Starting an argument with someone can be a great way to learn more about a topic. Arguments help us check our own thinking, come to terms with someone else’s reasoning, and occasionally even arrive at a shared understanding about what we believe to be true. Being open to debate is a great way to ...
Thinking and Deciding
Our world is increasingly complex and demanding. It’s not enough to rely on simple rules-of-thumb to navigate life, as they leave you vulnerable to undue influence and cognitive bias.
By building your skills for thinking and deciding, you can adopt more effective ways to reason through critical situations. In this category, we write about creative and critical thinking, as well as ways you can make better decisions.
Read all about thinking & deciding here.
Why Overconfidence Occurs and How to Overcome It
Overconfidence happens to all of us. Ever have a plan that just couldn’t go wrong? And then you get a kick in the butt. Ever know that something must be true, only to find out later that you had it backwards? Overconfidence is when you think you are more likely to be right than you actually ...
Confirmation Bias: 3 Effective (and 3 Ineffective) Cures
Confirmation bias is a fancy way of describing our human inclination to see what we want to see. In other words, we like to look for and interpret information in ways that confirm our expectations. The language makes it sound like confirmation bias is something only scientists can be afflicted ...
Critical Thinking and the Internet: Skills for a New Era
Learning has gotten complicated. We often need to answer challenging technical and scientific questions to get by in our everyday life. The web has become the default means to get those answers. Yet learning from the internet is fraught with difficulty. Searching, sorting, and ...
Critical Thinking in Decision Making
Critical thinking is often talked about as a stand-alone activity. Like some other individual activities, thinking critically may just feel good. Yet, critical thinking seems most useful when it aids other cognitive processes, such as applying critical thinking in decision making. Anne Helsdingen ...