This is the third and final part weekly series regarding critical thinking.

Lets imagine I present you with the opportunity to win money. All you have to do is pick a red jelly bean from a bowl while blindfolded. You have two options, one bowl has only 1 red jelly bean with 9 white ones and the other bowl has 10 red jelly beans with 90 white ones. Which bowl would you pick to have a better chance?

Most people selected the larger bowl with the one-hundred jelly beans. The reality is that you have the same probability (10%) to pick a red jelly bean in either bowl. This example is based on a study conducted by Kirpatrick and Epstein (1992). The result of the study supports the idea that our thinking is not as rational in all situations. How many times have you said to yourself, “I have a gut feeling about this?” We tend to rely on intuition and heuretics (mental shortcuts based on experience) to evaluate situations.

Part of developing critical thinking involves understanding how our biases and faulty logic detract us from accurate information. Examples of irrational thinking includes when we think that if two objects touch, they will pass the properties to one another (Law of contagion). Voodoo dolls share this concept; it is believed that dolls with hair from another person will share the person’s properties. Another irrational thinking is when individuals believe that because two objects resemble another object they share some fundamental properties (Law of similarity).

When we evaluate information, we need to do it without adding inaccurate assumptions.  For example, you see a person walking with some papers and a cup of coffee and suddenly the person drops the coffee and it splashes all over them. If the person then starts cursing and crying, we might think this person is clumsy and mean. What we might forget is that this person might be experiencing other things that might affect his/her overreaction, like a lover’s death or unemployment. The tendency for people to emphasize personality-based explanations for behavior is called the Fundamental Attribution Error.

We need to calibrate our mind to understand what cognitive pitfalls we may have prior to evaluating information. When our analysis is combined with scrutiny for the information, probability analysis and grounded logic, we can be more accurate with our interpretation. The more accurate the analysis, the more we will benefit from our decisions.

Critical Thinking is a developed approach. We must exercise it everyday in order for us to become better at it. I hope this series has helped you and has given you a glance on how we can improve ourselves everyday.

Share with us your comments and tips about critical thinking.

• Part 1 - Information
• Part 2 - Probability
• Part 3 - Faulty Logic