but ultimately has the same effect as feeding ourselves a good breakfast—it provides the necessary fuel for growth and regeneration. Instead of feeding the trolls, do not respond directly, block and report them to the platform where they are making statements, and then seek support from your close social group or professionals.

(Kozyreva et al., 2023)

Consider the previous scenario where your workplace team is trying to decide whether cellphones should be banned whenever interactions with clients take place. If you followed the first two steps, critical listening and critical thinking , you now have a lot of information to sort through. There may be many different opinions and perspectives on the question, and perhaps you found a few published articles. Next comes the third and final step, critical ignoring , to narrow down the information that really helps to answer the question.

As you reflect on the information you gather when exploring any topic or question, this three-strategy approach will help you manage the information and come to a reasonable course of action.

Relating Theory to Real Life

• Consider the following questions (Stevenson, 2023) and choose one that you would like to use to work through the three-step critical-thinking strategy you’ve read about on this page:
• Does humanity have the right to colonize other planets?
• Should we aim to rehabilitate prisoners or should we just punish them for their crimes?
• Would public health care be better than private?
• Should more be done to protect children on social media?

2. Use the critical listening, critical thinking, and critical ignoring three-step strategy.

• What response to the original question did you come up with?
• List and describe at least three key points that helped determine your final response as a result of using the three-step strategy.

Attribution

Unless otherwise indicated, material on this page has been copied and adapted from the following resource:

Department of Communication Studies. (n.d.). Communicating to connect: Interpersonal communication for today. Austin Community College. https://sites.google.com/austincc.edu/interpersonaloer/title-page , licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 , except where otherwise noted.

Adler, R. B., Rolls, J. A., & Proctor, R., II. (2021). LOOK: Looking out, looking in (4th ed.). Cengage Canada. (Original work published 2017)

Apedaile, S., & NorQuest College Centre for Intercultural Education. (2015). The Something’s up! cycle . https://www.norquest.ca/NorquestCollege/media/pdf/about/resources/intercultural-resources-for-educators/the-somethings-up-cycle.pdf

Beyer, B. K. (1995).  Critical thinking. Phi Kappa Delta Educational Foundation.

Crockett, L. (2021, September 29). The most useful critical thinking mental models to know about . Future Focused Learning. https://blog.futurefocusedlearning.net/useful-critical-thinking-mental-models

Drew, C. (2023, May 10). The 4 types of critical thinking skills – explained! HelpfulProfessor.com. https://helpfulprofessor.com/thinking-skills/

The Foundation for Critical Thinking. (2019). Defining critical thinking . https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766

Hammond, J., Keeney, R., & Raiffa, H. (1999). Smart choices: PROACT technique . Harvard Business School Press. https://www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/training/initiatives/skills-success/tools/problem-solved-employees-learners.html#h2.04

Kozyreva, A., Wineburg, S., Lewandowsky, S., & Hertwig, R. (2023). Critical ignoring as a core competence for digital citizens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 32 (1), 81–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214221121570

Merriam-Webster. (2023a). Bias. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary . https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias

Merriam-Webster. (2023b). Implicit bias. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary . https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/implicit%20bias

Plymouth University. (2010). Critical thinking . Learning Development with Plymouth University. https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/uploads/production/document/path/1/1710/Critical_Thinking.pdf

Stevenson, T. (2023, April 13). 80 ethical questions to ask yourself and others . Questions About Everything. https://questionsabouteverything.com/ethical-questions/#Looking_For_More_Questions

Vanderpool, A., & Robinson, T. A. (2017, November 29). Critical thinking: Multiple models for teaching and learning (abridged) . Teaching With Writing: The WIC Newsletter (Spring 2023). https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/wicnews/2017/11/29/critical-thinking-multiple-models-teaching-learning/#:~:text=Beyer’s%20evaluative%20thinking%20model&text=Thus%2C%20critical%20(or%2C%20to,(Beyer%201995%2C%2010

Introduction to Communications Copyright © 2023 by NorQuest College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate. The abilities can be identified directly; the dispositions indirectly, by considering what factors contribute to or impede exercise of the abilities. Standardized tests have been developed to assess the degree to which a person possesses such dispositions and abilities. Educational intervention has been shown experimentally to improve them, particularly when it includes dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. Controversies have arisen over the generalizability of critical thinking across domains, over alleged bias in critical thinking theories and instruction, and over the relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking.

2.1 Dewey’s Three Main Examples

2.2 dewey’s other examples, 2.3 further examples, 2.4 non-examples, 3. the definition of critical thinking, 4. its value, 5. the process of thinking critically, 6. components of the process, 7. contributory dispositions and abilities, 8.1 initiating dispositions, 8.2 internal dispositions, 9. critical thinking abilities, 10. required knowledge, 11. educational methods, 12.1 the generalizability of critical thinking, 12.2 bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, 12.3 relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking, other internet resources, related entries.

Use of the term ‘critical thinking’ to describe an educational goal goes back to the American philosopher John Dewey (1910), who more commonly called it ‘reflective thinking’. He defined it as

active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind. His lengthy quotations of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill indicate that he was not the first person to propose development of a scientific attitude of mind as an educational goal.

In the 1930s, many of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association (Aikin 1942) adopted critical thinking as an educational goal, for whose achievement the study’s Evaluation Staff developed tests (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942). Glaser (1941) showed experimentally that it was possible to improve the critical thinking of high school students. Bloom’s influential taxonomy of cognitive educational objectives (Bloom et al. 1956) incorporated critical thinking abilities. Ennis (1962) proposed 12 aspects of critical thinking as a basis for research on the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability.

Since 1980, an annual international conference in California on critical thinking and educational reform has attracted tens of thousands of educators from all levels of education and from many parts of the world. Also since 1980, the state university system in California has required all undergraduate students to take a critical thinking course. Since 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). In 1987, the APA’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy commissioned a consensus statement on critical thinking for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Facione 1990a). Researchers have developed standardized tests of critical thinking abilities and dispositions; for details, see the Supplement on Assessment . Educational jurisdictions around the world now include critical thinking in guidelines for curriculum and assessment.

For details on this history, see the Supplement on History .

2. Examples and Non-Examples

Before considering the definition of critical thinking, it will be helpful to have in mind some examples of critical thinking, as well as some examples of kinds of thinking that would apparently not count as critical thinking.

Dewey (1910: 68–71; 1933: 91–94) takes as paradigms of reflective thinking three class papers of students in which they describe their thinking. The examples range from the everyday to the scientific.

Transit : “The other day, when I was down town on 16th Street, a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12:20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o’clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o’clock.” (Dewey 1910: 68–69; 1933: 91–92)

Ferryboat : “Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river is a long white pole, having a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere on the boat two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

“I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of the pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

“In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot’s position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly.” (Dewey 1910: 69–70; 1933: 92–93)

Bubbles : “In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat, or by decrease of pressure, or both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse” (Dewey 1910: 70–71; 1933: 93–94).

Dewey (1910, 1933) sprinkles his book with other examples of critical thinking. We will refer to the following.

Weather : A man on a walk notices that it has suddenly become cool, thinks that it is probably going to rain, looks up and sees a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and quickens his steps (1910: 6–10; 1933: 9–13).

Disorder : A man finds his rooms on his return to them in disorder with his belongings thrown about, thinks at first of burglary as an explanation, then thinks of mischievous children as being an alternative explanation, then looks to see whether valuables are missing, and discovers that they are (1910: 82–83; 1933: 166–168).

Typhoid : A physician diagnosing a patient whose conspicuous symptoms suggest typhoid avoids drawing a conclusion until more data are gathered by questioning the patient and by making tests (1910: 85–86; 1933: 170).

Blur : A moving blur catches our eye in the distance, we ask ourselves whether it is a cloud of whirling dust or a tree moving its branches or a man signaling to us, we think of other traits that should be found on each of those possibilities, and we look and see if those traits are found (1910: 102, 108; 1933: 121, 133).

Suction pump : In thinking about the suction pump, the scientist first notes that it will draw water only to a maximum height of 33 feet at sea level and to a lesser maximum height at higher elevations, selects for attention the differing atmospheric pressure at these elevations, sets up experiments in which the air is removed from a vessel containing water (when suction no longer works) and in which the weight of air at various levels is calculated, compares the results of reasoning about the height to which a given weight of air will allow a suction pump to raise water with the observed maximum height at different elevations, and finally assimilates the suction pump to such apparently different phenomena as the siphon and the rising of a balloon (1910: 150–153; 1933: 195–198).

Diamond : A passenger in a car driving in a diamond lane reserved for vehicles with at least one passenger notices that the diamond marks on the pavement are far apart in some places and close together in others. Why? The driver suggests that the reason may be that the diamond marks are not needed where there is a solid double line separating the diamond lane from the adjoining lane, but are needed when there is a dotted single line permitting crossing into the diamond lane. Further observation confirms that the diamonds are close together when a dotted line separates the diamond lane from its neighbour, but otherwise far apart.

Rash : A woman suddenly develops a very itchy red rash on her throat and upper chest. She recently noticed a mark on the back of her right hand, but was not sure whether the mark was a rash or a scrape. She lies down in bed and thinks about what might be causing the rash and what to do about it. About two weeks before, she began taking blood pressure medication that contained a sulfa drug, and the pharmacist had warned her, in view of a previous allergic reaction to a medication containing a sulfa drug, to be on the alert for an allergic reaction; however, she had been taking the medication for two weeks with no such effect. The day before, she began using a new cream on her neck and upper chest; against the new cream as the cause was mark on the back of her hand, which had not been exposed to the cream. She began taking probiotics about a month before. She also recently started new eye drops, but she supposed that manufacturers of eye drops would be careful not to include allergy-causing components in the medication. The rash might be a heat rash, since she recently was sweating profusely from her upper body. Since she is about to go away on a short vacation, where she would not have access to her usual physician, she decides to keep taking the probiotics and using the new eye drops but to discontinue the blood pressure medication and to switch back to the old cream for her neck and upper chest. She forms a plan to consult her regular physician on her return about the blood pressure medication.

Candidate : Although Dewey included no examples of thinking directed at appraising the arguments of others, such thinking has come to be considered a kind of critical thinking. We find an example of such thinking in the performance task on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which its sponsoring organization describes as

a performance-based assessment that provides a measure of an institution’s contribution to the development of critical-thinking and written communication skills of its students. (Council for Aid to Education 2017)

A sample task posted on its website requires the test-taker to write a report for public distribution evaluating a fictional candidate’s policy proposals and their supporting arguments, using supplied background documents, with a recommendation on whether to endorse the candidate.

Immediate acceptance of an idea that suggests itself as a solution to a problem (e.g., a possible explanation of an event or phenomenon, an action that seems likely to produce a desired result) is “uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection” (Dewey 1910: 13). On-going suspension of judgment in the light of doubt about a possible solution is not critical thinking (Dewey 1910: 108). Critique driven by a dogmatically held political or religious ideology is not critical thinking; thus Paulo Freire (1968 [1970]) is using the term (e.g., at 1970: 71, 81, 100, 146) in a more politically freighted sense that includes not only reflection but also revolutionary action against oppression. Derivation of a conclusion from given data using an algorithm is not critical thinking.

What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. Ennis (2016) lists 14 philosophically oriented scholarly definitions and three dictionary definitions. Following Rawls (1971), who distinguished his conception of justice from a utilitarian conception but regarded them as rival conceptions of the same concept, Ennis maintains that the 17 definitions are different conceptions of the same concept. Rawls articulated the shared concept of justice as

a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining… the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (Rawls 1971: 5)

Bailin et al. (1999b) claim that, if one considers what sorts of thinking an educator would take not to be critical thinking and what sorts to be critical thinking, one can conclude that educators typically understand critical thinking to have at least three features.

• It is done for the purpose of making up one’s mind about what to believe or do.
• The person engaging in the thinking is trying to fulfill standards of adequacy and accuracy appropriate to the thinking.
• The thinking fulfills the relevant standards to some threshold level.

One could sum up the core concept that involves these three features by saying that critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking. This core concept seems to apply to all the examples of critical thinking described in the previous section. As for the non-examples, their exclusion depends on construing careful thinking as excluding jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question.

If the core of critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one’s criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses. As to its scope, some conceptions (e.g., Dewey 1910, 1933) restrict it to constructive thinking on the basis of one’s own observations and experiments, others (e.g., Ennis 1962; Fisher & Scriven 1997; Johnson 1992) to appraisal of the products of such thinking. Ennis (1991) and Bailin et al. (1999b) take it to cover both construction and appraisal. As to its goal, some conceptions restrict it to forming a judgment (Dewey 1910, 1933; Lipman 1987; Facione 1990a). Others allow for actions as well as beliefs as the end point of a process of critical thinking (Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b). As to the criteria and threshold for being careful, definitions vary in the term used to indicate that critical thinking satisfies certain norms: “intellectually disciplined” (Scriven & Paul 1987), “reasonable” (Ennis 1991), “skillful” (Lipman 1987), “skilled” (Fisher & Scriven 1997), “careful” (Bailin & Battersby 2009). Some definitions specify these norms, referring variously to “consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey 1910, 1933); “the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning” (Glaser 1941); “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (Scriven & Paul 1987); the requirement that “it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting” (Lipman 1987); “evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations” (Facione 1990a); and “plus-minus considerations of the product in terms of appropriate standards (or criteria)” (Johnson 1992). Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) propose to ground the concept of critical thinking in the concept of rationality, which they understand as combining epistemic rationality (fitting one’s beliefs to the world) and instrumental rationality (optimizing goal fulfillment); a critical thinker, in their view, is someone with “a propensity to override suboptimal responses from the autonomous mind” (2010: 227). These variant specifications of norms for critical thinking are not necessarily incompatible with one another, and in any case presuppose the core notion of thinking carefully. As to the thinking component singled out, some definitions focus on suspension of judgment during the thinking (Dewey 1910; McPeck 1981), others on inquiry while judgment is suspended (Bailin & Battersby 2009, 2021), others on the resulting judgment (Facione 1990a), and still others on responsiveness to reasons (Siegel 1988). Kuhn (2019) takes critical thinking to be more a dialogic practice of advancing and responding to arguments than an individual ability.

In educational contexts, a definition of critical thinking is a “programmatic definition” (Scheffler 1960: 19). It expresses a practical program for achieving an educational goal. For this purpose, a one-sentence formulaic definition is much less useful than articulation of a critical thinking process, with criteria and standards for the kinds of thinking that the process may involve. The real educational goal is recognition, adoption and implementation by students of those criteria and standards. That adoption and implementation in turn consists in acquiring the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker.

Conceptions of critical thinking generally do not include moral integrity as part of the concept. Dewey, for example, took critical thinking to be the ultimate intellectual goal of education, but distinguished it from the development of social cooperation among school children, which he took to be the central moral goal. Ennis (1996, 2011) added to his previous list of critical thinking dispositions a group of dispositions to care about the dignity and worth of every person, which he described as a “correlative” (1996) disposition without which critical thinking would be less valuable and perhaps harmful. An educational program that aimed at developing critical thinking but not the correlative disposition to care about the dignity and worth of every person, he asserted, “would be deficient and perhaps dangerous” (Ennis 1996: 172).

Dewey thought that education for reflective thinking would be of value to both the individual and society; recognition in educational practice of the kinship to the scientific attitude of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (Dewey 1910: iii). Schools participating in the Eight-Year Study took development of the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems as a means to leading young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18, 81). Harvey Siegel (1988: 55–61) has offered four considerations in support of adopting critical thinking as an educational ideal. (1) Respect for persons requires that schools and teachers honour students’ demands for reasons and explanations, deal with students honestly, and recognize the need to confront students’ independent judgment; these requirements concern the manner in which teachers treat students. (2) Education has the task of preparing children to be successful adults, a task that requires development of their self-sufficiency. (3) Education should initiate children into the rational traditions in such fields as history, science and mathematics. (4) Education should prepare children to become democratic citizens, which requires reasoned procedures and critical talents and attitudes. To supplement these considerations, Siegel (1988: 62–90) responds to two objections: the ideology objection that adoption of any educational ideal requires a prior ideological commitment and the indoctrination objection that cultivation of critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination.

Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:

• suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
• an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
• the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
• the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
• testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)

The process of reflective thinking consisting of these phases would be preceded by a perplexed, troubled or confused situation and followed by a cleared-up, unified, resolved situation (Dewey 1933: 106). The term ‘phases’ replaced the term ‘steps’ (Dewey 1910: 72), thus removing the earlier suggestion of an invariant sequence. Variants of the above analysis appeared in (Dewey 1916: 177) and (Dewey 1938: 101–119).

The variant formulations indicate the difficulty of giving a single logical analysis of such a varied process. The process of critical thinking may have a spiral pattern, with the problem being redefined in the light of obstacles to solving it as originally formulated. For example, the person in Transit might have concluded that getting to the appointment at the scheduled time was impossible and have reformulated the problem as that of rescheduling the appointment for a mutually convenient time. Further, defining a problem does not always follow after or lead immediately to an idea of a suggested solution. Nor should it do so, as Dewey himself recognized in describing the physician in Typhoid as avoiding any strong preference for this or that conclusion before getting further information (Dewey 1910: 85; 1933: 170). People with a hypothesis in mind, even one to which they have a very weak commitment, have a so-called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998): they are likely to pay attention to evidence that confirms the hypothesis and to ignore evidence that counts against it or for some competing hypothesis. Detectives, intelligence agencies, and investigators of airplane accidents are well advised to gather relevant evidence systematically and to postpone even tentative adoption of an explanatory hypothesis until the collected evidence rules out with the appropriate degree of certainty all but one explanation. Dewey’s analysis of the critical thinking process can be faulted as well for requiring acceptance or rejection of a possible solution to a defined problem, with no allowance for deciding in the light of the available evidence to suspend judgment. Further, given the great variety of kinds of problems for which reflection is appropriate, there is likely to be variation in its component events. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the critical thinking process is as a checklist whose component events can occur in a variety of orders, selectively, and more than once. These component events might include (1) noticing a difficulty, (2) defining the problem, (3) dividing the problem into manageable sub-problems, (4) formulating a variety of possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (5) determining what evidence is relevant to deciding among possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (6) devising a plan of systematic observation or experiment that will uncover the relevant evidence, (7) carrying out the plan of systematic observation or experimentation, (8) noting the results of the systematic observation or experiment, (9) gathering relevant testimony and information from others, (10) judging the credibility of testimony and information gathered from others, (11) drawing conclusions from gathered evidence and accepted testimony, and (12) accepting a solution that the evidence adequately supports (cf. Hitchcock 2017: 485).

Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted.

If one considers the critical thinking process illustrated by the 11 examples, one can identify distinct kinds of mental acts and mental states that form part of it. To distinguish, label and briefly characterize these components is a useful preliminary to identifying abilities, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits and the like that contribute causally to thinking critically. Identifying such abilities and habits is in turn a useful preliminary to setting educational goals. Setting the goals is in its turn a useful preliminary to designing strategies for helping learners to achieve the goals and to designing ways of measuring the extent to which learners have done so. Such measures provide both feedback to learners on their achievement and a basis for experimental research on the effectiveness of various strategies for educating people to think critically. Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the kinds of mental acts and mental events that can occur in a critical thinking process.

