Heuristics and biases as measures of critical thinking: Associations with cognitive ability and thinking dispositions

• Autores: Richard F. West, Maggie E. Toplak, Keith E. Stanovich
• Localización: Journal of educational psychology, ISSN-e 1939-2176, ISSN 0022-0663, Vol. 100, Nº. 4, 2008, págs. 930-941
• Idioma: inglés
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• Dialnet Métricas: 4 Citas
• Resumen

  • In this article, the authors argue that there are a range of effects usually studied within cognitive psychology that are legitimately thought of as aspects of critical thinking: the cognitive biases studied in the heuristics and biases literature. In a study of 793 student participants, the authors found that the ability to avoid these biases was moderately correlated with a more traditional laboratory measure of critical thinking--the ability to reason logically when logic conflicts with prior belief. The correlation between these two classes of critical thinking skills was not due to a joint connection with general cognitive ability because it remained statistically significant after the variance due to cognitive ability was partialed out. Measures of thinking dispositions (actively open-minded thinking and need for cognition) predicted unique variance in both classes of critical thinking skills after general cognitive ability had been controlled.