critical thinking survey questions

85 Critical Thinking Questions to Carefully Examine Any Information

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The ability to think critically will often determine your success in life.

Let’s face it. Every day, we are bombarded by news, social media updates, and an avalanche of information. If you take all of this at face value, it’s easy to be deceived, misled or ripped off.

That’s why it’s important to  develop a mindset that focuses on critical thinking . This is a skill that needs to be developed in the classroom. But it’s also a valuable life skill.

With that in mind, the following post will share 85 critical thinking questions you can use to increase your awareness about different problems by carefully examining available information. 

Let’s get started…

Table of Contents

What Are Critical Thinking Questions?

Critical thinking questions are inquiries that help you think rationally and clearly by understanding the link between different facts or ideas. These questions create a seemingly endless learning process that lets you critique, evaluate, and develop a depth of knowledge about a given subject. Moreover, you get to reinforce your viewpoints or see things in a new way.

We make decisions every day, whether at work or home. Adopting logical, rational, and practical approaches in addressing various issues requiring critical thinking is essential in decision-making. Therefore, before arriving at a decision, always ask yourself relevant questions and carefully analyze the matter’s pros and cons.

Critical Thinking Questions When in an Argument

When you make an argument using a critical thinking approach, you focus on justified claims that are valid and based on evidence. It helps one establish a strong argument.

• Do I disagree with the other person? Might the person I'm arguing with be misinformed on what they are saying?
• Would I be comfortable saying what I am telling him/her if I was in front of a group of people? 
• What would happen if I lose this argument? Is engaging in this argument worth my time and energy? How will I feel if I lose?
• Is there room for ambiguity or misinterpretation? Are we arguing because I didn't make my point explicit? Should I take my time to understand his school of thought?
• Do I need some rest before saying something? Am I arguing because of other reasons other than the issues at hand? Do I need to take some time and cool down?

• Is it more important that I’m right? Am I trying to ask to prove an unnecessary point?
• Is this argument inductive, deductive, or abductive? Is it a weak or strong argument that I need to engage in? Is it compelling or sound? 
• Is my opponent sincere? Given that they are wrong, are they willing to admit that they are wrong? Can they depend on available evidence, wherever it leads?
• Are my opponents only trying to shift their burden to me? What is the best way to prove them wrong without making them feel bad?
• Are the people I'm arguing with only interested in winning, or are they trying to pass some information across and help me discover the truth?

Critical Thinking Questions When Reading a Book 

When you read a book, you probably ask yourself many “why” questions. Why is this a problem? Why did the character say that? Why is this important? The most challenging part of reading a book is assessing the information you are reading. These questions can help.

• If I learn only two things from this book, what will they be? How will they help me? How will I apply them in my daily life?
• What message are the authors trying to pass across? Are they making suggestions or providing evidence for their arguments?
• Given that almost every book is about solving problems, what is the most prevalent issue that the author is trying to solve?
• What is the author’s writing style? What strategy or master plan does the author employ to convey his/her main ideas throughout the book?
• Do I have background information about the book’s topic? If so, how is what the author is saying different from what I already know?
• What didn’t I understand from the book? Should I re-read the book to understand everything the writer is trying to convey?
• Which sections of the book do I love the most, and why? Generally, do I like this book? Should I look for more books that are written by the same author?
• If I had a chance to meet this book’s author, what questions would I ask him/her? What would I tell the writer about the book? Is it a great book worth recommending to your friends and family members?
• Who are the main characters of the book? If there is only one main character, what overarching goal does the character accomplish?
• In what ways did the protagonist change from the start of the book to the end? What caused the changes? Was the protagonist reckless in some ways? Which ways?

Critical Thinking Questions to Spot a Scam

Asking questions when you feel that a fraud or a scam is being presented to you is a good way to stretch your critical thinking muscles. Are you being emailed or messaged by a stranger? Or maybe there are other red flags you are unsure about. If so, ask these questions.

• Does it seem to be too good to be true? Is this stranger pushy or trying to lure me into making a poor decision?
• When trying out online dating: Is my new “friend” professing strong feelings towards me although we’ve only interacted for a few hours?
• Why is a stranger calling me to ask about my Social Security Number (SSN), personal contact information, or bank details while claiming they are from the bank or a phone company? 
• When buying products online, why does the seller ask me to pay for goods using an insecure payment option like Bitcoin or money order?
• Does the email I have received have any spelling or grammatical errors? Is the language used overly formal or informal?
• If I do a quick search about the exact words of the email I received, does Google indicate it's a fraud or scam?
• Why should a stranger manipulate me using obvious questions like “Would you want to be rich or poor?” While they already know the answer?
• Is the email asking me to download an attachment? Or click a link to some insecure website? 
• Is the person trying to make me feel selfish or guilty for not sending them money, whether for a donation or buying a product? 
• Is the stranger portraying a sense of urgency and using pressure tactics? Are they telling me that their family member needs urgent medical attention?

Critical Thinking Questions About Your Life

It can also help to ask yourself a few critical thinking questions about your life. This way, you can gather basic information and uncover solutions to problems you might not have otherwise thought of.

• Where do I wish to be in a few years, probably two, three, or five years? What short-term and long-term goals should I set?
• What have I achieved so far from the time I set my previous goals? What should I be grateful for?
• Do I have any values that guide me in life? If so, what are these values? Am I always true to these values?
• Am I always worried about what people around me think? Can I act independently without the need to meet social expectations?
• What should people say about me at my funeral? Would they talk about how good I made them feel or how rich and flashy I was?
• If I wasn't afraid of anyone or anything, what would I have done? What if I didn't have any fear in me?
• If today was my last day, what extraordinary thing would I do? Can I do it right now?
• What should I do with the things that matter the most to me? 
• What things will make the greatest difference in my future life if I take action now?
• How should I react when I feel unwanted by the people I love the most? Should I tell them?