• Observing : One notices something in one’s immediate environment (sudden cooling of temperature in Weather , bubbles forming outside a glass and then going inside in Bubbles , a moving blur in the distance in Blur , a rash in Rash ). Or one notes the results of an experiment or systematic observation (valuables missing in Disorder , no suction without air pressure in Suction pump )
• Feeling : One feels puzzled or uncertain about something (how to get to an appointment on time in Transit , why the diamonds vary in spacing in Diamond ). One wants to resolve this perplexity. One feels satisfaction once one has worked out an answer (to take the subway express in Transit , diamonds closer when needed as a warning in Diamond ).
• Wondering : One formulates a question to be addressed (why bubbles form outside a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , how suction pumps work in Suction pump , what caused the rash in Rash ).
• Imagining : One thinks of possible answers (bus or subway or elevated in Transit , flagpole or ornament or wireless communication aid or direction indicator in Ferryboat , allergic reaction or heat rash in Rash ).
• Inferring : One works out what would be the case if a possible answer were assumed (valuables missing if there has been a burglary in Disorder , earlier start to the rash if it is an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug in Rash ). Or one draws a conclusion once sufficient relevant evidence is gathered (take the subway in Transit , burglary in Disorder , discontinue blood pressure medication and new cream in Rash ).
• Knowledge : One uses stored knowledge of the subject-matter to generate possible answers or to infer what would be expected on the assumption of a particular answer (knowledge of a city’s public transit system in Transit , of the requirements for a flagpole in Ferryboat , of Boyle’s law in Bubbles , of allergic reactions in Rash ).
• Experimenting : One designs and carries out an experiment or a systematic observation to find out whether the results deduced from a possible answer will occur (looking at the location of the flagpole in relation to the pilot’s position in Ferryboat , putting an ice cube on top of a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , measuring the height to which a suction pump will draw water at different elevations in Suction pump , noticing the spacing of diamonds when movement to or from a diamond lane is allowed in Diamond ).
• Consulting : One finds a source of information, gets the information from the source, and makes a judgment on whether to accept it. None of our 11 examples include searching for sources of information. In this respect they are unrepresentative, since most people nowadays have almost instant access to information relevant to answering any question, including many of those illustrated by the examples. However, Candidate includes the activities of extracting information from sources and evaluating its credibility.
• Identifying and analyzing arguments : One notices an argument and works out its structure and content as a preliminary to evaluating its strength. This activity is central to Candidate . It is an important part of a critical thinking process in which one surveys arguments for various positions on an issue.
• Judging : One makes a judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence and reasoning, such as the judgment in Ferryboat that the purpose of the pole is to provide direction to the pilot.
• Deciding : One makes a decision on what to do or on what policy to adopt, as in the decision in Transit to take the subway.

By definition, a person who does something voluntarily is both willing and able to do that thing at that time. Both the willingness and the ability contribute causally to the person’s action, in the sense that the voluntary action would not occur if either (or both) of these were lacking. For example, suppose that one is standing with one’s arms at one’s sides and one voluntarily lifts one’s right arm to an extended horizontal position. One would not do so if one were unable to lift one’s arm, if for example one’s right side was paralyzed as the result of a stroke. Nor would one do so if one were unwilling to lift one’s arm, if for example one were participating in a street demonstration at which a white supremacist was urging the crowd to lift their right arm in a Nazi salute and one were unwilling to express support in this way for the racist Nazi ideology. The same analysis applies to a voluntary mental process of thinking critically. It requires both willingness and ability to think critically, including willingness and ability to perform each of the mental acts that compose the process and to coordinate those acts in a sequence that is directed at resolving the initiating perplexity.

Consider willingness first. We can identify causal contributors to willingness to think critically by considering factors that would cause a person who was able to think critically about an issue nevertheless not to do so (Hamby 2014). For each factor, the opposite condition thus contributes causally to willingness to think critically on a particular occasion. For example, people who habitually jump to conclusions without considering alternatives will not think critically about issues that arise, even if they have the required abilities. The contrary condition of willingness to suspend judgment is thus a causal contributor to thinking critically.

Now consider ability. In contrast to the ability to move one’s arm, which can be completely absent because a stroke has left the arm paralyzed, the ability to think critically is a developed ability, whose absence is not a complete absence of ability to think but absence of ability to think well. We can identify the ability to think well directly, in terms of the norms and standards for good thinking. In general, to be able do well the thinking activities that can be components of a critical thinking process, one needs to know the concepts and principles that characterize their good performance, to recognize in particular cases that the concepts and principles apply, and to apply them. The knowledge, recognition and application may be procedural rather than declarative. It may be domain-specific rather than widely applicable, and in either case may need subject-matter knowledge, sometimes of a deep kind.

Reflections of the sort illustrated by the previous two paragraphs have led scholars to identify the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a “critical thinker”, i.e., someone who thinks critically whenever it is appropriate to do so. We turn now to these three types of causal contributors to thinking critically. We start with dispositions, since arguably these are the most powerful contributors to being a critical thinker, can be fostered at an early stage of a child’s development, and are susceptible to general improvement (Glaser 1941: 175)

8. Critical Thinking Dispositions

Educational researchers use the term ‘dispositions’ broadly for the habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker. Some writers (e.g., Paul & Elder 2006; Hamby 2014; Bailin & Battersby 2016a) propose to use the term ‘virtues’ for this dimension of a critical thinker. The virtues in question, although they are virtues of character, concern the person’s ways of thinking rather than the person’s ways of behaving towards others. They are not moral virtues but intellectual virtues, of the sort articulated by Zagzebski (1996) and discussed by Turri, Alfano, and Greco (2017).

On a realistic conception, thinking dispositions or intellectual virtues are real properties of thinkers. They are general tendencies, propensities, or inclinations to think in particular ways in particular circumstances, and can be genuinely explanatory (Siegel 1999). Sceptics argue that there is no evidence for a specific mental basis for the habits of mind that contribute to thinking critically, and that it is pedagogically misleading to posit such a basis (Bailin et al. 1999a). Whatever their status, critical thinking dispositions need motivation for their initial formation in a child—motivation that may be external or internal. As children develop, the force of habit will gradually become important in sustaining the disposition (Nieto & Valenzuela 2012). Mere force of habit, however, is unlikely to sustain critical thinking dispositions. Critical thinkers must value and enjoy using their knowledge and abilities to think things through for themselves. They must be committed to, and lovers of, inquiry.

A person may have a critical thinking disposition with respect to only some kinds of issues. For example, one could be open-minded about scientific issues but not about religious issues. Similarly, one could be confident in one’s ability to reason about the theological implications of the existence of evil in the world but not in one’s ability to reason about the best design for a guided ballistic missile.

Facione (1990a: 25) divides “affective dispositions” of critical thinking into approaches to life and living in general and approaches to specific issues, questions or problems. Adapting this distinction, one can usefully divide critical thinking dispositions into initiating dispositions (those that contribute causally to starting to think critically about an issue) and internal dispositions (those that contribute causally to doing a good job of thinking critically once one has started). The two categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, open-mindedness, in the sense of willingness to consider alternative points of view to one’s own, is both an initiating and an internal disposition.

Using the strategy of considering factors that would block people with the ability to think critically from doing so, we can identify as initiating dispositions for thinking critically attentiveness, a habit of inquiry, self-confidence, courage, open-mindedness, willingness to suspend judgment, trust in reason, wanting evidence for one’s beliefs, and seeking the truth. We consider briefly what each of these dispositions amounts to, in each case citing sources that acknowledge them.

• Attentiveness : One will not think critically if one fails to recognize an issue that needs to be thought through. For example, the pedestrian in Weather would not have looked up if he had not noticed that the air was suddenly cooler. To be a critical thinker, then, one needs to be habitually attentive to one’s surroundings, noticing not only what one senses but also sources of perplexity in messages received and in one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Habit of inquiry : Inquiry is effortful, and one needs an internal push to engage in it. For example, the student in Bubbles could easily have stopped at idle wondering about the cause of the bubbles rather than reasoning to a hypothesis, then designing and executing an experiment to test it. Thus willingness to think critically needs mental energy and initiative. What can supply that energy? Love of inquiry, or perhaps just a habit of inquiry. Hamby (2015) has argued that willingness to inquire is the central critical thinking virtue, one that encompasses all the others. It is recognized as a critical thinking disposition by Dewey (1910: 29; 1933: 35), Glaser (1941: 5), Ennis (1987: 12; 1991: 8), Facione (1990a: 25), Bailin et al. (1999b: 294), Halpern (1998: 452), and Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo (2001).
• Self-confidence : Lack of confidence in one’s abilities can block critical thinking. For example, if the woman in Rash lacked confidence in her ability to figure things out for herself, she might just have assumed that the rash on her chest was the allergic reaction to her medication against which the pharmacist had warned her. Thus willingness to think critically requires confidence in one’s ability to inquire (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Courage : Fear of thinking for oneself can stop one from doing it. Thus willingness to think critically requires intellectual courage (Paul & Elder 2006: 16).
• Open-mindedness : A dogmatic attitude will impede thinking critically. For example, a person who adheres rigidly to a “pro-choice” position on the issue of the legal status of induced abortion is likely to be unwilling to consider seriously the issue of when in its development an unborn child acquires a moral right to life. Thus willingness to think critically requires open-mindedness, in the sense of a willingness to examine questions to which one already accepts an answer but which further evidence or reasoning might cause one to answer differently (Dewey 1933; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b; Halpern 1998, Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). Paul (1981) emphasizes open-mindedness about alternative world-views, and recommends a dialectical approach to integrating such views as central to what he calls “strong sense” critical thinking. In three studies, Haran, Ritov, & Mellers (2013) found that actively open-minded thinking, including “the tendency to weigh new evidence against a favored belief, to spend sufficient time on a problem before giving up, and to consider carefully the opinions of others in forming one’s own”, led study participants to acquire information and thus to make accurate estimations.
• Willingness to suspend judgment : Premature closure on an initial solution will block critical thinking. Thus willingness to think critically requires a willingness to suspend judgment while alternatives are explored (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Halpern 1998).
• Trust in reason : Since distrust in the processes of reasoned inquiry will dissuade one from engaging in it, trust in them is an initiating critical thinking disposition (Facione 1990a, 25; Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Paul & Elder 2006). In reaction to an allegedly exclusive emphasis on reason in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, Thayer-Bacon (2000) argues that intuition, imagination, and emotion have important roles to play in an adequate conception of critical thinking that she calls “constructive thinking”. From her point of view, critical thinking requires trust not only in reason but also in intuition, imagination, and emotion.
• Seeking the truth : If one does not care about the truth but is content to stick with one’s initial bias on an issue, then one will not think critically about it. Seeking the truth is thus an initiating critical thinking disposition (Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). A disposition to seek the truth is implicit in more specific critical thinking dispositions, such as trying to be well-informed, considering seriously points of view other than one’s own, looking for alternatives, suspending judgment when the evidence is insufficient, and adopting a position when the evidence supporting it is sufficient.

Some of the initiating dispositions, such as open-mindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, are also internal critical thinking dispositions, in the sense of mental habits or attitudes that contribute causally to doing a good job of critical thinking once one starts the process. But there are many other internal critical thinking dispositions. Some of them are parasitic on one’s conception of good thinking. For example, it is constitutive of good thinking about an issue to formulate the issue clearly and to maintain focus on it. For this purpose, one needs not only the corresponding ability but also the corresponding disposition. Ennis (1991: 8) describes it as the disposition “to determine and maintain focus on the conclusion or question”, Facione (1990a: 25) as “clarity in stating the question or concern”. Other internal dispositions are motivators to continue or adjust the critical thinking process, such as willingness to persist in a complex task and willingness to abandon nonproductive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998: 452). For a list of identified internal critical thinking dispositions, see the Supplement on Internal Critical Thinking Dispositions .

Some theorists postulate skills, i.e., acquired abilities, as operative in critical thinking. It is not obvious, however, that a good mental act is the exercise of a generic acquired skill. Inferring an expected time of arrival, as in Transit , has some generic components but also uses non-generic subject-matter knowledge. Bailin et al. (1999a) argue against viewing critical thinking skills as generic and discrete, on the ground that skilled performance at a critical thinking task cannot be separated from knowledge of concepts and from domain-specific principles of good thinking. Talk of skills, they concede, is unproblematic if it means merely that a person with critical thinking skills is capable of intelligent performance.

Despite such scepticism, theorists of critical thinking have listed as general contributors to critical thinking what they variously call abilities (Glaser 1941; Ennis 1962, 1991), skills (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998) or competencies (Fisher & Scriven 1997). Amalgamating these lists would produce a confusing and chaotic cornucopia of more than 50 possible educational objectives, with only partial overlap among them. It makes sense instead to try to understand the reasons for the multiplicity and diversity, and to make a selection according to one’s own reasons for singling out abilities to be developed in a critical thinking curriculum. Two reasons for diversity among lists of critical thinking abilities are the underlying conception of critical thinking and the envisaged educational level. Appraisal-only conceptions, for example, involve a different suite of abilities than constructive-only conceptions. Some lists, such as those in (Glaser 1941), are put forward as educational objectives for secondary school students, whereas others are proposed as objectives for college students (e.g., Facione 1990a).

The abilities described in the remaining paragraphs of this section emerge from reflection on the general abilities needed to do well the thinking activities identified in section 6 as components of the critical thinking process described in section 5 . The derivation of each collection of abilities is accompanied by citation of sources that list such abilities and of standardized tests that claim to test them.

Observational abilities : Careful and accurate observation sometimes requires specialist expertise and practice, as in the case of observing birds and observing accident scenes. However, there are general abilities of noticing what one’s senses are picking up from one’s environment and of being able to articulate clearly and accurately to oneself and others what one has observed. It helps in exercising them to be able to recognize and take into account factors that make one’s observation less trustworthy, such as prior framing of the situation, inadequate time, deficient senses, poor observation conditions, and the like. It helps as well to be skilled at taking steps to make one’s observation more trustworthy, such as moving closer to get a better look, measuring something three times and taking the average, and checking what one thinks one is observing with someone else who is in a good position to observe it. It also helps to be skilled at recognizing respects in which one’s report of one’s observation involves inference rather than direct observation, so that one can then consider whether the inference is justified. These abilities come into play as well when one thinks about whether and with what degree of confidence to accept an observation report, for example in the study of history or in a criminal investigation or in assessing news reports. Observational abilities show up in some lists of critical thinking abilities (Ennis 1962: 90; Facione 1990a: 16; Ennis 1991: 9). There are items testing a person’s ability to judge the credibility of observation reports in the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, Levels X and Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). Norris and King (1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b) is a test of ability to appraise observation reports.

Emotional abilities : The emotions that drive a critical thinking process are perplexity or puzzlement, a wish to resolve it, and satisfaction at achieving the desired resolution. Children experience these emotions at an early age, without being trained to do so. Education that takes critical thinking as a goal needs only to channel these emotions and to make sure not to stifle them. Collaborative critical thinking benefits from ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotional commitments and reactions.

Questioning abilities : A critical thinking process needs transformation of an inchoate sense of perplexity into a clear question. Formulating a question well requires not building in questionable assumptions, not prejudging the issue, and using language that in context is unambiguous and precise enough (Ennis 1962: 97; 1991: 9).

Imaginative abilities : Thinking directed at finding the correct causal explanation of a general phenomenon or particular event requires an ability to imagine possible explanations. Thinking about what policy or plan of action to adopt requires generation of options and consideration of possible consequences of each option. Domain knowledge is required for such creative activity, but a general ability to imagine alternatives is helpful and can be nurtured so as to become easier, quicker, more extensive, and deeper (Dewey 1910: 34–39; 1933: 40–47). Facione (1990a) and Halpern (1998) include the ability to imagine alternatives as a critical thinking ability.

Inferential abilities : The ability to draw conclusions from given information, and to recognize with what degree of certainty one’s own or others’ conclusions follow, is universally recognized as a general critical thinking ability. All 11 examples in section 2 of this article include inferences, some from hypotheses or options (as in Transit , Ferryboat and Disorder ), others from something observed (as in Weather and Rash ). None of these inferences is formally valid. Rather, they are licensed by general, sometimes qualified substantive rules of inference (Toulmin 1958) that rest on domain knowledge—that a bus trip takes about the same time in each direction, that the terminal of a wireless telegraph would be located on the highest possible place, that sudden cooling is often followed by rain, that an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug generally shows up soon after one starts taking it. It is a matter of controversy to what extent the specialized ability to deduce conclusions from premisses using formal rules of inference is needed for critical thinking. Dewey (1933) locates logical forms in setting out the products of reflection rather than in the process of reflection. Ennis (1981a), on the other hand, maintains that a liberally-educated person should have the following abilities: to translate natural-language statements into statements using the standard logical operators, to use appropriately the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, to deal with argument forms and arguments containing symbols, to determine whether in virtue of an argument’s form its conclusion follows necessarily from its premisses, to reason with logically complex propositions, and to apply the rules and procedures of deductive logic. Inferential abilities are recognized as critical thinking abilities by Glaser (1941: 6), Facione (1990a: 9), Ennis (1991: 9), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 99, 111), and Halpern (1998: 452). Items testing inferential abilities constitute two of the five subtests of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), two of the four sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), three of the seven sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), 11 of the 34 items on Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), and a high but variable proportion of the 25 selected-response questions in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Experimenting abilities : Knowing how to design and execute an experiment is important not just in scientific research but also in everyday life, as in Rash . Dewey devoted a whole chapter of his How We Think (1910: 145–156; 1933: 190–202) to the superiority of experimentation over observation in advancing knowledge. Experimenting abilities come into play at one remove in appraising reports of scientific studies. Skill in designing and executing experiments includes the acknowledged abilities to appraise evidence (Glaser 1941: 6), to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques (Facione 1990a: 9), to judge inductions to an explanatory hypothesis (Ennis 1991: 9), and to recognize the need for an adequately large sample size (Halpern 1998). The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) includes four items (out of 52) on experimental design. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) makes room for appraisal of study design in both its performance task and its selected-response questions.

Consulting abilities : Skill at consulting sources of information comes into play when one seeks information to help resolve a problem, as in Candidate . Ability to find and appraise information includes ability to gather and marshal pertinent information (Glaser 1941: 6), to judge whether a statement made by an alleged authority is acceptable (Ennis 1962: 84), to plan a search for desired information (Facione 1990a: 9), and to judge the credibility of a source (Ennis 1991: 9). Ability to judge the credibility of statements is tested by 24 items (out of 76) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) and by four items (out of 52) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). The College Learning Assessment’s performance task requires evaluation of whether information in documents is credible or unreliable (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Argument analysis abilities : The ability to identify and analyze arguments contributes to the process of surveying arguments on an issue in order to form one’s own reasoned judgment, as in Candidate . The ability to detect and analyze arguments is recognized as a critical thinking skill by Facione (1990a: 7–8), Ennis (1991: 9) and Halpern (1998). Five items (out of 34) on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) test skill at argument analysis. The College Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) incorporates argument analysis in its selected-response tests of critical reading and evaluation and of critiquing an argument.

Judging skills and deciding skills : Skill at judging and deciding is skill at recognizing what judgment or decision the available evidence and argument supports, and with what degree of confidence. It is thus a component of the inferential skills already discussed.

Lists and tests of critical thinking abilities often include two more abilities: identifying assumptions and constructing and evaluating definitions.

In addition to dispositions and abilities, critical thinking needs knowledge: of critical thinking concepts, of critical thinking principles, and of the subject-matter of the thinking.

