PSY 1004 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Critical Thinking, Pseudoscience

• School: Temple University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1004
• Professor: Williams

Document Summary

Critical thinking: propensity of skills to engage in an activity with reflective skepticism focused on deciding what to believe in or do. Avoid emotional reasoning (cid:894) e. e(cid:373)piri(cid:272)al o(cid:271)ser(cid:448)atio(cid:374)s(cid:895) the fa(cid:272)ts you feel stro(cid:374)gly a(cid:271)out so(cid:373)ethi(cid:374)g does(cid:374)(cid:859)t make you right: remember that everyone hold convictions about how the world operates (or how it should operate) Consider other interpretations: before you draw a conclusion for the evidence, think creatively about other possible explanations. When you learn that two events are statistically correlated, for example, be sure to think carefully about which one is the cause and which is the result- or whether a third factor might be causing both of them. Tolerate uncertainty: this probably the hardest step in becoming a critical thinker, for it requires that (cid:449)e hold our (cid:271)elief (cid:862)lightly(cid:863) a(cid:374)d (cid:271)e (cid:449)illi(cid:374)g to gi(cid:448)e the(cid:373) up (cid:449)he(cid:374) (cid:271)etter e(cid:448)ide(cid:374)(cid:272)e comes along.