Critical Thinking Questions for a Debate or Discussion

When you are in the middle of a debate or discussion, you need to know that what you are saying is fact, have evidence to support your claim, and position yourself as an expert in what you are saying. Here are some critical thinking questions to ask when you are in a debate or discussion.

• Is there fairness in this discussion? Is the moderator supporting one side? Do they want to make one side look stupid or wrong? 
• What is the aim of this discussion? Is there a major problem that needs to be solved? If so, how can I help solve it?
• Who are the people affected by this discussion? If they were here, what would they say?
• Do my views on this discussion matter? If I raise my point, will I be redundant?
• What am I supposed to learn from this debate, and how can I use what I have learned in my daily life?
• Does the audience seem to be biased towards one side? Are they booing one side? What can I do even if it's our opponents being booed?
• Who are the discussion panel members? What views have they held about this kind of discussion or any other related discussions in the past?
• How can I make my point without being ambiguous? Before I speak, should I take down some notes to avoid any confusion during my speech?
• Am I ready to apologize if I make a mistake during the discussion? If so, what are the limits?
• What information does my team, or I need before this discussion? 

Critical Thinking Questions About Lying

Admitting when you are wrong, choosing not to cheat, and sharing constructive feedback are all ways to show your honesty. Here are some critical thinking skills to ask regarding lying.

• Will the lie hurt those I am telling, or will it help them? What if being honest might cause my friend unnecessary pain?
• Should I be the one telling this person a lie, or I let someone else do it? 
• Will I be the one hurt if I tell this lie? Will my friend feel I am a betrayer? Will it affect our friendship?
• Do they answer my questions in detail, or are they always trying to ignore and dodge the main problem?
• What if I ask these people the same question using different terms and wording? Will they give me the same response?
• Did the tone of my friend suddenly change after I asked him/her this question? Do they sound louder, faster, or slower compared to how they usually speak?
• Does this person have something to gain by lying to me? What is their motive?
• Does this person take a sudden pause or hesitate more than usual when responding to my question?
• When I look at these people's faces, do their facial expressions match what they say?
• Should I believe this person or not? What are my intuitions? Does it look like they are telling the truth?
• Do they blink like other days when I ask them questions? Are they always trying to avoid direct eye contact?
• Why do they seem uncomfortable when it’s just a normal conversation?  

Critical Thinking Questions When Presented With a Claim

Critical thinking is much more than just evaluating whether a claim is true or not. It also means a critical thinker reflects on what follows from true claims.

• What does this claim mean, and what are its implications? What if it's a false claim?
• Which of my morals, values, or beliefs do I have to give up to accept this claim?
• Do professionals in this field agree or disagree with the claim that has been made?
• Do they have evidence to back their claim? Which is the most robust evidence to support the claim?
• What argument can I come up with to refute this claim? Or what is the best view that can support this claim?
• Who is the primary source of the claim being made? Is the basis of the claim reliable?
• Is it a claim, or it's just an opinion?
• Is the claim likely to be 100% false, true, or partially true?
• Am I allowed to refute the claim and table my evidence, or is it one-sided?

Critical Thinking Interview Questions

Critical thinking skills are valuable in any industry or field and for almost all roles. During a job interview, you will be asked questions so the potential employer can assess your skills and see how you use logic. Your critical thinking ability is just one vital part that can play into your professional development.

• Is there a time you had to convince someone to use an alternate approach to solve a problem?
• Have you ever had to make a difficult decision quickly?
• How would you handle a situation where your supervisor handled something wrong or made a mistake?
• What is one of the most difficult decisions you have ever had to make at work?
• How would you solve a disagreement between coworkers when approaching a project?
• Can you describe a time when you anticipated a problem ahead of time and took the appropriate steps to stop the problem from becoming an issue?
• If you discover a cheaper way to do something or a better solution to a problem and try to explain it to your supervisor, but they don’t understand, what do you do?

Critical Thinking Questions for Kids

We can’t leave the kids out either. Critical thinking questions for kids get them thinking and talking. It also allows a parent to get to know their child better.

• How many grains of sand do you think are on the beach?
• What would happen if it stopped raining?
• Do you think there is life on other planets?
• Should children be able to set their own bedtimes?
• How would you describe what a tree looks like without saying green or leaves?
• Can you name five different emotions?
• Can you talk for five minutes without uttering “um?”

What Are the Basic Principles of Critical Thinking?

Your critical thinking skills involve gathering complete information, understanding and defining terms, questioning the methods by which we get facts, questioning the conclusions, and looking for hidden assumptions and biases.

Additionally, we can’t expect to find all of the answers, and we need to take the time to examine the big picture of it all.

Here are the basic principles:

• Disposition: Someone with critical thinking skills is often skeptical, open-minded, and practices fair-mindedness. They can look at different viewpoints and change positions if the evidence and reason lead them to do so.
• Criteria: In order to think critically, one must also apply criteria. Certain conditions must be met before someone believes in something. The information needs to be from credible sources.
• Argument: An argument is simply a statement or proposition that is shown with supporting evidence. When you use your critical thinking skills, you identify, evaluate, and construct your argument.
• Reasoning: With critical thinking comes reasoning. You must examine logical relationships among the statements being made.
• Point of View: Critical thinkers can see things from different perspectives and different points of view.

What Are Good Analysis Questions?

Analysis is a part of critical thinking that allows you to examine something carefully. Someone with analytical skills can examine the information presented, understand what that information means, and then properly explain that information to others. Analysis in critical thinking provides more clarity on the information you process.

When analyzing, you may ask yourself, “how do I know this,” how would I solve this problem,” and “why does it matter?”

Why Is Critical Thinking an Important Skill?

Critical thinking skills allow you to express thoughts, ideas, and beliefs in a better way. It also leads to improved communication while allowing others to understand you better. Critical thinking fosters creativity and encourages out-of-the-box thinking. This is a skill that can be applied to many different areas of your life.