We can derive a short list of concepts whose understanding contributes to critical thinking from the critical thinking abilities described in the preceding section. Observational abilities require an understanding of the difference between observation and inference. Questioning abilities require an understanding of the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness. Inferential abilities require an understanding of the difference between conclusive and defeasible inference (traditionally, between deduction and induction), as well as of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Experimenting abilities require an understanding of the concepts of hypothesis, null hypothesis, assumption and prediction, as well as of the concept of statistical significance and of its difference from importance. They also require an understanding of the difference between an experiment and an observational study, and in particular of the difference between a randomized controlled trial, a prospective correlational study and a retrospective (case-control) study. Argument analysis abilities require an understanding of the concepts of argument, premiss, assumption, conclusion and counter-consideration. Additional critical thinking concepts are proposed by Bailin et al. (1999b: 293), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 105–106), Black (2012), and Blair (2021).

According to Glaser (1941: 25), ability to think critically requires knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning. If we review the list of abilities in the preceding section, however, we can see that some of them can be acquired and exercised merely through practice, possibly guided in an educational setting, followed by feedback. Searching intelligently for a causal explanation of some phenomenon or event requires that one consider a full range of possible causal contributors, but it seems more important that one implements this principle in one’s practice than that one is able to articulate it. What is important is “operational knowledge” of the standards and principles of good thinking (Bailin et al. 1999b: 291–293). But the development of such critical thinking abilities as designing an experiment or constructing an operational definition can benefit from learning their underlying theory. Further, explicit knowledge of quirks of human thinking seems useful as a cautionary guide. Human memory is not just fallible about details, as people learn from their own experiences of misremembering, but is so malleable that a detailed, clear and vivid recollection of an event can be a total fabrication (Loftus 2017). People seek or interpret evidence in ways that are partial to their existing beliefs and expectations, often unconscious of their “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998). Not only are people subject to this and other cognitive biases (Kahneman 2011), of which they are typically unaware, but it may be counter-productive for one to make oneself aware of them and try consciously to counteract them or to counteract social biases such as racial or sexual stereotypes (Kenyon & Beaulac 2014). It is helpful to be aware of these facts and of the superior effectiveness of blocking the operation of biases—for example, by making an immediate record of one’s observations, refraining from forming a preliminary explanatory hypothesis, blind refereeing, double-blind randomized trials, and blind grading of students’ work. It is also helpful to be aware of the prevalence of “noise” (unwanted unsystematic variability of judgments), of how to detect noise (through a noise audit), and of how to reduce noise: make accuracy the goal, think statistically, break a process of arriving at a judgment into independent tasks, resist premature intuitions, in a group get independent judgments first, favour comparative judgments and scales (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein 2021). It is helpful as well to be aware of the concept of “bounded rationality” in decision-making and of the related distinction between “satisficing” and optimizing (Simon 1956; Gigerenzer 2001).

Critical thinking about an issue requires substantive knowledge of the domain to which the issue belongs. Critical thinking abilities are not a magic elixir that can be applied to any issue whatever by somebody who has no knowledge of the facts relevant to exploring that issue. For example, the student in Bubbles needed to know that gases do not penetrate solid objects like a glass, that air expands when heated, that the volume of an enclosed gas varies directly with its temperature and inversely with its pressure, and that hot objects will spontaneously cool down to the ambient temperature of their surroundings unless kept hot by insulation or a source of heat. Critical thinkers thus need a rich fund of subject-matter knowledge relevant to the variety of situations they encounter. This fact is recognized in the inclusion among critical thinking dispositions of a concern to become and remain generally well informed.

Experimental educational interventions, with control groups, have shown that education can improve critical thinking skills and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. For information about these tests, see the Supplement on Assessment .

What educational methods are most effective at developing the dispositions, abilities and knowledge of a critical thinker? In a comprehensive meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of strategies for teaching students to think critically, Abrami et al. (2015) found that dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring each increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They also found that in these studies a combination of separate instruction in critical thinking with subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically was more effective than either by itself. However, the difference was not statistically significant; that is, it might have arisen by chance.

Most of these studies lack the longitudinal follow-up required to determine whether the observed differential improvements in critical thinking abilities or dispositions continue over time, for example until high school or college graduation. For details on studies of methods of developing critical thinking skills and dispositions, see the Supplement on Educational Methods .

12. Controversies

Scholars have denied the generalizability of critical thinking abilities across subject domains, have alleged bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, and have investigated the relationship of critical thinking to other kinds of thinking.

McPeck (1981) attacked the thinking skills movement of the 1970s, including the critical thinking movement. He argued that there are no general thinking skills, since thinking is always thinking about some subject-matter. It is futile, he claimed, for schools and colleges to teach thinking as if it were a separate subject. Rather, teachers should lead their pupils to become autonomous thinkers by teaching school subjects in a way that brings out their cognitive structure and that encourages and rewards discussion and argument. As some of his critics (e.g., Paul 1985; Siegel 1985) pointed out, McPeck’s central argument needs elaboration, since it has obvious counter-examples in writing and speaking, for which (up to a certain level of complexity) there are teachable general abilities even though they are always about some subject-matter. To make his argument convincing, McPeck needs to explain how thinking differs from writing and speaking in a way that does not permit useful abstraction of its components from the subject-matters with which it deals. He has not done so. Nevertheless, his position that the dispositions and abilities of a critical thinker are best developed in the context of subject-matter instruction is shared by many theorists of critical thinking, including Dewey (1910, 1933), Glaser (1941), Passmore (1980), Weinstein (1990), Bailin et al. (1999b), and Willingham (2019).

McPeck’s challenge prompted reflection on the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific. McPeck argued for a strong subject-specificity thesis, according to which it is a conceptual truth that all critical thinking abilities are specific to a subject. (He did not however extend his subject-specificity thesis to critical thinking dispositions. In particular, he took the disposition to suspend judgment in situations of cognitive dissonance to be a general disposition.) Conceptual subject-specificity is subject to obvious counter-examples, such as the general ability to recognize confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. A more modest thesis, also endorsed by McPeck, is epistemological subject-specificity, according to which the norms of good thinking vary from one field to another. Epistemological subject-specificity clearly holds to a certain extent; for example, the principles in accordance with which one solves a differential equation are quite different from the principles in accordance with which one determines whether a painting is a genuine Picasso. But the thesis suffers, as Ennis (1989) points out, from vagueness of the concept of a field or subject and from the obvious existence of inter-field principles, however broadly the concept of a field is construed. For example, the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning hold for all the varied fields in which such reasoning occurs. A third kind of subject-specificity is empirical subject-specificity, according to which as a matter of empirically observable fact a person with the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker in one area of investigation will not necessarily have them in another area of investigation.

The thesis of empirical subject-specificity raises the general problem of transfer. If critical thinking abilities and dispositions have to be developed independently in each school subject, how are they of any use in dealing with the problems of everyday life and the political and social issues of contemporary society, most of which do not fit into the framework of a traditional school subject? Proponents of empirical subject-specificity tend to argue that transfer is more likely to occur if there is critical thinking instruction in a variety of domains, with explicit attention to dispositions and abilities that cut across domains. But evidence for this claim is scanty. There is a need for well-designed empirical studies that investigate the conditions that make transfer more likely.

It is common ground in debates about the generality or subject-specificity of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that critical thinking about any topic requires background knowledge about the topic. For example, the most sophisticated understanding of the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is of no help unless accompanied by some knowledge of what might be plausible explanations of some phenomenon under investigation.

Critics have objected to bias in the theory, pedagogy and practice of critical thinking. Commentators (e.g., Alston 1995; Ennis 1998) have noted that anyone who takes a position has a bias in the neutral sense of being inclined in one direction rather than others. The critics, however, are objecting to bias in the pejorative sense of an unjustified favoring of certain ways of knowing over others, frequently alleging that the unjustly favoured ways are those of a dominant sex or culture (Bailin 1995). These ways favour:

• reinforcement of egocentric and sociocentric biases over dialectical engagement with opposing world-views (Paul 1981, 1984; Warren 1998)
• distancing from the object of inquiry over closeness to it (Martin 1992; Thayer-Bacon 1992)
• indifference to the situation of others over care for them (Martin 1992)
• orientation to thought over orientation to action (Martin 1992)
• being reasonable over caring to understand people’s ideas (Thayer-Bacon 1993)
• being neutral and objective over being embodied and situated (Thayer-Bacon 1995a)
• doubting over believing (Thayer-Bacon 1995b)
• reason over emotion, imagination and intuition (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• solitary thinking over collaborative thinking (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• written and spoken assignments over other forms of expression (Alston 2001)
• attention to written and spoken communications over attention to human problems (Alston 2001)
• winning debates in the public sphere over making and understanding meaning (Alston 2001)

A common thread in this smorgasbord of accusations is dissatisfaction with focusing on the logical analysis and evaluation of reasoning and arguments. While these authors acknowledge that such analysis and evaluation is part of critical thinking and should be part of its conceptualization and pedagogy, they insist that it is only a part. Paul (1981), for example, bemoans the tendency of atomistic teaching of methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments to turn students into more able sophists, adept at finding fault with positions and arguments with which they disagree but even more entrenched in the egocentric and sociocentric biases with which they began. Martin (1992) and Thayer-Bacon (1992) cite with approval the self-reported intimacy with their subject-matter of leading researchers in biology and medicine, an intimacy that conflicts with the distancing allegedly recommended in standard conceptions and pedagogy of critical thinking. Thayer-Bacon (2000) contrasts the embodied and socially embedded learning of her elementary school students in a Montessori school, who used their imagination, intuition and emotions as well as their reason, with conceptions of critical thinking as

thinking that is used to critique arguments, offer justifications, and make judgments about what are the good reasons, or the right answers. (Thayer-Bacon 2000: 127–128)

Alston (2001) reports that her students in a women’s studies class were able to see the flaws in the Cinderella myth that pervades much romantic fiction but in their own romantic relationships still acted as if all failures were the woman’s fault and still accepted the notions of love at first sight and living happily ever after. Students, she writes, should

be able to connect their intellectual critique to a more affective, somatic, and ethical account of making risky choices that have sexist, racist, classist, familial, sexual, or other consequences for themselves and those both near and far… critical thinking that reads arguments, texts, or practices merely on the surface without connections to feeling/desiring/doing or action lacks an ethical depth that should infuse the difference between mere cognitive activity and something we want to call critical thinking. (Alston 2001: 34)

Some critics portray such biases as unfair to women. Thayer-Bacon (1992), for example, has charged modern critical thinking theory with being sexist, on the ground that it separates the self from the object and causes one to lose touch with one’s inner voice, and thus stigmatizes women, who (she asserts) link self to object and listen to their inner voice. Her charge does not imply that women as a group are on average less able than men to analyze and evaluate arguments. Facione (1990c) found no difference by sex in performance on his California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Kuhn (1991: 280–281) found no difference by sex in either the disposition or the competence to engage in argumentative thinking.

The critics propose a variety of remedies for the biases that they allege. In general, they do not propose to eliminate or downplay critical thinking as an educational goal. Rather, they propose to conceptualize critical thinking differently and to change its pedagogy accordingly. Their pedagogical proposals arise logically from their objections. They can be summarized as follows:

• Focus on argument networks with dialectical exchanges reflecting contesting points of view rather than on atomic arguments, so as to develop “strong sense” critical thinking that transcends egocentric and sociocentric biases (Paul 1981, 1984).
• Foster closeness to the subject-matter and feeling connected to others in order to inform a humane democracy (Martin 1992).
• Develop “constructive thinking” as a social activity in a community of physically embodied and socially embedded inquirers with personal voices who value not only reason but also imagination, intuition and emotion (Thayer-Bacon 2000).
• In developing critical thinking in school subjects, treat as important neither skills nor dispositions but opening worlds of meaning (Alston 2001).
• Attend to the development of critical thinking dispositions as well as skills, and adopt the “critical pedagogy” practised and advocated by Freire (1968 [1970]) and hooks (1994) (Dalgleish, Girard, & Davies 2017).

A common thread in these proposals is treatment of critical thinking as a social, interactive, personally engaged activity like that of a quilting bee or a barn-raising (Thayer-Bacon 2000) rather than as an individual, solitary, distanced activity symbolized by Rodin’s The Thinker . One can get a vivid description of education with the former type of goal from the writings of bell hooks (1994, 2010). Critical thinking for her is open-minded dialectical exchange across opposing standpoints and from multiple perspectives, a conception similar to Paul’s “strong sense” critical thinking (Paul 1981). She abandons the structure of domination in the traditional classroom. In an introductory course on black women writers, for example, she assigns students to write an autobiographical paragraph about an early racial memory, then to read it aloud as the others listen, thus affirming the uniqueness and value of each voice and creating a communal awareness of the diversity of the group’s experiences (hooks 1994: 84). Her “engaged pedagogy” is thus similar to the “freedom under guidance” implemented in John Dewey’s Laboratory School of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It incorporates the dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring that Abrami (2015) found to be most effective in improving critical thinking skills and dispositions.

What is the relationship of critical thinking to problem solving, decision-making, higher-order thinking, creative thinking, and other recognized types of thinking? One’s answer to this question obviously depends on how one defines the terms used in the question. If critical thinking is conceived broadly to cover any careful thinking about any topic for any purpose, then problem solving and decision making will be kinds of critical thinking, if they are done carefully. Historically, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’ were two names for the same thing. If critical thinking is conceived more narrowly as consisting solely of appraisal of intellectual products, then it will be disjoint with problem solving and decision making, which are constructive.

Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives used the phrase “intellectual abilities and skills” for what had been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others (Bloom et al. 1956: 38). Thus, the so-called “higher-order thinking skills” at the taxonomy’s top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are just critical thinking skills, although they do not come with general criteria for their assessment (Ennis 1981b). The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) likewise treats critical thinking as cutting across those types of cognitive process that involve more than remembering (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270). For details, see the Supplement on History .

As to creative thinking, it overlaps with critical thinking (Bailin 1987, 1988). Thinking about the explanation of some phenomenon or event, as in Ferryboat , requires creative imagination in constructing plausible explanatory hypotheses. Likewise, thinking about a policy question, as in Candidate , requires creativity in coming up with options. Conversely, creativity in any field needs to be balanced by critical appraisal of the draft painting or novel or mathematical theory.

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• What is Critical Thinking?

The ability to think critically calls for a higher-order thinking than simply the ability to recall information.

Definitions of critical thinking, its elements, and its associated activities fill the educational literature of the past forty years. Critical thinking has been described as an ability to question; to acknowledge and test previously held assumptions; to recognize ambiguity; to examine, interpret, evaluate, reason, and reflect; to make informed judgments and decisions; and to clarify, articulate, and justify positions (Hullfish & Smith, 1961; Ennis, 1962; Ruggiero, 1975; Scriven, 1976; Hallet, 1984; Kitchener, 1986; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Mines et al., 1990; Halpern, 1996; Paul & Elder, 2001; Petress, 2004; Holyoak & Morrison, 2005; among others).

After a careful review of the mountainous body of literature defining critical thinking and its elements, UofL has chosen to adopt the language of Michael Scriven and Richard Paul (2003) as a comprehensive, concise operating definition:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

Paul and Scriven go on to suggest that critical thinking is based on: "universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue, assumptions, concepts, empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions, implication and consequences, objections from alternative viewpoints, and frame of reference. Critical thinking - in being responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes - is incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking, anthropological thinking, economic thinking, moral thinking, and philosophical thinking."

This conceptualization of critical thinking has been refined and developed further by Richard Paul and Linder Elder into the Paul-Elder framework of critical thinking. Currently, this approach is one of the most widely published and cited frameworks in the critical thinking literature. According to the Paul-Elder framework, critical thinking is the:

• Analysis of thinking by focusing on the parts or structures of thinking ("the Elements of Thought")
• Evaluation of thinking by focusing on the quality ("the Universal Intellectual Standards")
• Improvement of thinking by using what you have learned ("the Intellectual Traits")

Selection of a Critical Thinking Framework

The University of Louisville chose the Paul-Elder model of Critical Thinking as the approach to guide our efforts in developing and enhancing our critical thinking curriculum. The Paul-Elder framework was selected based on criteria adapted from the characteristics of a good model of critical thinking developed at Surry Community College. The Paul-Elder critical thinking framework is comprehensive, uses discipline-neutral terminology, is applicable to all disciplines, defines specific cognitive skills including metacognition, and offers high quality resources.

Why the selection of a single critical thinking framework?

The use of a single critical thinking framework is an important aspect of institution-wide critical thinking initiatives (Paul and Nosich, 1993; Paul, 2004). According to this view, critical thinking instruction should not be relegated to one or two disciplines or departments with discipline specific language and conceptualizations. Rather, critical thinking instruction should be explicitly infused in all courses so that critical thinking skills can be developed and reinforced in student learning across the curriculum. The use of a common approach with a common language allows for a central organizer and for the development of critical thinking skill sets in all courses.

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Critical Thinking Definition, Skills, and Examples

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Critical thinking refers to the ability to analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgment. It involves the evaluation of sources, such as data, facts, observable phenomena, and research findings.

Good critical thinkers can draw reasonable conclusions from a set of information, and discriminate between useful and less useful details to solve problems or make decisions. These skills are especially helpful at school and in the workplace, where employers prioritize the ability to think critically. Find out why and see how you can demonstrate that you have this ability.

Examples of Critical Thinking

The circumstances that demand critical thinking vary from industry to industry. Some examples include:

• A triage nurse analyzes the cases at hand and decides the order by which the patients should be treated.
• A plumber evaluates the materials that would best suit a particular job.
• An attorney reviews the evidence and devises a strategy to win a case or to decide whether to settle out of court.
• A manager analyzes customer feedback forms and uses this information to develop a customer service training session for employees.

Why Do Employers Value Critical Thinking Skills?

Employers want job candidates who can evaluate a situation using logical thought and offer the best solution.

Someone with critical thinking skills can be trusted to make decisions independently, and will not need constant handholding.

Hiring a critical thinker means that micromanaging won't be required. Critical thinking abilities are among the most sought-after skills in almost every industry and workplace. You can demonstrate critical thinking by using related keywords in your resume and cover letter and during your interview.

How to Demonstrate Critical Thinking in a Job Search

If critical thinking is a key phrase in the job listings you are applying for, be sure to emphasize your critical thinking skills throughout your job search.

Add Keywords to Your Resume

You can use critical thinking keywords (analytical, problem solving, creativity, etc.) in your resume. When describing your work history, include top critical thinking skills that accurately describe you. You can also include them in your resume summary, if you have one.

For example, your summary might read, “Marketing Associate with five years of experience in project management. Skilled in conducting thorough market research and competitor analysis to assess market trends and client needs, and to develop appropriate acquisition tactics.”

Mention Skills in Your Cover Letter

Include these critical thinking skills in your cover letter. In the body of your letter, mention one or two of these skills, and give specific examples of times when you have demonstrated them at work. Think about times when you had to analyze or evaluate materials to solve a problem.

Show the Interviewer Your Skills

You can use these skill words in an interview. Discuss a time when you were faced with a particular problem or challenge at work and explain how you applied critical thinking to solve it.

