5 Inhibitors of Critical Thinking

One's feeling is increasingly perceived as a competitor to critical thinking. We’re venerating “lived experience,” “feeling offended,” and succumbing to feeling-heavy/rationality-light bumper sticker rhetoric, whether it's from the Right—for example, calling liberals “libtards”—or on the left—“Mass Decarceration Now!”

You can be a better thinker and, in turn, a better doer if you’re aware of the following five inhibitors of critical thinking:

1. Confirmation Bias

It’s comforting to be agreed with. So we tend to more critically view ideas that don’t comport with our beliefs. If we're not to be hypocritical in lauding the marketplace of ideas and ideological diversity, be aware of your confirmation bias and consider, judge-like, statesman-like, assertions on their merits.

2. Cognitive Dissonance

That refers to holding two or more conflicting beliefs or behaviors. For example, you may feel shame in claiming to be an environmentalist while living in a big house and driving a gas-guzzling SUV. Or you might rationalize abusing a substance because you eat a low-calorie diet. Or you may hide your cognitive dissonance by privately believing one thing about, for example, wokeism, but professing another so you can avoid censure.

A timeless example of cognitive dissonance regards kindness: Everyone professes to value kindness, yet many people behave in unkind ways. I’m not just talking about criminals, but, for example, people who mouth the right words on Sunday but during the rest of the week lie about someone they’re jealous of, withhold crucial truths to a customer or romantic partner, or lie under oath to get a better divorce settlement or to overturn a will.

A clue that you may be experiencing cognitive dissonance is when you’re feeling uncomfortable about something you’re doing or are about to do. If so, ask yourself how the Wise One within you would resolve the conflict. For example, let’s say you’re tempted to badmouth a coworker unfairly in an attempt to get a promotion that you’re both vying for. Ultimately, wouldn't you feel better if you took an ethical approach to resolving the conflict? For example, you can try upskilling, working more diligently, looking for another place of employment where your prospects for promotion are better, or accepting that justice will more likely accrue if you just sit tight.

3. Commitment Bias

That's the phenomenon of doing a thing making you more likely to want to do more of that thing. For example, signing up for a first session of psychoanalysis makes you more likely to sign up for a second, even if you disliked the first.

4. Source Bias

Bias is unavoidable; we all have biases. They’re based on our family background, culture, education, exposure to the media, and the zeitgeist. The latter reflects the collective effect of all of those on a society. But the ethical person in making a case for something tries to push his or her biases aside in favor of a fair-minded presentation of the most worthy perspective(s) even if not their own. Alas, too often we succumb to our biases. Of course, that’s particularly dangerous when the person has a megaphone: teachers, professors, and the media. Do try to think less like an activist and more like a statesman.

5. Unfalsifiability

There are many other inhibitors of critical thinking, but one that's particularly relevant to readers of Psychology Today and is underdiscussed is unfalsifiability. That means making a claim that can't be proven false. Unfalsifiability doesn’t necessarily make the assertion incorrect, but it demands carefully assessing the proposition's reasonability.

Let’s take a psychology-related example: EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). Some experts, for example, this multi-university team, concluded that EMDR is pseudoscience, in part because the underlying theory is both unprovable and seems logically unlikely to be effective. That puts additional burden on the results of high-quality studies that would confirm or refute EMDR's efficacy. Alas, a meta-analysis of EMDR studies finds that body of research to be of inadequate quality.

Other examples of unfalsifiable assertions include astrology and conspiracy theories. Regarding the latter, assertions both by the Left and Right about a “Deep State” are unprovable because the assertion is that they’re hidden. That means that there'd better be high-quality empirical support. For the Deep State as with astrology, that's lacking.

The Takeaway

Colleges have long attempted to teach critical thinking with limited success: "A fascinating review of the scientific research on how to teach critical thinking concludes that teaching generic critical thinking skills such as logical reasoning, might be a big waste of time."

So a mere blog post is unlikely to make a serious dent in the problem. Yet, it would seem that staying aware of those five potential biases—confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, commitment bias, source bias, and unfalsifiability—is a doable, time-effective approach to improving thinking. And in our ever busier and persuasion-oriented society, that seems to be worth at least a blog post—if you're thinking critically.

I read this aloud on YouTube.