For example, knowing the answers to critical thinking questions for a job interview will better prepare you for the interview. Many employers, during questioning, are likely to ask you critical thinking questions to assess if you have the ability to evaluate information effectively so you can make more informed decisions.

Final Thoughts on Critical Thinking Questions

Although it's common to get torn between making two or more choices, nobody wants to make the wrong decision. The only thing you can do to avoid this is use critical thinking questions to examine your situation. The answers to these questions will help you make informed decisions and help you comprehend crucial matters in your life. 

Want to learn more about critical thinking and decision-making using a real-life example? Here is  how Jeff Bezos uses critical thinking  to make some of the most challenging life decisions.

Finally, if you want to ask better questions, then watch this short, 20-minute course to learn how to have a great conversation with virtually anyone .

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Critical Thinking Is About Asking Better Questions

• John Coleman

Six practices to sharpen your inquiry.

Critical thinking is the ability to analyze and effectively break down an issue in order to make a decision or find a solution. At the heart of critical thinking is the ability to formulate deep, different, and effective questions. For effective questioning, start by holding your hypotheses loosely. Be willing to fundamentally reconsider your initial conclusions — and do so without defensiveness. Second, listen more than you talk through active listening. Third, leave your queries open-ended, and avoid yes-or-no questions. Fourth, consider the counterintuitive to avoid falling into groupthink. Fifth, take the time to stew in a problem, rather than making decisions unnecessarily quickly. Last, ask thoughtful, even difficult, follow-ups.

Are you tackling a new and difficult problem at work? Recently promoted and trying to both understand your new role and bring a fresh perspective? Or are you new to the workforce and seeking ways to meaningfully contribute alongside your more experienced colleagues? If so, critical thinking — the ability to analyze and effectively break down an issue in order to make a decision or find a solution — will be core to your success. And at the heart of critical thinking is the ability to formulate deep, different, and effective questions.

• JC John Coleman is the author of the HBR Guide to Crafting Your Purpose . Subscribe to his free newsletter, On Purpose , follow him on Twitter @johnwcoleman, or contact him at johnwilliamcoleman.com.

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Critical Thinking Questions That Will Blow Your Mind

• February 10, 2018

What would it be like if every decision you made didn’t involve your personal feelings or over-emotional reactions? What if your perspective was always balanced and decisions completely informed? Is it not time that you used critical thinking questions to become the more levelheaded, cool, and calm person you want to be?

Being a critical thinker enables you to take a neutral perspective on an idea or scenario and gives you the power of true choice. Being free from manipulation or emotional ties to your decision will allow you to make the most beneficial choice in any circumstance.

In critical thinking, we are taught to question everything. However, the question behind the question is; what questions should you be asking? Before we go into the critical matter of the exact questions, we should first look at the manner in which these critical thinking questions should be asked. After this article, you will be a wizard at asking critical thinking questions. 

The Standard of Questions You Should Ask

Although the actual questions will be very important to critical thinking, the emphasis and purpose of these questions will determine how effective the questions will be. You must first know how to question before you know what and which critical thinking questions to ask.

1. Open-ended questioning

As a critical thinker, you cannot allow whomever or whatever you are questioning to give you the smallest amount of information for your questions. Yes or No answers can really drag out the process of getting the answers and information that you want.

Asking questions that will not only give you the answers you are looking for but also open up a heap more information than you were searching for. Ask open-ended questions such as the following:

• “What is the purpose of this scenario?”  Instead of:  “Is this the purpose of this scenario?”
• “What is your favorite thing about this scenario?” Instead of: “Is this your favorite thing about this scenario?”

2. Avoid leading questions

Being a critical thinker is about escaping your bias and seeing things outside of your personal perspective . It is thus very important to avoid leading the question, in an area you want it to go.

Keep your questions as neutral as possible and don’t allow any definitive language to creep into the question. Such as using the following:

• “What is your take on the healthiest diet there is?”  Instead of: “Don’t you think the vegan diet is the healthiest diet?”
• “What is the condition of the country at the moment?”  Instead of: “How bad is the condition of the country at the moment?”

3. Specify the boundaries of your questions

As much as leading a question can be a hindrance to what you want, so can leaving the question too open, and invite unnecessary information to be given. Critical thinking is about being objective, but it still needs a direction and focus in which you apply your critical thinking.

Make sure that you set up an accurate framework in which your questions can be answered. Being too broad makes the process of getting answers inefficient and drawn out. Try asking questions like:

• “Who is your favorite male tennis player in the United States?”  Instead of: “Who is your favorite tennis player?”
• “If you could live anywhere in South East Asia, where would that be?”  Instead of: “If you could live anywhere, where would that be?”

4. Funnel the questions until you get the answer you were looking for

When questions remain shallow, it is easy for the sources of information you are questioning to mislead and avoid giving you the information that you want.

Do not set up the path of questions beforehand, but rather make sure that you dig deeper after each question in the direction of information that you really want.  Once you have your answer, then move back to broader questioning in order to get a better picture of the whole once again.

5. All the answers to your question must be based on facts and well supported from many different sources

Make sure that you don’t give into hearsay. Find the studies, the science, and ample testimonials before you accept the information that you have been given.

Look into many different and unrelated sources to see if the information matches up. Look at the other side of the argument and validate their claims.

Methods of Critical Thinking Questions

1. the 5 w’s and the h.

These are the absolute basics of critical thinking. The Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How are foundational questions that are taught over and over in journalism, investigation, and research.

They are the base from which every critical analysis should be created. You would apply these questions as follows:

•    …would benefit?
•    …would this harm?
•    …is responsible?
•    …has researched this before?
•    …is the other perspective?
•    …would be the challenges?
•    …are the strengths?
•    …is the key subject?
•    …would this problem reside?
•    …are there similar situations?
•    …can more information be found?
•    …can this be improved on?
•    …is this acceptable and unacceptable?
•    …could this be implemented?
•    …would we be able to measure the results?
•    …is it time to stop this action?
•    …is this a problem?
•    …is this relevant?
•    …should this be known about?
•    …is there a need for this?
•    …is this different from anything else similar to it?
•    …it functions?
•    … is this the truth about it?
•    …could it harm anyone?