Some interviewers will give you a hypothetical scenario or problem, and ask you to use critical thinking skills to solve it. In this case, explain your thought process thoroughly to the interviewer. He or she is typically more focused on how you arrive at your solution rather than the solution itself. The interviewer wants to see you analyze and evaluate (key parts of critical thinking) the given scenario or problem.

Of course, each job will require different skills and experiences, so make sure you read the job description carefully and focus on the skills listed by the employer.

Top Critical Thinking Skills

Keep these in-demand skills in mind as you refine your critical thinking practice —whether for work or school.

Part of critical thinking is the ability to carefully examine something, whether it is a problem, a set of data, or a text. People with analytical skills can examine information, understand what it means, and properly explain to others the implications of that information.

• Asking Thoughtful Questions
• Data Analysis
• Interpretation
• Questioning Evidence
• Recognizing Patterns

Communication

Often, you will need to share your conclusions with your employers or with a group of classmates or colleagues. You need to be able to communicate with others to share your ideas effectively. You might also need to engage in critical thinking in a group. In this case, you will need to work with others and communicate effectively to figure out solutions to complex problems.

• Active Listening
• Collaboration
• Explanation
• Interpersonal
• Presentation
• Verbal Communication
• Written Communication

Critical thinking often involves creativity and innovation. You might need to spot patterns in the information you are looking at or come up with a solution that no one else has thought of before. All of this involves a creative eye that can take a different approach from all other approaches.

• Flexibility
• Conceptualization
• Imagination
• Drawing Connections
• Synthesizing

Open-Mindedness

To think critically, you need to be able to put aside any assumptions or judgments and merely analyze the information you receive. You need to be objective, evaluating ideas without bias.

• Objectivity
• Observation

Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is another critical thinking skill that involves analyzing a problem, generating and implementing a solution, and assessing the success of the plan. Employers don’t simply want employees who can think about information critically. They also need to be able to come up with practical solutions.

• Attention to Detail
• Clarification
• Decision Making
• Groundedness
• Identifying Patterns

More Critical Thinking Skills

• Inductive Reasoning
• Deductive Reasoning
• Noticing Outliers
• Adaptability
• Emotional Intelligence
• Brainstorming
• Optimization
• Restructuring
• Integration
• Strategic Planning
• Project Management
• Ongoing Improvement
• Causal Relationships
• Case Analysis
• Diagnostics
• SWOT Analysis
• Business Intelligence
• Quantitative Data Management
• Qualitative Data Management
• Risk Management
• Scientific Method
• Consumer Behavior

Key Takeaways

• Demonstrate you have critical thinking skills by adding relevant keywords to your resume.
• Mention pertinent critical thinking skills in your cover letter, too, and include an example of a time when you demonstrated them at work.
• Finally, highlight critical thinking skills during your interview. For instance, you might discuss a time when you were faced with a challenge at work and explain how you applied critical thinking skills to solve it.

University of Louisville. " What is Critical Thinking ."

American Management Association. " AMA Critical Skills Survey: Workers Need Higher Level Skills to Succeed in the 21st Century ."

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Critical thinking

Advice and resources to help you develop your critical voice.

Developing critical thinking skills is essential to your success at University and beyond.  We all need to be critical thinkers to help us navigate our way through an information-rich world. 

Whatever your discipline, you will engage with a wide variety of sources of information and evidence.  You will develop the skills to make judgements about this evidence to form your own views and to present your views clearly.

One of the most common types of feedback received by students is that their work is ‘too descriptive’.  This usually means that they have just stated what others have said and have not reflected critically on the material.  They have not evaluated the evidence and constructed an argument.

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is the art of making clear, reasoned judgements based on interpreting, understanding, applying and synthesising evidence gathered from observation, reading and experimentation. Burns, T., & Sinfield, S. (2016)  Essential Study Skills: The Complete Guide to Success at University (4th ed.) London: SAGE, p94.

Being critical does not just mean finding fault.  It means assessing evidence from a variety of sources and making reasoned conclusions.  As a result of your analysis you may decide that a particular piece of evidence is not robust, or that you disagree with the conclusion, but you should be able to state why you have come to this view and incorporate this into a bigger picture of the literature.

Being critical goes beyond describing what you have heard in lectures or what you have read.  It involves synthesising, analysing and evaluating what you have learned to develop your own argument or position.

Critical thinking is important in all subjects and disciplines – in science and engineering, as well as the arts and humanities.  The types of evidence used to develop arguments may be very different but the processes and techniques are similar.  Critical thinking is required for both undergraduate and postgraduate levels of study.

What, where, when, who, why, how?

Purposeful reading can help with critical thinking because it encourages you to read actively rather than passively.  When you read, ask yourself questions about what you are reading and make notes to record your views.  Ask questions like:

• What is the main point of this paper/ article/ paragraph/ report/ blog?
• Who wrote it?
• Why was it written?
• When was it written?
• Has the context changed since it was written?
• Is the evidence presented robust?
• How did the authors come to their conclusions?
• Do you agree with the conclusions?
• What does this add to our knowledge?
• Why is it useful?

Our web page covering Reading at university includes a handout to help you develop your own critical reading form and a suggested reading notes record sheet.  These resources will help you record your thoughts after you read, which will help you to construct your argument. 

Reading at university

Developing an argument

Being a university student is about learning how to think, not what to think.  Critical thinking shapes your own values and attitudes through a process of deliberating, debating and persuasion.   Through developing your critical thinking you can move on from simply disagreeing to constructively assessing alternatives by building on doubts.

There are several key stages involved in developing your ideas and constructing an argument.  You might like to use a form to help you think about the features of critical thinking and to break down the stages of developing your argument.

Features of critical thinking (pdf)

Features of critical thinking (Word rtf)

Our webpage on Academic writing includes a useful handout ‘Building an argument as you go’.

Academic writing

You should also consider the language you will use to introduce a range of viewpoints and to evaluate the various sources of evidence.  This will help your reader to follow your argument.  To get you started, the University of Manchester's Academic Phrasebank has a useful section on Being Critical. 

Academic Phrasebank

Developing your critical thinking

Set yourself some tasks to help develop your critical thinking skills.  Discuss material presented in lectures or from resource lists with your peers.  Set up a critical reading group or use an online discussion forum.  Think about a point you would like to make during discussions in tutorials and be prepared to back up your argument with evidence.

For more suggestions:

Developing your critical thinking - ideas (pdf)

Developing your critical thinking - ideas (Word rtf)

Published guides

For further advice and more detailed resources please see the Critical Thinking section of our list of published Study skills guides.

Study skills guides  

This article was published on 2024-02-26

Introduction to Critical Thinking Skills

• First Online: 04 September 2024

Cite this chapter

• K. Venkat Reddy 3 &
• G. Suvarna Lakshmi 4  

This chapter contains summaries of six articles that are machine generated. The summaries discuss the multitude ways in which the field of critical thinking has been understood and defined. Mostly the summaries included in the chapter project the view that critical thinking is all about certain cognitive abilities belonging to the higher order of thinking. The first summary explains the definition of critical thinking using a meta-level approach; it uses this approach because the problem of defining critical thinking is a meta-problem. The authors argue that the definitions proposed earlier were either subject-specific or skill-specific resulting in definitions that are neither universally applicable nor acceptable. The authors therefore have attempted to propose an approach that has three proper criteria that the definition should satisfy. They are: (1) rely on criteria, (2) self-correcting, and (3) sensitive to context. The summary of the second article on the skills required for the twenty-first-century education is based on the lists of skills proposed by various bodies that are broadly categorized as productive, critical, and creative thinking along with digital skills. The author proposes that the curriculum should incorporate skills that are required as per the current pace of change and the need of the hour.

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Reddy, K.V., Lakshmi, G.S. (2024). Introduction to Critical Thinking Skills. In: Reddy, K.V., Lakshmi, G.S. (eds) Critical Thinking for Professional and Language Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37951-2_1

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critical thinking

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• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Critical Thinking
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critical thinking , in educational theory, mode of cognition using deliberative reasoning and impartial scrutiny of information to arrive at a possible solution to a problem. From the perspective of educators, critical thinking encompasses both a set of logical skills that can be taught and a disposition toward reflective open inquiry that can be cultivated . The term critical thinking was coined by American philosopher and educator John Dewey in the book How We Think (1910) and was adopted by the progressive education movement as a core instructional goal that offered a dynamic modern alternative to traditional educational methods such as rote memorization.

Critical thinking is characterized by a broad set of related skills usually including the abilities to

• break down a problem into its constituent parts to reveal its underlying logic and assumptions
• recognize and account for one’s own biases in judgment and experience
• collect and assess relevant evidence from either personal observations and experimentation or by gathering external information
• adjust and reevaluate one’s own thinking in response to what one has learned
• form a reasoned assessment in order to propose a solution to a problem or a more accurate understanding of the topic at hand

Theorists have noted that such skills are only valuable insofar as a person is inclined to use them. Consequently, they emphasize that certain habits of mind are necessary components of critical thinking. This disposition may include curiosity, open-mindedness, self-awareness, empathy , and persistence.

Although there is a generally accepted set of qualities that are associated with critical thinking, scholarly writing about the term has highlighted disagreements over its exact definition and whether and how it differs from related concepts such as problem solving . In addition, some theorists have insisted that critical thinking be regarded and valued as a process and not as a goal-oriented skill set to be used to solve problems. Critical-thinking theory has also been accused of reflecting patriarchal assumptions about knowledge and ways of knowing that are inherently biased against women.

Dewey, who also used the term reflective thinking , connected critical thinking to a tradition of rational inquiry associated with modern science . From the turn of the 20th century, he and others working in the overlapping fields of psychology , philosophy , and educational theory sought to rigorously apply the scientific method to understand and define the process of thinking. They conceived critical thinking to be related to the scientific method but more open, flexible, and self-correcting; instead of a recipe or a series of steps, critical thinking would be a wider set of skills, patterns, and strategies that allow someone to reason through an intellectual topic, constantly reassessing assumptions and potential explanations in order to arrive at a sound judgment and understanding.

In the progressive education movement in the United States , critical thinking was seen as a crucial component of raising citizens in a democratic society. Instead of imparting a particular series of lessons or teaching only canonical subject matter, theorists thought that teachers should train students in how to think. As critical thinkers, such students would be equipped to be productive and engaged citizens who could cooperate and rationally overcome differences inherent in a pluralistic society.

Beginning in the 1970s and ’80s, critical thinking as a key outcome of school and university curriculum leapt to the forefront of U.S. education policy. In an atmosphere of renewed Cold War competition and amid reports of declining U.S. test scores, there were growing fears that the quality of education in the United States was falling and that students were unprepared. In response, a concerted effort was made to systematically define curriculum goals and implement standardized testing regimens , and critical-thinking skills were frequently included as a crucially important outcome of a successful education. A notable event in this movement was the release of the 1980 report of the Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities that called for the U.S. Department of Education to include critical thinking on its list of “basic skills.” Three years later the California State University system implemented a policy that required every undergraduate student to complete a course in critical thinking.

Critical thinking continued to be put forward as a central goal of education in the early 21st century. Its ubiquity in the language of education policy and in such guidelines as the Common Core State Standards in the United States generated some criticism that the concept itself was both overused and ill-defined. In addition, an argument was made by teachers, theorists, and others that educators were not being adequately trained to teach critical thinking.

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1 – Critical Thinking

Since ancient times, the concept of critical thinking has been associated with persuasive communication, usually in the form of speeches, scholarly texts, and literature.

Today, there are many vehicles for information and ideas, but the elements of critical thinking in a university context still bear strong influences from early scholarly writing and oration.

Definition of Critical Thinking

“Critical Thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

Source: https://louisville.edu/ideastoaction/about/criticalthinking/what

Critical thinking may seem very abstract in  definitions such as the one above, but it is, above all,  an action . One source says critical thinking “is about being an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information” ( Skills You Need)   Most college curricula are designed to develop critical thinking.

“Critical thinkers rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value … They will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments, and findings represent the entire picture and are open to the possibility that they do not. It is more than the accumulation of facts, it is a way of thinking.”

                                                                                                                                   ( Source: Skills You Need )

In her article, “Why Are Critical Thinking Skills Necessary for Academics?,” journalist Jen Saunders  says, “universities concern the ways in which people research and write; their members are responsible for maintaining the foundational principles of truth and knowledge within the folds of scholarship, and permit scholars to grasp and comprehend academic subjects at levels of expertise.” ( https://classroom.synonym.com/ )

Saunders provides this information on the specific ways that critical thinking is important in  college-level work:

• Critical thinking supplies the foundation of high-quality academic writing.
• Peer awareness is an element of critical thinking in that it helps students understand and communicate with those who have different experiences, opinions, and perspectives.
• Critical thinking are necessary for passing some exams (e.g.,  essay answer, a series of multiple-choice questions to test comprehension, and especially situations where students must look for context clues or decipher word elements).
• When students are required to defend a thesis or dissertation, they need to be able to anticipate questions and respond on the spot to those asked by committee members.

Author and master teacher Michael Stratford (Demand Media), in his article, “What Are the Key Ideas for Critical Thinking Skills?”,  and the website, Skills You Need, note that someone with critical thinking skills can:

• Interpret data – becoming aware of all of the parts of an argument, such as point of view, audience, and thesis as well as reasoning through moral dilemmas
• Analyze and synthesize –  the ability to break down data into individual parts and reassemble them to create something original
• Infer and answer :  the ability to explain a problem with an inference, or educated guess. This requires knowing the difference between explaining by inference or by assumptions based on previous ideas
• Make Connections between ideas from varied sources
• Recognize, build, and appraise arguments put forth by others and determine their importance and relevance through objective evaluation
• Spot inconsistencies and errors in reasoning
• Approach problems consistently and systematically
• Reflect on the justification of one’s own assumptions, beliefs, and values

Indeed.com ., a service for finding jobs and polishing a resume, provides the following information about critical thinking. Their website offers five types of skills are important:

Five Important Critical Thinking Skills

Observation.

Observational skills are important for critical thinking because they help you to notice opportunities, problems, and solutions.  Eventually, good observers can predict  or anticipate problems or issues because their experience widens when they get in the habit of close observation. It is necessary to train yourself to pay close attention to details.

After you have spotted and identified a problem from your observation, your analytical skills become important: You must determine what part of a text or media is important and which parts are not. In other words,  gathering and evaluating sources of information that may support or depart from your text or media. This may involve a search for balanced research reports or scholarly work, and asking good questions about the text or media to make sure it is accurate and objective.

Now that you have gathered information or data, you must now interpret it and find a solution or resolution.  Even though the information you have may be incomplete, just make an “educated guess,” rather than a quick conclusion.  Look for clues (images, symbolism, data charts, or reports) that will help you analyze a situation, so you can evaluate the text or situation and come to a measured conclusion.

COMMUNICATION

In the context of critical thinking, this means engaging or initiating discussions, particularly on difficult issues or questions, especially when you face an audience that you know disagrees with your position. Use your communication skills to persuade them. Active listening, remaining calm, and showing respect are very important elements of communicating with an audience.

PROBLEM SOLVING

The problem-solving part of critical thinking involves applying or executing a conclusion or solution. You will want to choose the best, so this requires a strong understanding of your topic or goal, as well as some idea of how others have handled similar situations.

Essential “Critical” Vocabulary

[Source:  ( https://www.espressoenglish.net/difference-between-criticize-criticism-critique-critic-and-critical/]

Now let’s examine the many ways the word “critical” is used in various academic contents. You might be familiar with movie reviews or customer reviews on products in which a critic offers comments.  Below are some reviews of a long-standing Chinese restaurant in Columbus, Hunan Lion:

• The restaurant is over priced. You pay for the atmosphere. Ordered the beef and oriental veggies and to be honest it was onions and 3 pieces of broccoli. The meat was fatty and that is the worst. Typically the food is good but last night it wasn’t.
• 35 years of incredible food. By far the best Chinese restaurant in Columbus. If you want to have a great experience, without a doubt go there, you will love it.
• We ordered take out 10/01/2020. Food was TERRIBLE! The Crab Rangoon…well it’s not crab and I’m not sure of the texture it had going on but it was disgusting! The entire order of food after 1 bite went in the trash! I will certainly spread the word DO NOT ORDER FOOD from this restaurant! They are expensive and you are wasting your money. The girl at the cash register surpasses RUDE.
• The food and service were fantastic! We were in on Christmas day, and despite being busy, they did a magnificent job. We will definitely be back!

These reviews were voluntary; nevertheless, the writers of them are considered “critics,” because what they are really offering is judgment.

In a professional or academic setting, critics do much more than give a strong opinion. Whether they offer positive or negative comments, they all try to do so as objectively as possible. In other words, they avoid Personal Bias, meaning they try not to rely exclusively on their personal experiences, but rather they include influences from people, environments, cultures, values, stereotypes, and beliefs.

It is worth noting that all of these influences are part of being human. Part of critical thinking, however, means acknowledging the impact your own biases may have on the questions you ask or your interpreting of material; then, learn to overcome these evaluations. You must be like a judge in a courtroom:  you have to try to be fair and leave your own feeling out of the situation.

Activity #1:, inference exercise, harper’s is the oldest general-interest monthly magazine in the u.s. it emphasizes excellent writing and unique and varied perspectives. one of its most celebrated features is the “harper’s index,” which is a collection of random statistics about  politics, business, human behavior, social trends, research findings, and so forth. the reader is left alone to make sense of a fact by using inferences and background knowledge., below are some statistics from “harper’s index.” it is up to you to decide what each statistic suggests. something surprising mysterious what could explain its significance.

Choose a few of the facts below and write a response for each in which you raise questions , offer a possible explanation , or propose a tentative theory to explain the fact, or its significance.  Consider what the statistic suggests beyond what is written. Your response should be your own opinion , without consulting any internet resources or others.

Example:    Percentage increase last year in UFO sightings nationwide:   16% Source: [ July 2021 • Source: National UFO Reporting Center (Davenport,Wash.)] Response: Is this a large or small increase? Maybe the  increase is due to the recent U.S. government’s release of a file on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), or, what they call, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” Maybe people feel like they can admit to seeing such phenomena since the government now acknowledges their existence? In the recent past, perhaps people would be laughed at or stigmatized if they claimed to see a UFO because the government and general public believed the idea of “alien life forms”  was ridiculous.

Percentage by which the unemployment rate of recently graduated U.S. physics majors exceeds that of art history majors:  60%

Source:  November 2020 • Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York

ACTIVITY #2 – LINKING FACTS

Sometimes the “Harper’s Index” features pairs of statistics.  It is up to you to decide what the pair, seen together, suggests. Select a couple of the pairs below and write down questions you may have, or possible explanations that tell why the pair might be significant.  Consider what the statistic suggests beyond what is written. What you write should be your own opinion , without consulting any internet resources or others.

Type your response below each set:

Movie Reviews

One of the most familiar types of criticism we encounter is a movie review,  a short description of a film and the reviewer’s opinion about it. When you watch a movie on Netflix, for example, you can see the number of stars (1-5) given by those who have watched and rated the movie. Professional reviewers usually try to give a formal, balanced account of a movie, meaning they usually provide a summary and point out some positive and negative points about a film. Amateur critics, however, can write whatever they like – all positive, all negative, or a combination.

Amateur film critiques can be found in many places; the movie review site, IMDB , is one of the most popular, with a user-generated rating feature.  Another popular site is Rotten Tomatoes, which uses a unique ‘tomato meter’ to rate movies: a green tomato means fresh while red means rotten. You can also view the individual ratings given by critics. It has more than 50,000 movies in its database. And finally, another good source of movie reviews is Metacritic , which offers a collection of reviews from various sources.

