Critical Thinking About Developmental Issues

9/15 Lecture Notes

Seeking Alternative Viewpoints

1. Strengthen confidence

• If your beliefs can withstand strong counterarguments, then you are even more justified in being confiden in it

2. Expand thinking

• This will help you develop your ideas and make new conenctions

3. Enhance Persuasion

• It will help you better understand the alternative viewpoints, which might help you persuade others

Three Key Characteristics of Critical Thinking

1. Search for information is sufficiently thorough for the question and its importance

2. Search and inference are fair to all possibilities under consideration, including ones other than your initial/preferred position

3. Your confidence in your conclusion is appropriate to the amount of search that has been doen

Cognitive Miser

Tendency to make decision using mental shortcuts that require the least amount of effort

• Our tendency to be congitive misers can limit our skepiticism and search for answers. Push yourself to question!

Confirmation Bias

• Tendency to search for, interpret, and place greater weight on information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs

• Challenge this bias by knowing what you discredit and ignore, want to be true, and can recall

Split-Mind Strategy

• Half of you should actively be trying to AGREE (seeking to confirm, verify, uncover nuggets of truth)

• Half of you should actively be trying to DISAGREE (consiering the opposite, finding holes, questioning)

POINTS TO REMEMBER!

• Know the common cognitive biases: Cognitive miser and confirmation bias (be able to explain how they may lead to misconceptions about child development)

• Know the split-mind strategy