Week 1 Role of Critical Thinking in Psychology, psychology homework help

Role of Critical Thinking in Psychology

Let’s examine the role of critical thinking in psychology. It would appear that critical thinking is an active process. Some critical thinking activities are careful observation, remembering, imagining, inquiring, evaluating and judging. Psychologists use critical thinking to sharpen the focus and results of their experiments and to make better decisions. Critical thinking is all about the importance of evidence and making sure a claim is backed with adequate reasoning and research.

Every day, you are faced with multiple claims…it seems worse now than ever! Some claims are easily dismissed by heading to Snopes.com or some other site. Others are a little trickier. Thus, we need to know when to look for evidence and what kind of evidence is reliable.

Take some time to think about these questions:

• What are some claims that you have heard that need more evidence?
• Have you ever been guilty of using less than reliable evidence?
• What kinds of unreliable evidence work best on you? Why do you think this is?
• Do you think that you are looking at claims differently now that you are taking this course?
• How does learning about claims and evidence make you a better critical thinker?