Let’s look at this review by professional movie critic Roger Ebert ( https://www.rogerebert.com/

In “Top Gun: Maverick,” a sequel to “ Top Gun, ” an admiral refers to navy aviator Pete Mitchell (Tom Cruise)—call sign “ Maverick ”—as “the fastest man alive.” Truth be told, our fearless and ever-handsome action hero earns both appraisals and applause.  Indeed, Cruise’s consistent commitment to Hollywood showmanship deserves the same level of respect usually reserved for the fully-method actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis . Even if you somehow overlook the fact that Cruise is one of our most gifted and versatile dramatic and comedic actors with movies like “ Mission Impossible , ”  “ Born on the Fourth of July ,” “ Magnolia ,” “ Tropic Thunder ,” and “ Collateral ” on his CV, you will never forget why you show up to a Tom Cruise movie.

Director Joseph Kosinski allows the leading actor to be exactly what he is—a star—while upping the emotional and dramatic stakes of the first Top Gun (1986) with a healthy dose of nostalgia.  In this Top Gun sequel, we find Maverick in a role on the fringes of the US Navy, working as a test pilot. You won’t be surprised that soon enough, he gets called on a one-last-job type of mission as a teacher to a group of recent training graduates. Their assignment is just as obscure and politically cuckoo as it was in the first movie. There is an unnamed enemy—let’s called it Russia because it’s probably Russia—some targets that need to be destroyed, a flight plan that sounds nuts, and a scheme that will require all successful Top Gun recruits to fly at dangerously low altitudes. But can it be done?

In a different package, all the proud fist-shaking seen in “Top Gun: Maverick” could have been borderline insufferable, but fortunately Kosinski seems to understand exactly what kind of movie he is asked to navigate. In his hands, the tone of “Maverick” strikes a fine balance between good-humored vanity and half-serious self-deprecation, complete with plenty of emotional moments that catch one off-guard.

In some sense, what this movie takes most seriously are concepts like friendship, loyalty, romance, and okay, bromance.  Still, the action sequences are likewise the breathtaking stars of “Maverick.” Reportedly, all the flying scenes were shot in actual U.S. Navy F/A-18s, for which the cast had to be trained. Equally worthy of that big screen is the emotional strokes of “Maverick” that pack an unexpected punch. Sure, you might be prepared for a second sky-dance with “Maverick,” but perhaps not one that might require a tissue or two in its final stretch.

Available in theaters May 27th, 2022

ACTIVITY #3 – BEING A CRITIC

Analyze the film review above.  Does the reviewer give the movie a strongly positive or negative review? A mildly positive or negative review? A balanced review? How can you tell?  Support your opinion by identifying words, phases, and/or comparisons that directly or indirectly are positive, negative, or neutral.

ACTIVITY #4 – WRITE A MOVIE REVIEW

Select a movie to review. Choose one you either love or hate. (If it evokes emotions, it’s usually easier to review.) You may choose any movie, but for this assignment, don’t choose a film that might upset your target audience – your instructor and classmates. A movie review can be long or short.  Usually a simple outline of the plot and a sentence or two about the general setting in which it takes place will be sufficient, then add your opinion and analysis. The opinion section should be the main focus of your review. Don’t get too detailed. Your instructor will determine the word limit of this assignment.

Suggestions:

Do a web search to find information about the film: is it based on real-life events or is it fiction?

Find some information about the director and his/her/their style.

Look for information about the cast, the budget, the filming location, and where the idea for the film’s story came from. In other words, why did the producers want to make the movie?

Be sure to keep notes on where you find each piece of information – its source.  Most of the facts about movies are considered common knowledge, so they don’t have to be included in your review.

Avoid reading other reviews. They might influence your opinion, and that kind of information needs to be cited in a review.

When you are watching the film make notes of important scenes or details, symbolism, or the performances of the characters. You may want to analyze these in detail later. Again, keep notes on the source of the information you find.

Don’t give away the ending! Remember, reviews help readers decide whether or not to watch the movie. No spoilers!

Suggested Steps:

Write an introduction where you include all the basic information so that the film can be easily identified. Note the name, the director, main cast, and the characters in the story, along with the year it was made. Briefly provide the main idea of the film.

Write the main body. Analyze the story, the acting, and the director’s style. Discuss anything you would have done differently, a technique that was successful, or dialogue that was important. In other words, here is where you convey your opinion and the reasons for it. You may choose to analyze in detail one scene from the film that made an impression on you, or you may focus on an actor’s performance, or the film’s setting, music, light, character development, or dialogu

Make a conclusion. Search for several reviews of the film. Include how the film was rated by others. You will need to include information about where you found the information. Then, give your own opinion and your recommendation. You can end with a reason the audience might enjoy it or a reason you do not recommend it. Include a summary of the reasons you recommend or do not recommend it.

[Source:  https://academichelp.net/academic-assignments/review/write-film-review.html]

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References:

10 Top Critical Thinking Skills (and how to improve them).(2022).   Indeed.com: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/critical-thinking-skills

Difference between criticize, criticism, critique, critic, and critical. Espresso English : https://www.espressoenglish.net/difference-between-criticize-criticism-critique-critic-and-critical/

Hansen, R.S. (n.d.).  Ways in which college is different from high school.  My CollegeSuccessStory.com .

Ideas to Action. Critical Thinking Inventories. University of Louisville:  https:// louisville.edu/ideastoaction/about/criticalthinking/what

Saunders, J. (n.d.). “Why Are Critical Thinking Skills Necessary for Academics?,” Demand Media.

Stratford, M. (n.d. ) What are the key ideas for critical thinking skills? Demand Media .

Van Zyl, M.A., Bays, C.L., & Gilchrist, C. (2013). Assessing teaching critical thinking with validated critical thinking inventories: The learning critical thinking inventory (LCTI) and the teaching critical thinking inventory (TCTI). Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across The Discipline , 28(3), 40-50.

What is Critical Thinking? (n.d.). Skills You Need : https://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/critical-thinking.html

Write a Film Review. Academic Help: Write Better : https://academichelp.net/academic-assignments/review/write-film-review.html

Critical Reading, Writing, and Thinking Copyright © 2022 by Zhenjie Weng, Josh Burlile, Karen Macbeth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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critical thinking

Definition of critical thinking

Examples of critical thinking in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'critical thinking.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1815, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Dictionary Entries Near critical thinking

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Critical Thinking & Communication

Critical thinking and communication are closely related. If you aren’t able to think critically about problems, information, and obstacles as they relate to your relationships, the media you consume, and the conversations you have, you are set up to fail. If you can’t think critically, communication won’t be as good as it possibly can be. Good critical thinking directly influences the quality and nature of the messages you send, the conversations you have, the decisions you make, and the overall quality of your communication interactions.

Critical thinking helps communication improve. Good communication influences critical thinking.

“Critical Thinking” means getting beyond just the surface-level questions about a topic or subject during a conversation or discussion. Think of critical thinking as interrogating and investigating an idea, a current state, or a potential solution on the merits of its rigor and its usefulness. If you can’t “think critically” well, you’re quite simply at a disadvantage when you communicate. There is a steamroller of disinformation out there, tricky people everywhere, and there are important decisions all over the place! Better critical thinking helps you to analyze problems more adeptly, helps to create better connections with people, and achieves more positive, productive outcomes.

Critical thinking is an active process. You have to make a willful, conscious decision to engage in it. It’s a skill that needs to be exercised and practiced. It doesn’t just happen automatically. You have to put your critical thinking hat on and leave it on, almost quite literally. It can protect and shield you from all the bad ideas that are out there.

So what does better critical thinking get us? So what?  

What Does Critical Thinking Get Us?

Critical thinking, done in good faith, results in better outputs (ideas, conversations, relationships). Critical thinking leads to better communication outcomes. This goes both for you individually, for pairs of people, and for collective groups. It’s our human gift to be able to more rigorously interrogate ideas, thoroughly vet outcomes, and collaborate with people to create better outcomes. More critical thinking simply cannot be bad.

Critical thinking isn’t required only about big, obvious problems either. Of course, we should think critically collectively about the large problems that face us (Police Reform, for example). That’s obvious. Similarly, of course, it’s in your interest to think critically about problems and challenges, say, at your job. But we’re constantly faced with an array of problems, large and small. These problems happen at large scales with problems that are beyond any one person and they are the more simple sorts of relational problems that can be solved between two people with just slightly more close, dedicated effort.

So, how can we think critically, better?

Critical Thinking Explained

Critical thinking is essentially a purposeful process of asking questions. We can start by thinking of questions in standard categories: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. Some questions to ask yourself to stimulate critical thinking:

Who         … benefits from this?

                … is harmed?

                … makes the decision?

                … is directly affected? In what ways?

                … if anyone, would be a good person to consult?

What         … are the strengths/weaknesses?

                … is another perspective or a good alternative?

                … would be a counterargument?

                … is most important/least important?

                … is blocking us?

                … can we do to make a positive change?

Where      … could we learn from others?

                … can we get more information?

                … to improve?

                … could we get help?

                … will this idea take us?

When       … will we know we’ve succeeded?

                … can we expect to see change?

                … should we ask for help?

                … could this cause a problem?

                … should we revisit this issue to assess?

Why         … do we think this is a problem?

                … is this relevant to me (or us)?

                … is this the best solution for now?

                … has it been this way for so long?

                … have we allowed this to happen?

How          … does this benefit me, us, or others?

                … does this harm me, us, or others?

                … does this change things?

                … do we know the truth about this?

You can ask those you’re communicating with — or yourself — any of these questions or any combination of them. You can also come up with similar questions! These are just a guide to help get you started. There’s no limit to the amount or quality of good questions you can ask. Sprinkle these into your conversations and discussions as appropriate.

These questions, while decent inspiration, are quite stiff. “When should we revisit this issue to assess?” sounds halting and jerky. You’re not a robot, are you? Don’t ask it like that! Try to sound human. Say something like “Hey, uh, everybody? When can we follow up on this in a week or so to uhh, you know, check we’re doing alright?” You know, how people talk.  

The Shape of Critical Thinking

Good critical thinking interrogates an idea or problem purposefully, whether that is individually or together. Hopefully, this is done in the spirit of making progress. In practice, what critical thinking looks like can vary. There’s no one way to perform critical thinking to be proper, thorough, or fair.

What’s more, is that critical thinking isn’t just for relationships and the problems we face in them. Critical thinking is, at an even broader level, often about our human relationships with information: as we consume it, as we interact with it (and people spewing it off), and as we sift through the bombardments of information, advertisements, and messages that constantly pelt us like radioactive symbolic fallout. Critical thinking is your built-in BS detector.

Critical thinking is a tool for life. Use that brain evolution gave you! We should all strive to be better critical thinkers. Question things: authority, motive, tactics, perspective. Question it all, especially those in power and people trying to sell you things.  

A Few Words About Emotions

Critical thinking isn’t a purely rational process. There is no such thing as a purely rational process. Beware those trumpeting their “rationality,” and their humanity has likely been corrupted. Emotions are real and powerful. They are relevant and even central when you’re hashing out difficult problems with people. Interrogating others (and yourself) can be emotionally challenging. That’s ok. That’s exactly part of the process of communicating and part of critical thinking. Try to embrace and express authentic emotions appropriately, knowing full well that what’s “appropriate” is always shifting and political . Emotive expressions, when listened to, are evidence of systemic problems that lie beneath. Strive to be flexible and open to the authentic expressions of others. You can’t tell people in pain to suppress emotions.  

Critical thinking is hard. We don’t do it enough. It’s easy to *not* do it because you have to actively engage  in its practice. The residuals of evolution are pulling you in the other direction. Your monkey brain wants shortcuts, but you have to fight against this. Critical thinking improves communication. Good communication influences critical thinking. The relationship is reciprocal.

Hashing out an idea with someone, and critical thinking with them, is bond-forming. When you can rigorously vet and work out an idea or problem with another person, regardless of the size type, or shape of that problem, you are forming a bond with them. You are connecting. You are making something better. Engage in it. Surrender to the process. Get in there and mix it up.

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Our Concept and Definition of Critical Thinking

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• What Is Critical Thinking? | Definition & Examples

What Is Critical Thinking? | Definition & Examples

Published on 25 September 2022 by Eoghan Ryan .

Critical thinking is the ability to effectively analyse information and form a judgement.

To think critically, you must be aware of your own biases and assumptions when encountering information, and apply consistent standards when evaluating sources .

Critical thinking skills help you to:

• Identify credible sources
• Evaluate and respond to arguments
• Assess alternative viewpoints
• Test hypotheses against relevant criteria

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Table of contents

Why is critical thinking important, critical thinking examples, how to think critically, frequently asked questions.

Critical thinking is important for making judgements about sources of information and forming your own arguments. It emphasises a rational, objective, and self-aware approach that can help you to identify credible sources and strengthen your conclusions.

Critical thinking is important in all disciplines and throughout all stages of the research process . The types of evidence used in the sciences and in the humanities may differ, but critical thinking skills are relevant to both.

In an academic context, critical thinking can help you to determine whether a source:

• Is free from research bias
• Provides evidence to support its findings
• Considers alternative viewpoints

Outside of academia, critical thinking goes hand in hand with information literacy to help you form opinions rationally and engage independently and critically with popular media.

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Critical thinking can help you to identify reliable sources of information that you can cite in your research paper . It can also guide your own research methods and inform your own arguments.

Outside of academia, critical thinking can help you to be aware of both your own and others’ biases and assumptions.

Academic examples

However, when you compare the findings of the study with other current research, you determine that the results seem improbable. You analyse the paper again, consulting the sources it cites.

You notice that the research was funded by the pharmaceutical company that created the treatment. Because of this, you view its results skeptically and determine that more independent research is necessary to confirm or refute them. Example: Poor critical thinking in an academic context You’re researching a paper on the impact wireless technology has had on developing countries that previously did not have large-scale communications infrastructure. You read an article that seems to confirm your hypothesis: the impact is mainly positive. Rather than evaluating the research methodology, you accept the findings uncritically.

Nonacademic examples

However, you decide to compare this review article with consumer reviews on a different site. You find that these reviews are not as positive. Some customers have had problems installing the alarm, and some have noted that it activates for no apparent reason.

You revisit the original review article. You notice that the words ‘sponsored content’ appear in small print under the article title. Based on this, you conclude that the review is advertising and is therefore not an unbiased source. Example: Poor critical thinking in a nonacademic context You support a candidate in an upcoming election. You visit an online news site affiliated with their political party and read an article that criticizes their opponent. The article claims that the opponent is inexperienced in politics. You accept this without evidence, because it fits your preconceptions about the opponent.

There is no single way to think critically. How you engage with information will depend on the type of source you’re using and the information you need.

However, you can engage with sources in a systematic and critical way by asking certain questions when you encounter information. Like the CRAAP test , these questions focus on the currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose of a source of information.

When encountering information, ask:

• Who is the author? Are they an expert in their field?
• What do they say? Is their argument clear? Can you summarise it?
• When did they say this? Is the source current?
• Where is the information published? Is it an academic article? Is it a blog? A newspaper article?
• Why did the author publish it? What is their motivation?
• How do they make their argument? Is it backed up by evidence? Does it rely on opinion, speculation, or appeals to emotion ? Do they address alternative arguments?

Critical thinking also involves being aware of your own biases, not only those of others. When you make an argument or draw your own conclusions, you can ask similar questions about your own writing:

• Am I only considering evidence that supports my preconceptions?
• Is my argument expressed clearly and backed up with credible sources?
• Would I be convinced by this argument coming from someone else?

Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

Critical thinking skills include the ability to:

You can assess information and arguments critically by asking certain questions about the source. You can use the CRAAP test , focusing on the currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose of a source of information.

Ask questions such as:

• Who is the author? Are they an expert?
• How do they make their argument? Is it backed up by evidence?

A credible source should pass the CRAAP test  and follow these guidelines:

• The information should be up to date and current.
• The author and publication should be a trusted authority on the subject you are researching.
• The sources the author cited should be easy to find, clear, and unbiased.
• For a web source, the URL and layout should signify that it is trustworthy.

Information literacy refers to a broad range of skills, including the ability to find, evaluate, and use sources of information effectively.

Being information literate means that you:

• Know how to find credible sources
• Use relevant sources to inform your research
• Understand what constitutes plagiarism
• Know how to cite your sources correctly

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Article contents

Post-truth and critical communication studies.

• Jayson Harsin Jayson Harsin Department of Global Communication, American University of Paris
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.757
• Published online: 20 December 2018

While the periodizing concept “post-truth” (PT) initially appeared in the United States as a key word of popular politics in the form “post-truth politics” or “post-truth society,” it quickly appeared in many languages. It is now the object of increasing scholarly attention and public debate. Its popular and academic treatments sometimes differ in respect to its meaning, but most associate it with communication forms such as fake or false news, rumors, hoaxes, and political lying. They also identify causes such as polarization and unethical politicians or unregulated social media; shoddy journalism; or simply the inevitable chaos ushered in by digital media technologies. PT is sometimes posited as a social and political condition whereby citizens or audiences and politicians no longer respect truth (e.g., climate science deniers or “birthers”) but simply accept as true what they believe or feel. However, more rigorously, PT is actually a breakdown of social trust, which encompasses what was formerly the major institutional truth-teller or publicist—the news media. What is accepted as popular truth is really a weak form of knowledge, opinion based on trust in those who supposedly know. Critical communication approaches locate its historical legacy in the earliest forms of political persuasion and questions of ethics and epistemology, such as those raised by Plato in the Gorgias . While there are timeless similarities, PT is a 21st-century phenomenon. It is not “after” truth but after a historical period where interlocking elite institutions were discoverers, producers, and gatekeepers of truth, accepted by social trust (the church, science, governments, the school, etc.). Critical scholars have identified a more complex historical set of factors, to which popular proposed solutions have been mostly blind. Modern origins of PT lie in the anxious elite negotiation of mass representative liberal democracy with proposals for organizing and deploying mass communication technologies. These elites consisted of pioneers in the influence or persuasion industries, closely associated with government and political practice and funding, and university research. These influence industries were increasingly accepted not just by business but also by (resource-rich) professional political actors. Their object was not policy education and argument to constituents but, increasingly strategically, emotion and attention management. PT can usefully be understood in the context of its historical emergence, through its popular forms and responses, such as rumors, conspiracies, hoaxes, fake news, fact-checking, and filter bubbles, as well as through its multiple effects—not the least of which the discourse of panic about it.

• fact-checking
• disinformation
• attention economy
• political communication
• communication and critical studies

Post-truth (PT) is a periodizing concept (Green, 1995 ; Besserman, 1998 ) that refers to a historically particular public anxiety about public truth claims and authority to be a legitimate public truth-teller. However, the term is potentially misleading for at least two major reasons. First, it pertains to two different but related forms of truth: honesty, on the one hand, and factuality and knowledge (justified belief), on the other. Second, PT presents definitional problems similar to other grand periodizing concepts (e.g., modernity and modernism, postmodernity and postmodernism; industrial and postindustrial; traditional and post-traditional). It is sometimes interpreted as a time beyond, after or without truth, which could not be farther from the truth. Post-truth’s historical and cultural aspect related to shifting power relations and strategies make it an especially fertile subject for critical communication study.