2. Agenda and method questioning

These two areas of questioning may have already been covered through the 5 W’s and the H. However, it is beneficial to emphasize the angle from which this questioning comes.

The first one is questioning the agenda. This is aimed at figuring out how people could benefit from a situation or idea. This agenda can place all the information received in context.

For instance, if a company was contributing to a charity and their agenda was to improve their image against the damage done by that company, then the contributions would be much less charitable and much more about publicity.

Questions that would help clarify the agenda would be:

• What is the person or organization involved trying to accomplish?
• What issues or problems are raised by the person or organization involved?
• What data, what experiences, what evidence is given?
• Is the person or organization involved thinking about the environment?
• Is the person’s or organization’s thinking justified as far as we can see from our perspective?
• And how do they justify it from their perspective?
• How can we enter their perspective to appreciate what they have to say?

The second aspect of this is questioning the method. As a critical thinker, this makes the outcomes of every situation and idea questionable, which is exactly the point of critical thinking.

Too many times the outcome of a specific method is the focus of debate, without clarifying if that outcome has validity.

Questions that would help clarify the Method would be:

•   I s the person or organization involved willing to fundamentally rethink their methods of creating a certain outcome?
•  Has the person or organization involved thought about how the method will work going into the future?
•  To what extent has the method been tested?
•  Is there any other method that could be used to produce this outcome and what would be the implications of this method?
•  Is the person or organization involved willing to allow this method to be tested?
•  In what other situation has this method been used and how effective was it?

3. Inquiry process

The inquiry process is exactly that; a process. It does entail certain questions but the power of this process resides in the way the process is conducted.

This process is the standard of research and creates an order in which you can follow, uncovering the information that you seek. Although the terminology may change for each step of the process, the essence of what needs to be done remains the same.

The process is divided as follows:

•     Ask (Pose Question)
•    Investigate (Find Resources)
•    Create (interpret/ Synthesise)
•    Discuss (Report findings)
•    Reflect (follow the process backward)

4. Bloom’s taxonomy

Bloom’s taxonomy was created by Dr. Benjamin Bloom , a psychologist in the 1950’s. Bloom’s work was to create a better form of learning through more focus on analysis and evaluation.

Bloom’s taxonomy is very much Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to critical thinking. The original Bloom’s taxonomy encompasses:

•    What is the subject?
•    When did it happen?

Comprehension:

•    How would you compare the subject?
•    Explain the subject in your own words?

Application

•    What examples can you find of the subject?
•    What approach would you use to solve the problem?
•    What inference can you make from the information?
•    How would you classify or categorize the subject?
•    How would you compare the information?
•    What was the value or importance of the information?

Creation or Synthesis

•    Can you propose an alternative interpretation of the information?
•    What might happen if you…?

Bloom’s Taxonomy has since been revised. In 2001 a group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists and instructional researchers, and testing and assessment specialists change the titles of each level to make a more dynamic approach to the system.

The titles were revised to:

•    Recognizing
•    Recalling
•    Interpreting
•    Exemplifying
•    Classifying
•    Summarizing
•    Inferring
•    Comparing
•    Explaining
•    Executing
•    Implementing
•    Differentiating
•    Organizing
•    Attributing
•    Checking
•    Critiquing
•    Generating
•    Planning
•    Producing

In the process of the revision, the authors broke the knowledge area into its own taxonomy:

Factual Knowledge

•    Knowledge of terminology
•    Knowledge of specific details and elements

Conceptual Knowledge

•    Knowledge of classifications and categories
•    Knowledge of principles and generalizations
•    Knowledge of theories, models, and structures

Procedural Knowledge

•    Knowledge of subject-specific skills and algorithms
•    Knowledge of subject-specific techniques and methods
•    Knowledge of criteria for determining when to use appropriate procedures

Metacognitive Knowledge

•    Strategic Knowledge
•    Knowledge about cognitive tasks, including appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge
•    Self-knowledge

If you want to know more about the reasoning behind the revision click here .

5. Integral questioning

Integral theory was created by Ken Wilber  (author of A Brief History of Everything ) and has become one of the most useful structures of evaluation in this era. The integral model is a reference structure in which you can objectively see all areas of a specific subject.

This method goes hand in glove with the practice of critical thinking. Applying the method into question form will bring out the following analysis:

Quadrants: this is the evaluation of each viewpoint of a certain subject.

•    What does a specific person involved think or feel about the subject?
•    What studies and tests have been done on the subject?
•    What do the people as a whole feel or think about the subject?
•    What does the industry of the subject say on the subject?

Lines: These are the areas of understanding of factors involved in the matter.

•    What are the different areas of life expressed in this subject?
•    What factors are involved in the situation or subject?
•    To what area of understanding does is the subject appeal to?

Levels: This deals with a hierarchical standard of a certain area of the subject.

•    To what level of understanding does is a subject appeal?
•    How complex or advanced is this subject?
•    What standard of knowledge needs to be obtained to understand this subject?

State: This refers to a fleeting state of being in which the subject can be seen in.

•    In what state of mind was the person involved in when reviewing the subject?
•    In what state of mind was the person involved in when the situation occurred?
•    Is the information given contextual to a certain situation?

Types: This is a division of experiences based on traits that could affect perspective.

•    How would someone who is completely different from the person involved perceive the situation?
•    What different types of people were involved in the situation?
•    How could this subject be received differently by a different cultural reference?

Question Everything

You now possess all that you need to start becoming a critical thinker and asking critical thinking questions. The only way to engrain the above processes and questions to become a critical thinker is to practice. You might need to refer to this article consistently at first, but after time you will become a natural and healthy critical thinker.

