The Eight Guidelines to Critical Thinking
Grant Anderson
Psychology 101
Mid-term Essay Paper
10/27/2008
The Eight Guidelines to Critical Thinking
In the discipline of Psychology, there are eight guidelines to critical thinking. This essay will discuss all of them with examples to help understand each one. The first is to Ask Questions: Be willing to wonder (Wade & Travis, 2008 p.8). Young children may ask questions such as, “Why is the sky blue Mommy?” “Why doesn’t the plane fall?” Why don’t pigs have wings?” Unfortunately, as children grow up, they tend to stop asking “why” questions. Why is this the case? Vincent Ruggiero (1988) observed, “The trigger mechanism for creative thinking is the disposition to be curious, to wonder, to inquire.” “Asking ‘Whats wrong here?’ or ‘Why is this the way it is, and how did it come to be that way?’ leads to the identification of problems and challenges.” By asking questions one will not approach new information such as theories and findings as received wisdom but will ask many questions so as to think the way psychologists do. An example of this has to do with the way work effects motivation. A question in this regard that North Americans tend to ask is, if a person isn’t doing well at work, “What’s the matter with that person’s motivation? How come that person is so lazy?” Yet by asking other questions, it would lead to different answers about why this person is “lazy”? Let say you lived in a town where a company is famous. The company has many employees that go to work with high hopes. Soon, however, an odd thing occurs to many employees. They complain of fatigue and irritability. They call out sick.
Productivity declines. Some may think that this problem is due to employees being lazy.
But a question to consider would be why are all the employees lazy? Many psychologists have criticized the idea
Psychology 101
Mid-term Essay Paper
10/27/2008
The Eight Guidelines to Critical Thinking
In the discipline of Psychology, there are eight guidelines to critical thinking. This essay will discuss all of them with examples to help understand each one. The first is to Ask Questions: Be willing to wonder (Wade & Travis, 2008 p.8). Young children may ask questions such as, “Why is the sky blue Mommy?” “Why doesn’t the plane fall?” Why don’t pigs have wings?” Unfortunately, as children grow up, they tend to stop asking “why” questions. Why is this the case? Vincent Ruggiero (1988) observed, “The trigger mechanism for creative thinking is the disposition to be curious, to wonder, to inquire.” “Asking ‘Whats wrong here?’ or ‘Why is this the way it is, and how did it come to be that way?’ leads to the identification of problems and challenges.” By asking questions one will not approach new information such as theories and findings as received wisdom but will ask many questions so as to think the way psychologists do. An example of this has to do with the way work effects motivation. A question in this regard that North Americans tend to ask is, if a person isn’t doing well at work, “What’s the matter with that person’s motivation? How come that person is so lazy?” Yet by asking other questions, it would lead to different answers about why this person is “lazy”? Let say you lived in a town where a company is famous. The company has many employees that go to work with high hopes. Soon, however, an odd thing occurs to many employees. They complain of fatigue and irritability. They call out sick.
Productivity declines. Some may think that this problem is due to employees being lazy.
But a question to consider would be why are all the employees lazy? Many psychologists have criticized the idea
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