How can PT be empirically known? It can be recognized in constant discursive obsession with and accusation of dishonesty, especially lying, and by the public anxiety and distrust it generates. It lies in the frequency and volume of the increasing amounts of labor to produce and attempt to debunk or clarify inaccurate or deceptive statements, the proliferation of “fact-checking” and rumor or hoax debunking organizations, usually individual businesses or wings of news organizations; it lies in the market for them, too (Graves & Cherubini, 2016 ). It lies in numerous international surveys measuring distrust (of multiple institutions and actors). It lies in a culture saturated with artifice and promotionalism. It lies in the material impact of false or intentionally misleading claims and the emotionalized public opinion they generate, from demands to and then release of a president’s full birth certificate, to rumors of a candidate’s child sex slavery ring in a Washington, DC, pizza parlor, resulting in armed confrontation. It lies in the documentation of politics and business built around the deception of artificial intelligence (bots), whose armies present the mirage of popularity or of supporters who sear their targets with brands of repugnance and chimerical flaws. It also lies in the industry of political consulting (now heavily informed by cognitive science and big data analytics, corresponding to emotionally pin-pointed, demographically microtargeted influence strategies and practices). These are a few of the ways that one empirically encounters what is being named as PT, though scholars are only beginning to provide the important critical analytical and theoretical work to explain how it is shot through with power relations and struggles.

Critical Theoretical and Philosophical Precedents

Overall, while some themes and a tradition of critique toward authoritative truth claims from the Enlightenment to its critics in Marxism and postmodernism are consistent with many aspects of PT sociopolitical conditions and theory, they differ in major ways with regard to who or what is the subject and object of (dis-)trust in the authority to (re-)present truth and use it for political purposes. They also differ greatly in their explanations for shifts in dynamics of authority, trust, and truth-telling/-believing, PT being closely associated with cognitive scientific, technological, and ethical explanations.

Enlightenment thought, in both its rationalist and empiricist strands, critiqued powerful traditional institutions of truth-telling, which it viewed as highly superstitious, yet having a monopoly on means to enforce their theories and (rationally indefensible) truth claims. Their targets of critique ranged from the relationship of religious truth to theories of human potential for thinking and political practice associated with critiques of monarchy and aristocratic class systems (Bristow, 2017 ; Israel, 2001 ).

In its questioning and politicizing of representations of reality, the Marxist tradition of ideological critique also resonates with PT theory and the world that it describes. This tradition, which runs through influential theorists such as Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Stuart Hall, and Slavoj Žižek, among others, takes as a starting point Marx’s idea that people become aware of class conflict in capitalism through its broad cultural forms—“legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic”—while those forms are also the stuff of great illusionists (Marx, 1978 , p. 5; Williams, 1976 , p. 156).

In addition, the Marxist critique of reason and Enlightenment issuing from the Frankfurt School, with a heavy emphasis on the role of entertainment culture and 20th-century media technology, anticipates some PT themes. Horkheimer and Adorno’s influential Dialectic of Enlightenment posited that “culture industries” served the colonization of reason (including science) for capitalist exploitation, and anodyne mass media contents largely served a broad veil of socioeconomic deception, a point developed by Guy Debord in Society of the Spectacle (see also Edelman, 1988 , 2001 ).

However, PT has a particularly political, informational, and rhetorical emphasis less central to these earlier critical theories. What is more, those previous accounts broadly viewed the category of masses (the majority of citizen-consumers, nonelite without great policy decision-making power) as passive to the realities reported and views offered by news media and political figures. Post-truth, in stark contrast, emphasizes discord, confusion, polarized views, and understanding, well- and misinformed competing convictions, and elite attempts to produce and manage these “truth markets” or competitions. In PT, the idea is not that lay citizens see the world falsely through the ideology of ruling-class thinkers, but that “popular” conceptions of reality have become confusing or suspicious because of the saturation of reality representation with games of expertly researched and thus exclusive strategic deception—of pan-partisan nature. This is an instrumentalization of representation, of reality given new media technologies of surveillance and emotional message targeting as never before. While there may be points of intersection, the overall driving questions, material conditions that surround them (not the least media technological and economic ones), and sets of power relations cannot be rigorously viewed as identical.

Jürgen Habermas’s historical account of the structural transformation of the bourgeois public sphere ( 1989 ), despite the many criticisms of it, also has several key ideas that remain pertinent to theories and critiques of PT. The most important is his account of reason and public deliberation being gradually colonized by the state and staged in news media, offered for public opinion formation without deliberation by citizens who would identify the issues or problems in the first place. Habermas warned of professional political communication and polling that elites used to legitimate their hold on power through the production of public opinion. As with other precursors, from ideology critique to postmodern theory, the structural transformation of the public sphere is an important predecessor but does not capture the different historical facets of the PT condition and its analyses.

Postmodernism

Despite some claims that PT politics and society are the product of postmodern theory (McIntyre, 2018 ), PT only shares with it a general concern about knowledge, truth, and reality.

Regarding common themes, some aspects of Jean Baudrillard’s critical theory resonate more strongly with PT, especially Baudrillard’s notion, similar to Debord’s “spectacle,” that social life and subjectivity had become consumed by a techno-consumerist flood of images, simulations and hyper-reality, more real than reality (and having no necessary relationship to it) ( 1983 ). Baudrillard’s position that “illusion is the fundamental rule” resonates with PT ( 2001 ). However, his theory of causation does not stress problems of competing trust, authority, bias, political polarization, algorithmically customized experiences with perceptual and epistemic repercussions and other topics at the heart of PT conditions and theory.

Nor is there across work labeled postmodern, with rare exceptions, anything like the contemporary influence of the cognitive or neurosciences in PT. For example, the neuro-philosophical turn associated with Antonio Damasio and colleagues comes in the 1990s (Damasio’s Descartes’ Error , 1994 ), and has only more recently come to have interdisciplinary and increasingly broad public impact. Differences between PT and postmodern thought are more pronounced yet when considering PT as a condition.

A Post-Truth Condition?

Speaking of a PT condition echoes Lyotard’s influential “report on knowledge,” The Postmodern Condition ( 1979 ) and recalls its consequent public intellectual and academic panic; however, Lyotard’s focus was more on shifts regarding overarching narratives that justified knowledge claims (knowledge authorized by the Enlightenment’s residual “grand narratives” of progress, science, Marxism, and so forth). Lyotard emphasized the collapse of these metanarratives associated with a modern period, and the proliferation of less ambitious, nontotalizing explanations and justifications for knowledge ( petits récits ).

In contrast, a PT condition is not simply about the fragmentation of justifying stories for truth claims, but one beset by suspicion of truth-tellers as dishonest. Post-truth especially refers to a sociopolitical condition perceived as rifer than ever before with dishonesty and distrust, inaccuracies or false knowledge, all corresponding to a crisis of shared trusted adjudicating authorities. Systematic deception and lack of authority are furthermore reproduced by and contribute to a problem of distrust (Stoker, 2017 , pp. 35–36). In sum, the public problems for which PT is shorthand are epistemic (false knowledge, competing truth claims); fiduciary (distrust of society-wide authoritative truth-tellers, trust in micro-truth-tellers); and ethicomoral (conscious disregard for factual evidence—bullshitting—or intentional, strategic falsehoods/lying—dishonesty), the latter of which is often bracketed or abstracted into institutional logics of political strategy (Harding, 2008 ).

Citizen-audiences are fragmented in liberal democracies (Napoli, 2011 ), where thanks especially to competing truths and truth-tellers or prevalent nondialogue between them, political polarization ensues (Doherty, Kiley, & Johnson, 2017 ). Contemporary liberal democracies are said to lack common authorities, discourses, and institutions that may effectively suture these competing knowledges and authorities and reform populations into national identities that necessarily supersede partisan and ideological particularities (McCoy & McEvers, 2017 ). It is not farfetched then to speak of PT as a potential twilight of the stable liberal democratic nation-state and institutions that held it together, which partly explains the heightened discourse of panic from some quarters of popular politics and academia (Bennett & Livingston, 2018 ).

The Growth of Post-Truth in Popular and Academic Discourse

Post-truth appears to have first been used in academic and public discourse in the early 1990s, but its use increased 2,000% between 2015 and 2016 (Oxford Dictionaries, n.d. ). Two popular American books from 2004 drew attention to the anxiety about public trust and knowledge to which PT now commonly refers. In The Post-Truth Era , Ralph Keyes argued mass dishonesty had arrived. The same year, in his book When Presidents Lie ( 2004 ), Eric Alterman coined the term “post-truth presidency,” with reference to the Bush II presidency. The following year, 2005 , the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt published a best-selling book On Bullshit , the latter of which, unlike lying, he said, demonstrated a simple disregard for the factuality of one’s truth claims. It was originally published as an essay in 1986 but attracted renewed interest in the new political and media context of the early 21st century . Like 2004 , 2012 was a major year for reflections on the crisis of truth and facts. James Fallows wrote about the “Post-truth media,” while Farhad Manjoo, later a New York Times technology columnist, announced the arrival of “post-fact society” in True Enough . 1 All of these seminal popular works emphasized rampant lying as the primary driver of PT politics and society. However, critical communication scholars have identified other forces at work in the production of PT. 2

There has been a recent outpouring of communication research on PT, almost entirely from quantitative methodological approaches, reflecting what some critical communication researchers describe as a neopositivist dominance in the field (Fuchs, 2017 ). These studies usually originate from well-funded quantitative and big-data-centered institutes and think tanks, government (e.g., the EU), or, alternately, from an experimental methodological individualist side, cross-fertilizing with cognitive science (cognitive biases, motivated reasoning, etc.). While the studies provide important empirical data, deeper theorization is scarce, critical theorization even scarcer (e.g., see Kavanagh & Rich, 2018 ; European Commission, 2018 ). These studies frequently end up reproducing a kind of panicked realism, nostalgia for the mass communication age, especially for journalistic gatekeeping, and result in prognostic guides for media literacy and journalistic fact-checking. The few critical communication treatments of PT point to more complex historical and structural explanations, and thus solutions. 3

Critical scholarly attention to shifts in public knowledge or belief and trust have been developing since the turn of the millennium (though their citational practices show that they often developed unbeknownst of one another). John Hartley was perhaps first to have employed PT in the communication field, in his book The Politics of Pictures (1992a), and he also proposed the idea of journalism as a truth “regime” in Tele-ology (1992b). However, he necessarily refers to a specific mass broadcast era—certainly pre-Web 2.0 and in most places pre-Internet (1992a, p. 137). He nonetheless anticipates later PT theory by focusing on blurring of fact/fiction boundaries in popular media (namely, television). While a regime generates and polices boundaries between fact and fiction (not the least in journalistic professional codes; he cites the Australian Journalists Association), hierarchies of truth and regimes are contested. Publishing and TV, he argues, are “incommensurate regimes of truth” (1992b, p. 46).

Scholars in the 1990s had begun to discuss popular culture in the context of legitimate and illegitimate knowledges as well as trust in authority, dramatized by TV series such as the X-Files (Bellon, 1999 ; Lavery, Hague, & Cartwright, 1996 ). Working on the popular fascination with “conspiracy culture,” Dean ( 1998 ) was already speaking of American society as characterized by “fugitive truth” at the turn of the 21st century . A small group of scholars continued to pursue questions of popular knowledges and politics through Foucault’s concepts of truth regimes and subjugated knowledges, with particular emphasis on conspiracy theory and gossip (Birchall, 2006 ; Bratich, 2008 ) as well as through Stephen Colbert’s satirical coinage “truthiness,” what is felt to be true (Jones, 2009 ). However, thus far, the scholarly emphasis on truth, media and politics, dominant and subjugated knowledges and power did not identify a conjunctural shift with regard to public truth and trust and had not begun to explore in depth the multiple, converging mechanisms behind such a thesis.

The Bush II administration’s propaganda apparatus and confusion around Iraq–al-Qaeda links and Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction was also a turning point for early PT scholarship. Scholars began to theorize cultural shifts issuing from causal synergies (Harsin, 2006 ; Jones, 2009 ). Jones saw truthiness as emblematic of a shift from a journalistic regime of truth, based on “truth in fact,” to one where a mix of groups (citizens, politicians, journalists, satirists) creates “believable fictions.” He drew on a notion of “truth in essence,” which pervaded a range of popular media forms (see also Jones & Baym, 2010 ). 4 These scholars stressed the waning of journalism’s privileged institutional role as truth-teller or mediator; its role was contested and, by default, shared—which resulted in liberal democratic panic, in journalism, the political establishment, and academia.

Other scholars placed far more causal emphasis on digital technology and how especially right-wing political actors used it in tandem with populist emotional rhetorical styles and the attempt to discredit institutions and experts (Van Zoonen, 2012 ). Van Zoonen described a new “ i- pistemology,” where questions of knowledge are approached “from the basis of I (as in me, myself) and Identity, with the Internet as the great facilitator” ( 2012 , p. 60). Harsin ( 2014 , 2015 , 2018 ) expanded the theory that truth regimes embedded in a digital capitalist attention/information economy were in such conflict or competition that “truth markets” (profit-seeking partisan information brokers, on the one hand; and rumor debunking and fact-checking businesses from Snopes.com to the Washington Post , on the other) were proposed within an emergent regime of PT (see also Mukherjee, 2017 ).

Post-truth Misinforms and Disinforms: Rumor Bombs, Fake News, and Lies

Post-truth appears through a repertoire of forms bearing political (mis-)use of false statements or a disregard for or misrecognition of facts, and a corresponding false belief or confusion (Andersen, 2017 ; Ingraham, 2016 ). While the larger cultural precondition, a widespread distrust of institutions that could be respected as truth-tellers across a wide ideological audience spectrum, will be explored more in-depth momentarily, one can first say that PT is associated with several major types of communication, statements or narratives, all of which are subclasses of deceptive communication: misinformation, fake news, rumor bombs, and lying. Disinformation, rumor bombs, and fake news have mass communication era antecedents in both war and security (gray propaganda) and commercial communication (advertising and public relations). All can be said to be forms of strategic communication and not mere accidental or innocent misstatements of facts.

Deliberate misstatement (disinformation) is hard to prove definitively, yet one can assume that many ambiguous, misleading, or partly false political statements are deliberate, given the fact that this genre of communication is highly professionalized and mediatized (Serazio, 2017 ). These strategic misstatements or innocent misstatements that attract receptive audiences then generate a political economic response by journalism and new businesses in fact-checking and rumor debunking (supported by advertising or, less often, donors), which is why they may be understood literally as truth markets (Harsin, 2015 ).

Post-truth is thus not simply about lies and false beliefs but also, perhaps even especially, about confusion amid a surfeit of information and influential appeals, the difficulty in discerning one from the other, the constant selective use and presentation of information and appeals for strategic political (and business) ends, and the incessant public disputes about what is (in-)accurate and (dis-)honest. Some inaccurate statements of fact are made innocently, if unethically and cavalierly (i.e., what is called bullshit, without regard for knowledge of true or false [Frankfurt, 2005 ]). But a great deal of it is deliberate, strategically aimed at disinforming as a way to manage opponents and/or govern by capturing attention.

Analytically speaking, the forms PT takes are often not well distinguished. Lies, rumors, fake news, spin, propaganda are used synonymously. Much of what is perceived as PT communication is a form of two general categories of communication (in lieu of simple information, which never appears without a communication context): disinformation and misinformation. Stahl ( 2010 ) explains a common distinction between misinformation and disinformation (though some tend to interchange the two).

Misinformation, on the one hand, is the spreading of inaccurate or false information while mistakenly thinking one is sharing accurate information (in reality, the person or organization spreading it is misinformed). On the other hand, disinformation is seen as deliberately spreading false or inaccurate information. In practice, the two are closely linked. One can spread a false statement that one took to be true, which was originally produced to misinform. Disinformers may produce misinformers. In terms of ethics, intention and effect, misinform corresponds to inaccuracy, a false statement, but not a falsehood. If the recipient of misinformation believes it, takes it as fact or true, then he or she is misinformed but not manipulated for strategic ends of the misinformer. Disinformation, however, is closer to lying, as both are dishonest. The producer of disinformation knowingly utters falsehoods, not just false statements. In between, perhaps, is the bullshitter, who, according to Frankfurt’s influential account, makes statements that may be false; the point is that he/she does not care ( 2005 ).

Rumor Bombs

While deliberate rumors (just like lies) in politics are ancient, the fact that they have become core issues with clear effects in public culture appears new, if not unprecedented. No US president before Obama felt forced to release his long-form birth certificate in response to constantly weaponized rumors that he was not born in the United States; the rumor was used to “bomb” the news agenda and preoccupy Obama’s communication professionals to respond defensively. The fact that majorities do not believe it is all the more proof of its efficacy (Dimock, July 15, 2008 ). Influential in the history of rumor scholarship, Shibutani ( 1966 ) argued that rumors were “improvised news,” a non-professional form of news-telling in conditions of information scarcity. However, in 21st-century media and politics, rumors flourish in the opposite condition: information overload (Andrejevic, 2013 ), fragmentation of attention, and decline of culture-wide authorities or truth-tellers (Harsin, 2006 , 2014 , 2015 ). Political rumors were thriving in contemporary conditions marked by a public knowledge (epistemic) and trust (fiduciary) crisis. Yet, they were not traditional rumors. Rumor bombs correspond to fake news and strategic political communication developments, which helped distinguish them from simple rumors and as a counterpart to other contemporary communication bombs (google bombs and twitter bombs, for example, which were various ways of “bombing” the field of attention). Rumor bombs referred to the core definition of rumor as a statement whose veracity is unknown or unprovable and to communication bombs as longtime forms of information warfare migrating from military to politics as “war by other means” (Caplow, 1947 ). Iraq–al-Qaeda links, John Kerry lied about Vietnam, Obama is a Muslim, and former French President François Hollande was supported by over 700 mosques—all are rumor bombs professionally operationalized in popular political struggles (Conason, 2004 ; Kessler, 2014 ; Harsin, 2018a ).

Rumor bombs normally differ from fake news in the sense that rumors may turn out to be true. Fake news is false news, though its core propositions may be contextualized by facts (for example, Hillary Clinton is a real person, and Comet Ping Pong is a real pizzeria in Washington, DC, neither fact of which makes true the associated false claim that she ran a child sex slavery ring in the basement of the said pizzeria). Furthermore, rumor bombs tend to use deliberately ambiguous or strategically polysemic claims to generate not just belief but conflict and disagreement or debate. For example, what does “links” mean in the claim there were Iraq–al-Qaeda “links” or “ties”? The claim may be more influential when “links” is not defined and left to the audience’s imagination. A rumor bomb may be accompanied by a story, attempting to provide evidence for the core claim. That evidence usually is not fake; it is just an example of poor reasoning: Obama’s name is not Christian; he has been photographed in what appears to be Muslim clothing; therefore, Obama is Muslim. The conflict and disagreement that rumor bombs produce in turn produces confusion or disorientation—a structure of feeling deep in the core of PT.