This video may help to ignite your passion for questioning everything:

Read more on critical thinking by checking out these related articles and resources:

• How to Solve the Biggest Problems With Critical Thinking
• Critical Thinking Examples That Wil Influence the World Around You

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Critical Thinking Tests

• 228 questions

Critical thinking tests, sometimes known as critical reasoning tests, are often used by employers. They evaluate how a candidate makes logical deductions after scrutinising the evidence provided, while avoiding fallacies or non-factual opinions. Critical thinking tests can form part of an assessment day, or be used as a screening test before an interview.

What is a critical thinking test?

A critical thinking test assesses your ability to use a range of logical skills to evaluate given information and make a judgement. The test is presented in such a way that candidates are expected to quickly scrutinise the evidence presented and decide on the strength of the arguments.

Critical thinking tests show potential employers that you do not just accept data and can avoid subconscious bias and opinions – instead, you can find logical connections between ideas and find alternative interpretations.

This test is usually timed, so quick, clear, logical thinking will help candidates get the best marks. Critical thinking tests are designed to be challenging, and often used as part of the application process for upper-management-level roles.

What does critical thinking mean?

Critical thinking is the intellectual skill set that ensures you can process and consider information, challenge and analyse data, and then reach a conclusion that can be defended and justified.

In the most simple terms, critical reasoning skills will make sure that you are not simply accepting information at face value with little or no supporting evidence.

It also means that you are less likely to be swayed by ‘false news’ or opinions that cannot be backed with facts – which is important in high-level jobs that require logical thinking.

For more information about logical thinking, please see our article all about logical reasoning .

Which professions use critical thinking tests, and why?

Typically, critical thinking tests are taken as part of the application process for jobs that require advanced skills in judgement, analysis and decision making. The higher the position, the more likely that you will need to demonstrate reliable critical reasoning and good logic.

The legal sector is the main industry that uses critical thinking assessments – making decisions based on facts, without opinion and intuition, is vital in legal matters.

A candidate for a legal role needs to demonstrate their intellectual skills in problem-solving without pre-existing knowledge or subconscious bias – and the critical thinking test is a simple and effective way to screen candidates.

Another industry that uses critical thinking tests as part of the recruitment process is banking. In a similar way to the legal sector, those that work in banking are required to make decisions without allowing emotion, intuition or opinion to cloud coherent analysis and conclusions.

Critical thinking tests also sometimes comprise part of the recruitment assessment for graduate and management positions across numerous industries.

The format of the test: which skills are tested?

The test itself, no matter the publisher, is multiple choice.

As a rule, the questions present a paragraph of information for a scenario that may include numerical data. There will then be a statement and a number of possible answers.

The critical thinking test is timed, so decisions need to be made quickly and accurately; in most tests there is a little less than a minute for each question. Having experience of the test structure and what each question is looking for will make the experience smoother for you.

There are typically five separate sections in a critical thinking test, and each section may have multiple questions.

Inference questions assess your ability to judge whether a statement is true, false, or impossible to determine based on the given data and scenario. You usually have five possible answers: absolutely true, absolutely false, possibly true, possibly false, or not possible to determine.

Assumptions

In this section, you are being assessed on your ability to avoid taking things for granted. Each question gives a scenario including data, and you need to evaluate whether there are any assumptions present.

Here you are given a scenario and a number of deductions that may be applicable. You need to assess the given deductions to see which is the logical conclusion – does it follow?

Interpretation

In the interpretation stage, you need to read and analyse a paragraph of information, then interpret a set of possible conclusions, to see which one is correct. You are looking for the conclusion that follows beyond reasonable doubt.

Evaluation of Arguments

In this section, you are given a scenario and a set of arguments that can be for or against. You need to determine which are strong arguments and which are weak, in terms of the information that you have. This decision is made based on the way they address the scenario and how relevant they are to the content.

How best to prepare for a critical thinking test

The best way to prepare for any type of aptitude test is to practice, and critical thinking tests are no different.

Taking practice tests, as mentioned above, will give you confidence as it makes you better understand the structure, layout and timing of the real tests, so you can concentrate on the actual scenarios and questions.

Practice tests should be timed. This will help you get used to working through the scenarios and assessing the conclusions under time constraints – which is a good way to make sure that you perform quickly as well as accurately.

In some thinking skills assessments , a timer will be built in, but you might need to time yourself.

Consistent practice will also enable you to pinpoint any areas of the critical thinking test that require improvement. Our tests offer explanations for each answer, similar to the examples provided above.

Publishers of critical thinking tests

The watson glaser critical thinking test.

The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (W-GCTA) is the most popular and widely used critical thinking test. This test has been in development for 85 years and is published by TalentLens .

The W-GCTA is seen as a successful tool for assessing cognitive abilities, allowing recruiting managers to predict job success, find good managers and identify future leaders. It is available in multiple languages including English, French and Spanish.

The test itself can be used as part of an assessment day or as a screening assessment before an interview. It consists of 40 questions on the 5 sections mentioned above, and is timed at 30 minutes. Click here for more information on Watson Glaser tests .

SHL critical reasoning test

SHL is a major aptitude test publisher, which offers critical thinking as part of its testing battery for pre-employment checks.

SHL tests cover all kinds of behavioural and aptitude tests, from logic to inference, verbal to numerical – and with a number of test batteries available online, they are one of the most popular choices for recruiters.

Cornell critical thinking test

The Cornell critical thinking test was made to test students and first developed in 1985. It is an American system that helps teachers, parents and administrators to confidently predict future performance for college admission, gifted and advanced placement programs, and even career success.

Prepare yourself for leading employers

5 Example critical thinking practice questions with answers

In this section, you need to deduce whether the inferred statement is true, false or impossible to deduce.

The UK Government has published data that shows 82% of people under the age of 30 are not homeowners. A charity that helps homeless people has published data that shows 48% of people that are considered homeless are under 30.

The lack of affordable housing on the sales market is the reason so many under-30s are homeless.

• Definitely True
• Probably True
• Impossible to Deduce
• Probably False
• Definitely False

The information given does not infer the conclusion given, so it is impossible to deduce if the inference is correct – there is just not enough information to judge the inference as correct.

The removal of the five-substitution rule in British football will benefit clubs with a smaller roster.

Clubs with more money would prefer the five-substitute rule to continue.

• Assumption Made

Assumption Not Made

This is an example of a fallacy that could cause confusion for a candidate – it encourages you to bring in any pre-existing knowledge of football clubs.

It would be easy to assume the assumption has been made when you consider that the more money a club has, the more players they should have on the roster. However, the statement does not make the assumption that the clubs with more money would prefer to continue with the five-substitute rule.

All boys love football. Football is a sport, therefore:

• All boys love all sports
• Girls do not love football
• Boys are more likely to choose to play football than any other sport

In this section we are looking for the conclusion that follows the logic of the statement. In this example, we cannot deduce that girls do not love football, because there is not enough information to support that.

In the same way the conclusion that all boys love all sports does not follow – we are not given enough information to make that assumption. So, the conclusion that follows is 3: boys are more likely to choose football than any other sport because all boys like football.

The British Museum has a range of artefacts on display, including the largest privately owned collection of WWII weaponry.

There is a larger privately owned collection of WWII weaponry in the USA.

• Conclusion Follows

Conclusion Does Not Follow

The fact that the collection is in the British Museum does not make a difference to the fact it is the largest private collection – so there cannot be a larger collection elsewhere.

The Department for Education should lower standards in examinations to make it fairer for less able students.

• Yes – top grades are too hard for lower-income students
• No – less fortunate students are not capable of higher standards
• Yes – making the standards lower will benefit all students
• No – private school students will suffer if grade standards are lower
• The strongest argument is the right answer, not the one that you might personally believe.

In this case, we need to assess which argument is most relevant to the statement. Both 1 and 4 refer to students in particular situations, which isn’t relevant to the statement. The same can be said about 2, so the strongest argument is 3, since it is relevant and addresses the statement given.

Sample Critical Thinking Tests question Test your knowledge!

What implication can be drawn from the information in the passage?

A company’s internal audit revealed that departments with access to advanced analytics tools reported higher levels of strategic decision-making. These departments also showed a higher rate of reaching their quarterly objectives.

• Strategic decision-making has no link to the achievement of quarterly objectives.
• Access to advanced analytics does not influence a department's ability to make strategic decisions.
• Advanced analytics tools are the sole reason for departments reaching their quarterly objectives.
• Departments without access to advanced analytics tools are unable to make strategic decisions.
• Advanced analytics tools may facilitate better strategic decision-making, which can lead to the achievement of objectives.

After reading the passage below, what conclusion is best supported by the information provided?

• Job satisfaction increases when employees start their day earlier.
• Starting early may lead to more efficient task completion and less job-related stress.
• Workers who start their day later are more efficient at completing tasks.
• There is a direct correlation between job satisfaction and starting work early.
• The study concludes that job-related stress is unaffected by the start time of the workday.

Based on the passage below, which of the following assumptions is implicit?

• Inter-departmental cooperation is the sole factor influencing project completion rates.
• The increase in project completion rates is due entirely to the specialized team-building module.
• Team-building exercises have no effect on inter-departmental cooperation.
• The specialized team-building module may contribute to improvements in inter-departmental cooperation.
• Departments that have not undergone the training will experience a decrease in project completion rates.

What is the flaw in the argument presented in the passage below?

• The assumption that a casual dress code is suitable for all company types.
• High-tech companies have a casual dress code to increase employee productivity specifically.
• The argument correctly suggests that a casual dress code will increase employee morale in every company.
• Morale and productivity cannot be affected by a company's dress code.
• A casual dress code is more important than other factors in determining a company's success.

Which statement is an inference that can be drawn from the passage below?

• Telecommuting employees are less productive than on-site workers.
• The reduction in operational costs is directly caused by the increase in telecommuting employees.
• Telecommuting may have contributed to the decrease in operational costs.
• Operational costs are unaffected by employee work locations.
• The number of telecommuting employees has no impact on operational costs.

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Critical Thinking Tests Tips

The most important factor in your success will be practice. If you have taken some practice tests, not only will you start to recognise the way questions are worded and become familiar with what each question is looking for, you will also be able to find out whether there are any parts that you need extra practice with.

It is important to find out which test you will be taking, as some generic critical thinking practice tests might not help if you are taking specific publisher tests (see the section below).

2 Fact vs fallacy

Practice questions can also help you recognise the difference between fact and fallacy in the test. A fallacy is simply an error or something misleading in the scenario paragraph that encourages you to choose an invalid argument. This might be a presumption or a misconception, but if it isn’t spotted it can make finding the right answer impossible.

3 Ignore what you already know

There is no need for pre-existing knowledge to be brought into the test, so no research is needed. In fact, it is important that you ignore any subconscious bias when you are considering the questions – you need logic and facts to get the correct answer, not intuition or instinct.

4 Read everything carefully

Read all the given information thoroughly. This might sound straightforward, but knowing that the test is timed can encourage candidates to skip content and risk misunderstanding the content or miss crucial details.

During the test itself, you will receive instructions that will help you to understand what is being asked of you on each section. There is likely to be an example question and answer, so ensure you take the time to read them fully.

5 Stay aware of the time you've taken

This test is usually timed, so don’t spend too long on a question. If you feel it is going to take too much time, leave it and come back to it at the end (if you have time). Critical thinking tests are complex by design, so they do have quite generous time limits.

For further advice, check out our full set of tips for critical thinking tests .

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Critical Thinking Tests FAQs

What are the basics of critical thinking.

In essence, critical thinking is the intellectual process of considering information on its merits, and reaching an analysis or conclusion from that information that can be defended and rationalised with evidence.

How do you know if you have good critical thinking skills?