Fake news is a term of American origin, whose first use appears briefly in 1992 with regard to video news releases, news segments produced by public relations then broadcast by television news as content journalists had produced through reporting procedures (Rampton, 2005 ). It seems to have had no regular public use before 1999 , at which point it became associated with self-identified comedy news shows, such as the Daily Show , Saturday Night Live ’s Weekend Update, and The Colbert Report , which had origins in satirical “news” publications such as The Onion in the United States (Harsin, 2018a ). By 2015 , it took on a globalizing negative twist of connotations associated with PT, bound up with geopolitical propaganda and artificial intelligence (AI), or “bots” (Chen, 2015 ; Riotta, 2017 ). In an even more recent globalizing trend, “fake news” has become a popular ad hominem for discrediting any unfavorable news coverage or criticisms from opponents. Fake news was deemed such an important recent cultural form of PT that it was named and then recognized as a 2017 word of the year by Collins Dictionary (following PT as the Oxford Dictionary ’s 2016 word of the year), in an infotaining development of dictionaries to self-promote by breaking a “word of the year” that generates discussion and profits (Flood, 2017 ). Fake news is, like rumor bombs, a sub-category of disinformation, alternately called “false news” and “junk news.” Unlike rumor bombs, fake news is not usually a mix of interpretive ambiguity and fact, but it includes core false statements (things that did not happen, that do not even exist), and therefore are sometimes wrongly referred to as lies.

Consider also the difference between fake news and lies. One may assume that fake/false news is at base mere lies. But a lie is, technically, a deliberately false statement (Mahon, 2016 ). A lie is not a series of statements, but fake news suggests a story, an article, all statements contained in which are unlikely to all be false, as lies or inaccuracies. Fake news is often characterized by a core falsehood surrounded by factual statements or details. Reuters Digital News annual report for 2017 notes that

“definitions of ‘fake news’ are fraught with difficulty and respondents frequently mix up three categories: (1) news that is ‘invented’ to make money or discredit others; (2) news that has a basis in fact but is ‘spun’ to suit a particular agenda; and (3) news that people don’t feel comfortable about or don’t agree with.”

Meanwhile, the Oxford Institute for the Study of Computational Propaganda defines fake news as “misleading, deceptive or incorrect information, purporting to be real news about politics, economics or culture” (Hazard Owen, 2018 ).

Though many definitions of fake news attribute an intent to deceive for political ends, some fake news producers have intent to deceive only to make money through the attention and circulation the fake news receives, even while it can have expected political effects (belief, confusion, agenda-setting). Those effects, through exploitation by more strategic partisans who aim to spread disinformation, may have a secondary level of effects, political ones—and the secondary agent may have no interest in financial profit. Conversely, some fake news producers originally aim to deceive only for political ends. Either way, news organizations, which legitimate the fake news by making it real news that titillates large audiences, will profit from it. American CBS news executive Warren Moonves underlined this point when speaking about Trump’s 2016 rumor-bombing candidacy: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS” (Bond, 2016 ; Pickard, 2017 ).

Fake news is usually the presentation of new events where the event is presented as a discovery of something hitherto hidden (Obama’s fake birth certificate allegations; allegations that Clinton sold weapons to ISIS). While in the era of citizen journalism, fake news could appear rather unadorned, thanks to easily accessible photo-editing software and web page templates, it may also appear in the style of news organizations with high production values, such as the New York Times , Le Monde , and CNN . Mimicking the style of professional journalism is the way fake news produces its credibility for some audiences; it is even reflected in web addresses (URLs), which imitate recognized news sites by inserting the words “news” or “report,” or more partisan-comforting brand names: worldnewsreport.com, winningdemocrats.com, conservativestate.com (McClain, 2017 ; Silverman, 2016 ).

All of these previously discussed forms of PT misinformation can contain lies. Yet there is a difference between them. What is lying? According to Mahon, “The most widely accepted definition of lying” is Isenberg’s: “a statement made by one who does not believe it with the intention that someone else shall be led to believe it” (Isenberg in Mahon, 2016 ).

Post-truth is perhaps most saliently marked by an emphasis on lying, constant accusations of lying (without proof) and revelations of lying (with convincing proof). While it is nearly impossible to prove definitively that there are more lies or liars today than in the past, there is clearly an observable discourse about lying, which claims that there are more, that people perceive or feel there must be more, because there is also so much empirically verifiable distrust and documentable dishonesty (a quintessential example: fake news).

In his book When Presidents Lie ( 2004 ), Eric Alterman discusses what he argues were major lies of US presidents from FDR to JFK, Johnson to Reagan. For the George W. Bush administration, Alterman coins the term “post-truth presidency” to describe the general mode of dishonesty that he saw pervading the quotidian White House communications. Alterman is correct both to emphasize the commonplaceness of dishonesty in the history of modern presidential communication and to signal something of a historic shift in the Bush regime. It is of little wonder that a public discourse heavy with accusations, perceptions, and documentations of lying could have effects on political trust and motivation.

Political communication and news practices and values have shifted in a way that favors even banalized lying, whereby “honesty is a novelty” (Corner & Pels, 2003 , p. 11). The very conditions for being considered honest and truthful have been reconfigured thanks to processes of mediatization and celebrification in politics, the internalizing of entertainment genre expectations and values in their political performances as a perceived requirement for gaining attention.

Yet, while claims of increased lying appear constantly (Manjoo, 2008 ), it would be almost impossible to prove such claims convincingly. If PT’s forms can be recognized as having particular qualities, the question remains: what are the mechanisms that have brought it about now? It is argued that multiple agents synergized more recently in ways previously not possible.

Four Synergistic Agents

Thus, while aspects of PT communication and its context have existed before (if not always) new forces have converged with old, creating a communications environment unlike anything seen before. Later theorists have referred to mediatization as a macro-category describing the way mediation has engulfed all institutions instead of, in the predigital mass communication era, these institutions having some separation from media as an institution itself (Couldry & Hepp, 2016 ; Hepp & Krotz, 2014 , p. 2; Livingstone, 2009 ). Yet while the general concepts of mediatization, hybrid media systems (Chadwick, 2013 ), or mixed media culture (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 1999 ) are useful starting points for thinking about the causes of PT communication practices, critical approaches must further examine and theorize the historically and culturally specific mechanisms of PT within the new highly datafied capitalist communication structure. Four major historical agents synergistically structure PT communication forms and practices, while having particular national conjunctural specificities, themselves deeply mediating these changes.

Face 1: Technology and Attention Economy (Speed and Cognition)

Technology is treated as a category of influence here, but with important qualifications, since it does not exist outside political economic, cultural, and other contexts and forces. Considerations of technological agency in PT production must include the fact that they do not exist free of human agency or goals. In fact, the digital mediascape is the grounds for an economy embedded in communication technology as never before, which restructures the way communication can be produced, circulated, used, and received. Strategic political communication in PT is thus inevitably parasitic on and structured by attentional capitalism. Attentional habits are then structured through the programming of apps and platforms and their algorithms. At the same time, various forms of digital technology have enabled a dizzying amount of cultural production (user-generated content) and social media platforms have permitted their potentially broad diffusion as mass self-communication (Castells, 2009 ).

However, the constant strategic uses of and attempts to manage the spaces of mass self-communication (big data analytics, microtargeting, neuromarketing, bots, trolls) likely help explain the subsequent effects on trust and truth (surveys showing little trust in digital platforms or the Internet generally, thus also suggesting users’ cynical disavowal). Mostly overlooked in the discussions of PT is the fact that the digital communication infrastructure, though identified by many citizens as a source of political news and means for political speech, is not designed to suit democratic political communication or trustworthy information but, rather, to suit recent forms of consumer capitalism, “the attention economy.” In this sense the Internet, and especially social media, in places like the United States has quickly become economically structured in a way it took American broadcast journalism years to succumb to, as Marc Gunther noted in 1999 : “Twenty years ago, there was no network news ‘business.’ The Big Three broadcast television networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—all covered news, but none generally made money doing so. Nor did they expect to turn a profit from news programming” ( 1999 ). However, it is not simply the economic embeddedness of platforms that need attention in a discussion of PT but also technologies that have enabled or “democratized” cultural production.

Part of the new production and broadcast technologies include accessible photo and audiovisual editing software, as well as platforms for mass publication or broadcast. Yet the capacity to “jam” and “hack” original content, altering it while retaining an aura of authenticity, has enabled a near constant stream of deceptions (to which AI developers are responding with “reverse image search” by Google Image or TinEye). 5

Technological developments also include the powerful influence of algorithms in structuring fields of perception and trust. Algorithms structured for networking, marketing, and constant “participation” become useful for political PT ends. Thus, repetition and illusory truth (more repeated, more likely to be judged true) is extremely important in algorithmically constructed publics, polarized politics, and filter bubbles, evidenced by studies concluding that “top fake election news stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories from 19 major news outlets combined” in the US 2016 presidential campaign (Silverman, 2016 ).

Furthermore, some PT commentary and research has put considerable causal and explanatory emphasis on algorithmic ideological filtering (echo chambers) and cognitive bias (especially confirmation bias) (Bear, 2016 ; Dieguez, 2017 ; Kavanagh & Rich, 2018 ). However, few approaches to PT so far have seen the attention economy’s techno-infrastructure as itself creating conditions unfavorable to more deliberative forms of cognition when consuming digital content (such as fake news headlines and rumor bombs). Not only is the digital communication infrastructure oriented toward profit, instead of toward dissemination of factual information, it is built for speed and constant individual movement and attention shifting, which research suggests has an impact on perception, interest, temporal reasoning, and knowledge (Carr, 2010 ; Manjoo, 2013 ; Harsin, 2014 ). Tech-focused cognitive scientists are beginning to argue that this techno-economic structure (they do not base their analyses in the structure’s embeddedness in capitalism) has effects on reasoning, long-term memory, and thus knowledge acquisition (Atchley & Lane, 2014 ). Cognition in the attention economy is typically fast, emotional, and targeted with distractions. Such an “information ecology” is not, it is argued, conducive to more deliberative political participation, thus posing challenges to proposed PT solutions, such as the necessarily slower and colder cognition required by proponents of media literacy. Technology identified as a primary cause (instead of as a secondary cause embedded in capitalism and synergizing with other agents) leads to solutions also often embedded in capitalism (self-regulation of service providers, fact-checking businesses and apps to buy—the commodification of truth).

Face 2: Journalism

Changes in journalism, such as downsizing staff while accelerating the publication pace (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 1999 , 2010 ), invited inaccuracies and vulnerabilities to hoaxes (later fake news); partly issuing from “citizen journalism,” by which everyone is now a journalist (the opposite of the progressive promise of networked journalism [Russell, 2011 ]) and which brings not just packs of watchdogs but also armies of rumor bombers and fake news purveyors. As Harwood notes, “[g]ossip, rumor and fact, truth and falsehood (with rare exceptions) have equal standard under the law and, in practice, universally coexist in the unending ‘news’ stream saturating the environment” (Harwood, 1999 ). The latter was partly explained by market pressures to grab readers’ and viewers’ attention, partly resulting in trends of infotainment and tabloidization, and politainment allowing for the repetition of rumors and disinformation as agenda-setting topics themselves (Thussu, 2009 ; Riegert & Collins, 2015 ). Market pressures are also blamed for significant amounts of public relations material that appear unidentified in news products (Bennett, 2003 , p. 175; Lewis, Williams, & Franklin, 2008 ). Finally, new apps (e.g., Bulletin) allow quick posting of citizen journalist content, while critics have warned about a “high potential for abuse,” especially for producing “fake news” (Kaufman, 2018 ). Citizen journalism app experiments are complemented on the professional end by robot (also called automated or algorithmic) journalists (Carlson, 2015 ), which risk being recuperated for strategic communication purposes, just as had been the case with human “fake reporters” under the Bush II administration (Rich, 2005 ).

In a culture of multiple institutional and professional trust deficits, journalism’s traditional credibility is threatened. If for decades, journalism relied on “authorized knowers” (Fishman, 1980 ), officials in government, business, and political organizations who were deemed knowledgeable (Epstein, 1973 ), then “webs of facticity” (Tuchman, 1978 ) become undermined in PT, for such sources, as well as their journalist-intermediaries are seen as illegitimate by millions of people. The web of facticity comes to be perceived as a web of deception that news organizations and their sources weave.

If journalism has lost authority to tell and distinguish truth, while news has a proliferating and competing cast of truth-tellers, promotional culture applies cultural pressure to journalism, politics, and everyday social relations. Its agency in PT synergy cannot be ignored.

Face 3: Promotional Culture

Promotional culture is another factor of PT cultural synergy that has been almost completely absent from public intellectual and recent computationally driven PT analyses (Harsin, 2017 ; Hearn, 2017 ). Promotional culture studies argue that culture and social relations have been powerfully transformed by the role of communication in new forms of consumer capitalism—the latter’s hyperpromotional stage, with no small effects on perceptions of honesty, truth claims, and trust-granting. According to Alison Hearn, one of promotional culture’s primary theorists:

Promotionalism names the extension of market values and commodity relations in all areas of life…. As we increasingly come to see our selves, relationships, political candidates, and social issues in terms of this logic of promotion, we can no longer determine, or read, genuinely expressive intent or determine what is truth as opposed to a lie, what is authentic as opposed to “spun.” In a population so acclimatized to the constant sell, how can we recognize or construct legitimate authority? What is the impact of the generalized public acceptance of “spin” and promotional politics on the democratic process?… [T]he logic of commodities and their promotional signs, also known as advertising and marketing, comes to dominate and structurally condition all other forms of political expression and power relations. (Hearn, 2011 )

Promotionalism’s relationship to truth has thus always been more like Harry Frankfurt’s ( 2005 ) notion of bullshit—it is agnostic toward truth in its strategies to promote attention and consumption. Promotional culture scholars view bullshit-friendly communication as having become accepted in a wider and wider array of human practices, not in the least politics (see also Davis, 2013 ). Professional bullshitters are essential to contemporary consumer economies and politics. One rarely hears about promotionalism in causal explanations of PT (and one has almost never heard of counter-attacking its origins—consumer capitalism—as a logical solution to such a powerful form of causation).

Just as the very infrastructure of contemporary communication practices, the digital attention economy, leans toward PT, so does professionalized political communication, with its modern roots in mass electric communication and mass democracy at the turn of the 20th century .

Face 4: Professional Political Communication

Promotionalism’s relationship to PT was also anticipated by Hannah Arendt in her well-known reflection “Lying in Politics,” spurred by the release of The Pentagon Papers ( 1971 ). She spoke of a “recent variety” added to “the many genres in the art of lying developed in the past: the apparently innocuous one of the public-relations managers in government who learned their trade from the inventiveness of Madison Avenue.” Arendt noted that their “origin [lay] in the consumer society” (p. 8). This importation from consumer society to politics was problematic, according to Hannah Arendt, for public relations “deals only in opinions and ‘good will,’ the readiness to buy, that is, in intangibles whose concrete reality is at a minimum” (p. 8).

The promotionalism that Arendt regarded as a threat to democracy has been discussed in political communication textbooks for several decades now as “professionalization,” a trend in elite political communication that since the onset of TV has put “image-making” at the center of politics (Lilleker, 2014 ; McNair, 2017 ). This professionalization is marked by the growth of political marketing, using highly strategized forms of influence employed by cognitive science-oriented commercial and military communication (Alic, Branscomb, Brooks, Epstein, & Carter, 1992 ; Lees, Strömbäck, & Rudd, 2010 ). One may recall here that Arendt’s influential account of lying in politics ends by emphasizing the spread of promotional communication orientations to politics, resulting in a propensity for lying, and thus contributing to PT (Arendt, 1972 ).

Several PT commentators point to the post-9/11 Bush regime’s sophisticated propaganda as a turning point in contemporary state communication. It is important to note that the conjunctural conditions of communication were and still are quite different than those of pre-Internet times, while the practice of strategic political communication, aiming at creating its own realities to which it can respond to achieve its goals, is a staple of modern mass communication influences, in the commercial and political sector. A passage from Daniel Boorstin’s influential The Image is illustrative on this point. Boorstin discusses one of the most influential theorist-practitioners of public influence in the 20th century , Edward Bernays, by way of Napoleon (indicating a cross-fertilization of military, political, and commercial communication). Of the public relations-produced realities he calls “pseudo-events,” Boorstin writes:

The power to make a reportable event is thus the power to make experience. One is reminded of Napoleon’s apocryphal reply to his general, who objected that circumstances were unfavorable to a proposed campaign: “Bah, I make circumstances!” The modern public relations counsel—and he is, of course, only one of many twentieth century creators o pseudo-events—has come close to fulfilling Napoleon’s idle boast. “The counsel on public relations,” Mr. Bernays explains, “not only knows what news value is, but knowing it, he is in a position to make news happen. He is a creator of events.” ( 1992 , pp. 10–11)

Roughly 80 years after Bernays’s confident declaration, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s legendary spin doctor and strategist, bragged that journalists naively belonged to a “reality-based community,” while strategists like him “create our own reality,” which they (journalists) are free to “study.” Journalists will be left “to just study what we [strategists] do” (Suskind, 2004 ). The arrogance aside, of course, communication strategists are sometimes forced to respond to journalist-produced events, and perhaps more often, to events opponents publicize with the assistance of news organizations. They nonetheless lead by misleading.

Indeed, the Bush regime’s communication strategists ushered in the shifting signification of fake news registers from largely comedic to more traditional political communication (Rich, 2005 ). The Bush team used “fake reporters” and fake broadcast segments (video news releases dutifully broadcast by local newscasts) over a decade prior to the term becoming a “word of the year.” In the New York Times , Frank Rich made the crossover explicit: “The White House Stages Its ‘Daily Show,’” he wrote ( February 20, 2005 ). Writing a year before, but looking back at 2003 , Naomi Klein dubbed it the “year of the fake” in a Nation column. She wrote that 2003 was, for starters, “a year that waged open war on truth and facts and celebrated fakes and forgeries of all kinds…: fake rationales for war, a fake President dressed as a fake soldier declaring a fake end to combat and then holding up a fake turkey.” Nieman Reports spoke not just of an episode but of an “Age of Pseudo-reporting,” citing a “spate of media infamies known by the names Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Jeff Gannon, and Karen Ryan” (Greve, 2005 ). Recently, the use of big-data-driven political marketing (even neuropolitical marketing), bots and trolls (human and non-), and censorship in several countries, contribute mightily to PT synergy (Bulut & Yörük, 2017 ; Harsin, 2015 , 2018a , 2018b ).

As Arendt foresaw, organized, systematic lying, or, more easily proven, deceptions, the bread and butter of consumer capitalism and the communications wing of the state security apparatus, have come also to be the organizing force of mediated political life. Thus, when analysts shrug skeptically at claims that there is more lying now than before, they are looking at lying and deception through a lens too methodologically individualist to comprehend the production side of it. Both consumer capitalism, deeply embedded in everyday life, and elite liberal democracy, as its communication apparatus has been structured for over 100 years, demand deceptive communication. It is systematic, strategic, highly organized. There is a structural incitement to deception.

American democracy, like most if not all contemporary liberal democracies, has been, among other things, an evolving competition of fakery. This is not to suggest it fails by comparison to some essential, purely honest democratic utopia (a fantasy, of course) but is rather to emphasize the massive scale of organization and systematicity. Now fakery is embedded in everyday commercial promotionalism as well as in mass self-communication (individual broadcasting) amid historic levels of distrust; thus, it is understandable that deception’s effects would be felt more intensely to the point of PT today. Meanwhile panics around PT disavow how embedded promotionalism and deception is in 20th – 21st-century liberal democratic political communication practices, which may suggest that such panics are a fundamental symptom of PT itself.

(Post-)Trust

The foundation of popular truth, often taken for granted in the heyday of mass communication and journalism’s monopoly on gatekeeping and authoritative truth (re-)telling, has come into greater relief in the PT moment: (dis-)trust. The sociologist Georg Simmel argued that trust is actually a “weak form of inductive knowledge,” and “very few relationships would endure if trust were not as strong as, or stronger than, rational proof or personal observation” ( 2004 , p. 179). Understanding shifts in the communicational mechanisms of trust may be seen as key to understanding the epistemic problems often discussed separately.

What is the evidence for widespread and increasing distrust? Consider, for example, declining numbers of voters in presidential and parliamentary elections across the West, where similar techniques of strategic political communication, among other things, are imitated. Countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France have seen participation dips by 30 percentage points over the last 50 years (International IDEA, n.d. ).

Compare the decline in voter turnout with the rise of self-identified disenfranchised movements and new parties in the very same countries. On the right, one sees the Front National in France, the UK Independence Party, Germany’s AFD (Alternative for Germany), and even the insurgent democratic socialist challenge to the US Democratic Party by Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, left “prefigurative” social-political movements such as les Indignados in Spain, Occupy in the United States, and Nuit Debout in France have stressed their alienation from liberal democracy’s lack of choices and means for a real hearing of grievances, a critique realized in their own performances of direct democracy.

Distrust is also widely self-reported. Edelman’s Trust Barometer study for 2017 featured a provocative headline announcing a “Global Implosion of Trust.” Some of their highlights across 43 countries include the following: CEO credibility at lowest point ever; trust in media fell and is at lowest point ever in 17 countries; trust in government dropped (at 41%) in 14 countries, being the least trusted in institution in half of the countries surveyed. Categories of leaders dropped in trustworthiness across the board: an all-time low of 37% for CEOs and government leaders are the least credible of all, at 29% (“2017 Edelman Trust Barometer,” 2017 ). The news media in particular suffers significant distrust, across the United States and Europe. Just over half of Americans in a 2017 survey said they trust information from the news media “some,” while about 15% trusted it “a lot” (“People have more trust in ‘my’ media than ‘the’ media,” 2017 ). However, people have more trust in their own choice of news media. Post-truth thus thrives in this context of political polarization.

Perceptions of widespread cynicism of course also have effects on trust. As Sissela Bok notes in her classic examination of lying in public life and a discussion of Hannah Arendt’s influential comments on public lying, “Even when the substitution of falsehood for truth is not total, but seems random or partial to the deceived, or when it affects matters they consider crucial, such a state of cynicism may result. For this reason, the many forms of international deception which are assumed to be merely a ‘part of the game’ by governments can have far-reaching effects on both internal and external trust” ( 1978 , p. 150). Speaking primarily of governments, she adds, in 1978 , that “there is a growing evidence that the world audiences to which propaganda is directed are becoming more distrustful…. As a result, citizens the world over have less confidence that they can influence what governments do” (p. 150). She was of course writing before the Bush administration’s strategic communication efforts to promote the Iraq War, and before the financial crisis of 2008 , among other major events in a cultural slide toward generalized distrust.

If, as Simmel and others argue, trust is a kind of crude knowledge, which may be closest to the kind of knowledge citizens exercise on public issues, pervasive deficits thereof would likely lead to not just any kind of epistemic but public epistemic instabilities. As Longino explains, “[m]uch of what passes for common knowledge is acquired from others. We depend on experts to tell us what is wrong or right with our appliances, our cars, our bodies. Indeed, much of what we later come to know depends on what we previously learned as children from our parents and teachers. We acquire knowledge of the world through the institutions of education, journalism, and scientific inquiry” (para 9, 2015 ). Consequently, “we do not know most of what we think we know.”

While 1980s and 1990s postmodern theory already flagged scholarly preoccupations with epistemic skepticism, legitimacy and reality, the contemporary focus on lying and dishonesty distinguishes PT discourse from its 1990s forerunner (Lyotard, 1984 ). Post-truth’s epistemic crisis is really an ethicofiduciary one. Its epistemic crises are the effect of distrust and dishonesty crises regarding systematic widespread deception.

It is worth noting that, in this critical synergy theory of PT, the panic about irrational duped citizens appears misplaced. Given these conditions from public relations- and hoax-infiltrated journalism, resource rich strategic political communication using sophisticated data analytics, deceptive AI (bots and trolls), cognitive scientifically informed microtargeted messages, and a widespread promotional culture of exaggerated claims and games of fakery for profit—it could be said that people would be irrational not to be highly skeptical of truth claims. The question, of course, is what kind of performances and communication successfully produce trust and truth in this climate.

Trust and Emotional Truth

Anthony Giddens ( 1994 ) has argued that modern and traditional societies differ importantly in terms of trust-granting, and that late modern societies underwent a shift from “passive trust” toward social institutions and their experts to general distrust and fleeting, “active trust” today. Trust-granting appears to have taken even more intensely restricted roles, based much of the time on performativity (rhetorical devices to produce credibility), ongoing “facework.”

If trust amid PT is short term and, if maintained, constantly renewed, how is active public trust performed and earned today? One argument is that the synergistic agencies of PT favor highly emotional communication, and that this is partly the way many subjects identify with truthful communication. This turn to emotion and affect is not based on a traditional rational/irrational, reason/emotion dualism. On the contrary, it builds on revolutions in cognitive science and neurophilosophy over the last thirty years, which holds that there is no actual separation between emotion and reason. However, they insist that the conceptual distinction be maintained since there are different degrees of emotion in reasoning, even shown to be located in different parts of the brain (Damasio, 1994 ; Kahneman, 2011 ; Westen, 2008 ). While promotional industries and political communication have for some time used this research to produce strategies (hoping especially for quick manageable affective responses), journalism is now visiting this research in order to manage visitor attention online (and probably in what remains of print and broadcast) (Song, 2013 ).

Resource-rich political and economic actors using big data analytics and sentiment analysis target audiences emotionally, hoping not simply to produce beliefs (ideological effects) but to modulate cognition, emotion, and attention, via quick likes/dislikes, shares, before moving on. In a culture of speed and attention scarcity, of exigencies and expectations of faking or exaggeration (promotionalism), slower, perhaps “quieter” civil forms of communication are suspicious to some audiences. These audiences are attracted to what appears “authentic,” which seems to periodically escape the exigencies of promotional culture (Banet-Weiser, 2012 ). These fleeting moments have been described as emotional truth and “emo-truth” (Harsin, 2017 , 2018a ).

Emotional/emo-truth theory argues that there are parallels in reality TV and popular politics regarding the way truth and trust is performed and granted. The theory is based on insights from audience studies of melodrama genres (Ang) and “fact-based” programming’s (i.e., reality TV) audiences (Hill, 2007 , p. 141; Grindstaff, 2008 ):

Emo-truth is truth where emotion serves as inference (prime or indexical sign, emotional or unconscious affective response, and presto: truth). It is felt (though not necessarily consciously), not accompanied by long temporal reasoning. It is akin to what reality TV audience scholarship has documented as trust in perceived authenticity (i.e. truth) of moments where participants lose control, get angry and aggressive, bully, or, conversely, cry. It is a variant of what Laura Grindstaff in her landmark work on sensational talk shows called “the money shot.” (Harsin, 2018b , p. 45)

With such pervasive, systematic, strategic artifice in PT society and politics, it is these ephemeral moments of emo-truth that connect with some citizen-audiences, which helps to explain the success of aggressive emo-truth masculinities, fond of insulting, spectacular claims, and of attacking political correctness, of figures such as US’s Donald Trump, Philippines’ Roderigo Duterte, and the UK’s Boris Johnson, among others in varying degrees of the style (Harsin, 2017 ). Not all PT political performance is emo-truth; and not all of its performers do it as virtuosically or constantly. The key is that the connection of trust, the lack of concern with the falsity of some truth claims, is explained by an emotional, not rational connection, and perhaps for the angriest most distrustful citizens, emo-truth’s anger and aggression is most appealing. Emotional truth and emo-truth political communication also show signs of the normalization of celebrity politics and its games of authenticity and appeal (Street, 2004 ).

Solutions to Post-Truth as Perceived Problem

If critical communication studies have offered preliminary theories of PT as a historical and cultural phenomenon, from such a diagnosis, what kind of prognosis may it offer, while shedding a critical light on popular solutions proffered less critical PT theories? The main solutions proposed thus far (mostly from the computational and cognitive scientific sides of communication study) can be summarized as the following: techno-curatives, such as AI filtering of PT claims/stories; human fact-checking, especially rooted in journalism; strategic human responses to cognitive bias; more vigorous self-regulation by social media providers; and media literacy initiatives (Kavanagh & Rich, 2018 ; European Commission, 2018 ). Each misses the entire synergy of historical and cultural causation, and therefore will not likely achieve the curative ends for which they aim. The problems viewed from a critical perspective are not all acknowledged from other perspectives, and thus lead to very different calls for change.

Techno-curative solutions respond to the perceived problem of filter bubbles and fake news circulation (misinformed citizens), calling for AI tagging and suppression of false information. These problematizations and solutions overlook that the marketing structure of social media veers toward birds-of-a-feather networks, easier for big data analysis to aggregate (construct) into markets. The bracketed ethics of attentional capitalism are overlooked, and the general structure is unlikely to be overcome. Getting attention has apparently inspired fact-checking organizations to use infotaining categories of evaluation. When they rate statements as lies (“pants on fire”! or “five Pinocchios”!) but cannot prove deliberate statement of falsehood instead of inaccuracy or bullshit, they paradoxically undermine their purported task (pointing again to the informational and attentional embeddedness in capitalism) and may simply trigger the stubborn ire of those citizens they aim to correct. Techno-curative solutions in AI also overlook the problem that many people distrust the service providers to be truth arbiters, and this is even more the case when companies like Facebook attempt to “team up” with already extant fact-checking businesses ( Snopes.com or the Washington Post , for example, or Le Monde ’s “ Décodeurs ” in France) (“Voters Don’t Trust,” 2016 ). These brands are already ideologically contaminated, distrusted. Unless widely perceived partisan providers are to team up with more mainstream old “trustee journalism” organizations, the victims of disinformation are unlikely to see the debunking (because of customized content) or trust the post’s AI tag. Posts would have to be suppressed, raising concerns of freedom of speech in countries like the United States (Fisher, 2017 ). While experiments on cognitive bias are hopeful that misinformed users gradually change opinion and perception with repeated exposure to debunkings, these experiments do not account for the fact that the structure of the attention economy is, again, not one aimed at microtargeting repeated debunkings. The debunker (trusted/distrusted) is also crucial—who do people trust with such a role, seeing as how they are distrustful of most macro-truth-tellers ?

Finally, deceptive forms of PT communication are built into the culture of liberal democracy, mediatized and dependent on highly professional strategists and practices. Few diagnoses consider this problem, and thus solutions will likely overlook and reproduce different versions of PT. Relatedly, strategic political communication produces PT forms that elude easy logical-positivist-type judgments of true or false, because they are often deliberately ambiguous. This means they require longer cognitive and critical analyses to explain what interpretations are more in accord with facts and which more errant—who is trusted enough to fulfill this role? Given the attention economy, who will engage with this necessarily longer and patience-demanding content?

A recent report by academics and journalists, sponsored by the European Union, touches upon what have become common policy recommendations (one can imply their diagnoses of cause from these proposed solutions):

1. enhance transparency of online news, involving an adequate and privacy-compliant sharing of data about the systems that enable their circulation online; 2. promote media and information literacy to counter disinformation and help users navigate the digital media environment; 3. develop tools for empowering users and journalists to tackle disinformation and foster a positive engagement with fast-evolving information technologies; 4. safeguard the diversity and sustainability of the European news media ecosystem. (European Commission, 2018 )

Compare their solutions to these alternatives, which follow from the critical PT theory articulated in this article.

If one bears in mind the fact that majorities of citizens in many countries report that they distrust news media, corporations, government, democracy, capitalism and other major institutions and traditional accepted sacred organizing discourses of social life, at the most fundamental level “fixing” PT would first of all mean recovering social trust by radically transforming:

consumer capitalism (propelled by PT communication strategies and tactics—promotional culture) and its deep mediatization in an attention economy, since the latter must be made to serve ends beyond attention capture and data harvesting for marketing, i.e. corporate profit and state surveillance;

journalism’s slide into PT infotainment, even when ostensibly trying to extinguish PT via (infotaining and polarizing rhetoric of) fact-checking; and a debate about how it should be financed and what it can and should do under current conditions of communication and culture;

the unequal resources of professional political communication used to study, quantify, construct, and control pseudopublics instead of turning such communication channels and tools over to more democratic actors, albeit with strong emphasis on ethics;

education, teaching the history of anti-democratic elite forces that from the onset of mass communication commandeered scientific knowledges, immense communication resources, and strategic skills to manipulate and control the demos, with varying degrees of success.

Unlike popular and liberal-academic approaches, critical communication approaches to PT eschew nostalgia for earlier periods of pseudodemocratic opinion and perception management, and aim to avoid reactionary (cloaked in the rhetoric of progressivism) calls to restore liberal democracy, itself catastrophically recuperated by neoliberal failures of growing economic inequality, continual post-colonial exploitation, patriarchal backlashes, and the destruction of the environment. A PT cultural condition generates panics about truth that necessarily misrecognize the deeper origins of the condition. Critical approaches to PT wrestle with PT’s nascent roots in the scene of 20th-century mass democracy/communication and consumer capitalism, while assisting with theory and critique to build a more socially just world.

Acknowledgments

My thanks go to Ergin Bulut and Jack Bratich for conversations that contributed to the development of this article.

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1. In a 2012 Atlantic column, James Fallows covered the emerging claims to the term’s origin. In terms of books, Alterman and Keyes originate the term in 2004.

2. Before Harsin’s attempt to theorize it as periodizing concept with a strong communication component in 2015, the Foucauldian-inflected “regimes of post-truth” in 2015, there is scarcely any academic mention of the term, and no mention of the term in communication and media journals ( Google Scholar ; Communication and Mass Media database, October 15, 2017). The exceptions refer mainly to the South African “Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” Between 1994 and 2014, one finds only two instances of “post-truth” in the full text of communication and media journal articles, and they use it loosely, in passing, without defining it (three others use the term but as a construct in experiments about truth and lying), and those refer to the popular uses of the term, especially “post-truth” as Eric Alterman ( 2004 , “post-truth presidency”), Ralph Keyes ( 2004 , “post-truth era”) and Paul Krugman ( 2011 , “post-truth campaign”) use them.

3. One of the most misleading false starts has been to locate PT’s origins in 1980s and 1990s academic theories of postmodernism. Despite some vigorous boxing with the theoretical fads of the 1980s and 1990s, these accounts offer little more than their enduring distaste for the fashion of a bygone era. They document the wide academic fascination with the sprawling body of thought associated with it, but they provide no empirical evidence that it had any major effects on public life, on the way citizens orient themselves to politics and the way journalism and politicians communicate to or with them: a correlation of alleged epistemic relativism a causation does not make (D’Ancona, 2017 ). Post-truth has far more obvious historical and contemporary causes, and more compelling evidence from which one can speculatively theorize.

4. Zelizer ( 2004 ) also offered an important challenge to critical cultural approaches to re-engage with the nuances of journalism’s “god terms”: facts, truth, and objectivity. As this overview shows, there was an increasing attempt to do that.

5. The flow of photographic or audiovisual deceptions since 2000 is impressive, and they range from fake photos about John Kerry with Jane Fonda at Vietnam War protests (Marinucci, 2004 ) to fake photos of Israeli military in its Lebanon conflict in 2006 (“Reuters Toughens Rules,” 2007 ).

Related Articles

• Stuart Hall and Communication Studies
• Slavoj Žižek and Communication Studies
• Althusser and Structuralism in Communication Studies
• News Literacy
• Propaganda and Journalism
• Credibility and Trust in Journalism

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Critical thinking: definition and how to improve its skills

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Critical thinking is based on the observation and analysis of facts and evidences to return rational, skeptical and unbiased judgments.   

This type of thinking involves a series of skills that can be created but also improved, as we will see throughout this article in which we will begin by defining the concept and end with tips to build and improve the skills related to critical thinking.

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is a discipline based on the ability of people to observe, elucidate and analyze information, facts and evidences in order to judge or decide if it is right or wrong.

It goes beyond mere curiosity, simple knowledge or analysis of any kind of fact or information.

People who develop this type of outlook are able to logically connect ideas and defend them with weighty opinions that ultimately help them make better decisions.

How to build and improve critical thinking skills?

Building and improving critical thinking skills involves focusing on a number of abilities and capacities .

To begin the critical thinking process all ideas must be open and all options must be understood as much as possible.

Even the dumbest or craziest idea can end up being the gateway to the most intelligent and successful conclusion.

The problem with having an open mind is that it is the most difficult path and often involves a greater challenge and effort. It is well known that the easy thing to do is to go with the obvious and the commonly accepted but this has no place in critical thinking.

By contrast, it is helpful not to make hasty decisions and to weigh the problem in its entirety after a first moment of awareness.

Finally, practicing active listening will help you to receive feedback from others and to understand other points of view that may help you as a reference.

Impartiality

An important point in the critical thinking process is the development of the ability to identify biases and maintain an impartial view in evaluations.

To improve this aspect it is advisable to have tools to be able to identify and recognize the prejudices and biases you have and try to leave them completely aside when thinking about the solution.

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Observation

Observation allows you to see each and every detail , no matter how small, subtle or inconsequential they may be or seem to be.

Behind the superficial information hides a universe of data, sources and experiences that help you make the best decision.

One of the pillars of critical thinking is objectivity. This forces you to base your value judgments on established facts that you will have gathered after a correct research process. 

At this point in the process you should also be clear about the influencing factors to be taken into account and those that can be left out.

Remember that your research is not only about gathering a good amount of information that puts the maximum number of options, variables or situations on the table. 

For the information to be of quality, it must be based on reliable and trustworthy sources.

If the information you have to collect is based on the comments and opinions of third parties, try to exercise quality control but without interference. 

To do this, ask open-ended questions that bring all the nuances to the table and at the same time serve to sift out possible biases.

With the research process completed, it is time to analyze the sources and information gathered.

At this point, your analytical skills will help you to discard what does not conform to unconventional thinking, to prioritize among the information that is of value, to identify possible trends and to draw your own conclusions.

One of the skills that characterize a person with critical thinking is their ability to recognize patterns and connections between all the pieces of information they handle in their research.

This allows them to draw conclusions of great relevance on which to base their predictions with weighty foundations.

Analytical thinking is sometimes confused with critical thinking. The former only uses facts and data, while the latter incorporates other nuances such as emotions, experiences or opinions.

One of the problems with critical thinking is that it can be developed to infinity and beyond. You can always keep looking for new avenues of investigation and new lines of argument by stretching inference to limits that may not be necessary.

At this point it is important to clarify that inference is the process of drawing conclusions from initial premises or hypotheses.

Knowing when to stop the research and thinking process and move on to the next stage in which you put into practice the actions considered appropriate is necessary.

Communication

The information you collect in your research is not top secret material. On the contrary, your knowledge sharing with other people who are involved in the next steps of the process is so important.

Think that your analytical ability to extract the information and your conclusions can serve to guide others .

Problem solving

It is important to note at this point that critical thinking can be aimed at solving a problem but can also be used to simply answer questions or even to identify areas for improvement in certain situations. 

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