You are likely to be someone with good critical thinking skills if you can build winning arguments; pick holes in someone’s theory if it’s inconsistent with known facts; reflect on the biases inherent in your own experiences and assumptions; and look at problems using a systematic methodology.

Reviews of our Watson Glaser tests

What our customers say about our Watson Glaser tests

Jozef Bailey

United Kingdom

April 05, 2022

Doesn't cover all aspects of Watson-Glaser tests but useful

The WGCTA uses more categories to assess critical thinking, but this was useful for the inference section.

April 01, 2022

Just practicing for an interview

Good information and liked that it had a countdown clock, to give you that real feel in the test situation.

Jerico Kadhir

March 31, 2022

Aptitude test

It was OK, I didn't understand personally whether or not the "cannot say" option was acceptable or not in a lot of the questions, as it may have been a trick option.

Salvarina Viknesuari

March 15, 2022

I like the test because the platform is simple and engaging while the test itself is different than most of the Watson Glaser tests I've taken.

Alexis Sheridan

March 02, 2022

Some of the ratios were harder than I thought!

I like how clear the design and layout is - makes things very easy (even if the content itself is not!)

Cyril Lekgetho

February 17, 2022

Mental arithmetic

I enjoyed the fact that there were multiple questions pertaining to one passage of information, rather than multiple passages. However I would've appreciated a more varied question type.

Madupoju Manish

February 16, 2022

Analytics are the best questions

I like the test because of its time schedule. The way the questions are prepared makes it easy to crack the original test.

Chelsea Franklin

February 02, 2022

Interesting

I haven't done something like this for ages. Very good for the brain - although I certainly experienced some fog whilst doing it.

[email protected]

January 04, 2022

Population/exchange rates were the hardest

Great test as it felt a bit time pressured. Very different types of questions in terms of difficulty.

faezeh tavakoli

January 02, 2022

More attention to detail + be more time conscious

It was asking about daily stuff we all deal with, but as an assessment it's scrutinising how we approach these problems.

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• A Model for the National Assessment of Higher Order Thinking
• International Critical Thinking Essay Test
• Online Critical Thinking Basic Concepts Test
• Online Critical Thinking Basic Concepts Sample Test

Consequential Validity: Using Assessment to Drive Instruction

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Critical Thinking Testing and Assessment

The purpose of assessment in instruction is improvement. The purpose of assessing instruction for critical thinking is improving the teaching of discipline-based thinking (historical, biological, sociological, mathematical, etc.) It is to improve students’ abilities to think their way through content using disciplined skill in reasoning. The more particular we can be about what we want students to learn about critical thinking, the better we can devise instruction with that particular end in view.

The Foundation for Critical Thinking offers assessment instruments which share in the same general goal: to enable educators to gather evidence relevant to determining the extent to which instruction is teaching students to think critically (in the process of learning content). To this end, the Fellows of the Foundation recommend:

that academic institutions and units establish an oversight committee for critical thinking, and

that this oversight committee utilizes a combination of assessment instruments (the more the better) to generate incentives for faculty, by providing them with as much evidence as feasible of the actual state of instruction for critical thinking.

The following instruments are available to generate evidence relevant to critical thinking teaching and learning:

Course Evaluation Form : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, students perceive faculty as fostering critical thinking in instruction (course by course). Machine-scoreable.

Online Critical Thinking Basic Concepts Test : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, students understand the fundamental concepts embedded in critical thinking (and hence tests student readiness to think critically). Machine-scoreable.

Critical Thinking Reading and Writing Test : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, students can read closely and write substantively (and hence tests students' abilities to read and write critically). Short-answer.

International Critical Thinking Essay Test : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, students are able to analyze and assess excerpts from textbooks or professional writing. Short-answer.

Commission Study Protocol for Interviewing Faculty Regarding Critical Thinking : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, critical thinking is being taught at a college or university. Can be adapted for high school. Based on the California Commission Study . Short-answer.

Protocol for Interviewing Faculty Regarding Critical Thinking : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, critical thinking is being taught at a college or university. Can be adapted for high school. Short-answer.

Protocol for Interviewing Students Regarding Critical Thinking : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, students are learning to think critically at a college or university. Can be adapted for high school). Short-answer. 

Criteria for Critical Thinking Assignments : Can be used by faculty in designing classroom assignments, or by administrators in assessing the extent to which faculty are fostering critical thinking.

Rubrics for Assessing Student Reasoning Abilities : A useful tool in assessing the extent to which students are reasoning well through course content.  

All of the above assessment instruments can be used as part of pre- and post-assessment strategies to gauge development over various time periods.

Consequential Validity

All of the above assessment instruments, when used appropriately and graded accurately, should lead to a high degree of consequential validity. In other words, the use of the instruments should cause teachers to teach in such a way as to foster critical thinking in their various subjects. In this light, for students to perform well on the various instruments, teachers will need to design instruction so that students can perform well on them. Students cannot become skilled in critical thinking without learning (first) the concepts and principles that underlie critical thinking and (second) applying them in a variety of forms of thinking: historical thinking, sociological thinking, biological thinking, etc. Students cannot become skilled in analyzing and assessing reasoning without practicing it. However, when they have routine practice in paraphrasing, summariz­ing, analyzing, and assessing, they will develop skills of mind requisite to the art of thinking well within any subject or discipline, not to mention thinking well within the various domains of human life.

For full copies of this and many other critical thinking articles, books, videos, and more, join us at the Center for Critical Thinking Community Online - the world's leading online community dedicated to critical thinking!   Also featuring interactive learning activities, study groups, and even a social media component, this learning platform will change your conception of intellectual development.

MindEdge Online Learning

Corporate, Continuing, and Higher Education

The State of Critical Thinking Survey 2019

General info, content area, millennials, boomers, and critical thinking in the digital age.

The Internet is like a fire hose of information – a lot of it good, a lot of it bad – and knowing how to make sense of all that content has never been more important. But MindEdge’s third annual State of Critical Thinking survey suggests that digital literacy and critical thinking skills are in surprisingly short supply, even among tech-savvy Millennials.

While college-educated Americans express a high level of confidence in their critical thinking skills, most could not pass a nine-question quiz designed to gauge their ability to detect fake news. Overall, 69 percent of survey respondents earned a failing grade on the quiz, correctly answering just five or fewer questions.

The failure rate among Millennials – digital natives who’ve grown up with the Internet – was even higher, at 74 percent. Baby Boomers fared somewhat better on the quiz, but a clear majority (58 percent) still received a failing grade. On the positive side, 13 percent of Boomers received an “A” or “B” by answering eight or nine questions correctly – but only 5 percent of Millennials did likewise.

MindEdge’s national survey of 1001 college-educated Americans was conducted online by Qualtrics from May 8 through May 14, 2019. In addition to the Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking Quiz, the survey included questions that probed respondents’ confidence in their own job-related skills; their perceptions of the “mainstream media”; their views on the relative accuracy of online and offline news sources; and their concerns about possible foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election.

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The Importance of Critical Thinking Skills in Today's World

In a fast-paced and complex world, the ability to think critically has become more important than ever. With the rapid advancement of technology and the abundance of information available at our fingertips, it is crucial for individuals to possess strong critical thinking skills to navigate through the challenges of everyday life. Critical thinking skills refer to the ability to analyze, evaluate, and interpret information effectively. They involve asking thoughtful questions, considering multiple perspectives, and making informed decisions. To assess and enhance these skills, a short survey has been designed to gauge individuals' aptitude in critical thinking. The survey consists of 20 different questions, ranging from single-choice to multiple-choice and open-ended questions. It covers various aspects of critical thinking, including its definition, importance, development, and application. Participants are provided with possible answers to select from, ensuring a comprehensive assessment. The survey aims to gather valuable insights from participants across different demographics and backgrounds. By categorizing the survey as 'Education,' we can better understand the current state of critical thinking skills in the education sector. Developing critical thinking skills is not only beneficial for students but also for professionals in various industries. It enables individuals to make well-informed decisions, solve complex problems, and think creatively. In an ever-evolving job market, employers highly value candidates with strong critical thinking abilities, as it contributes to innovation and organizational success. The survey results will provide a holistic understanding of individuals' perspectives on critical thinking skills. It will shed light on the challenges faced in developing and applying these skills, as well as the strategies employed by individuals to enhance their critical thinking abilities. In summary, the 'Critical Thinking Skills Questions' survey aims to uncover the significance of critical thinking in different aspects of life. By assessing individuals' knowledge and perspectives on critical thinking, we can identify areas for improvement and develop tailored strategies to nurture this vital skill.

The State of Critical Thinking 2018

November 2018, table of contents.

Executive Summary Introduction and Background Methodology and Design Major Findings Conclusion   

Executive Summary

Critical thinking has always been an asset. But in today’s increasingly digital and globalized world, robust forms of thinking have become a necessity.  With more and more information at our fingertips, we have to be far more discerning about our choices and judgments. Just consider that in October 2018 alone, Twitter took down dozens of accounts that falsely posed as lawmakers. (1) But despite the need for more critical thinking, our institutions have not done nearly enough to give students richer thinking tools. In too many schools, critical thinking is not taught to young people. At workplaces, employers don’t do enough to prioritize richer forms of reasoning. This happens despite the fact that strong reasoning skills have become increasingly key to navigating everyday life, and a growing body of research shows that thinking critically runs in lockstep with life outcomes. Researcher Heather Butler recently conducted a study that found “critical thinkers experience fewer bad things in life.” (2)

According to Butler, good critical thinkers are far less likely to foreclose on a home or carry large credit card balances, while those without strong critical thinking skills are more likely to have an extramarital affair and drink while driving. (3) What’s more, there’s plenty of evidence that our democracy is fraying because of a lack of reflective thought. Politicians around the world are taking advantage of new technologies to push a political agenda that divides nations instead of uniting them, and there have been sharp upticks in reports of everything from racism to fascism. (4) The Reboot Foundation is dedicated to promoting richer forms of thought and to better understanding the state of critical thinking today. With that in mind, the foundation recently commissioned a survey, which will be conducted each year in an attempt to better understand shifts in the public’s views on critical thinking and what it means for the future of society. The Foundation surveyed more than 1,000 people using an online platform, and we weighted the results along demographic lines.

Our data uncovers a number of key findings.

While the public believes that critical thinking is crucial, most people believe that schools do not do enough to prepare young people to think more effectively. Across just about every demographic variable, people support more critical thinking, and nearly all respondents (95 percent) say critical thinking skills are necessary in today’s world. Still, people worry that our schools do not teach robust forms of thinking, and about 80 percent of respondents say that young people lack the ability to engage in critical thinking. Only 29 percent of respondents say that they definitively studied critical thinking in school themselves. There’s a lack of clarity about when, where, and even how critical thinking should be taught. About 48 percent of parents surveyed say that they (the parents) should be responsible for teaching critical thinking. Another 41 percent believe that educators should be responsible for teaching young people about how to think critically. And still another 22 percent believe that children themselves should be responsible.

While it’s encouraging that many feel critical thinking is a shared responsibility, this lack of consensus helps explain why people often don’t acquire better thinking skills: the teaching of the skill seems to simply fall through societal cracks.

While parents say that they know how to teach their kids critical thinking, they don’t generally practice these skills with them. In our survey, 72 percent of parents say that they know how to help their kids gain critical thinking skills, and 96 percent say that critical thinking is an important skill to teach to their children. 

But upon closer examination, we found that, on the whole, parents often fall short of teaching their children basic critical thinking skills. For instance, only 20 percent of parents frequently or daily ask their children to take an opposing view. Only a third of parents have their children regularly discuss issues without a right or wrong answer. 

Members of the public say they practice critical thinking, but their behaviors often suggest otherwise.The vast majority of respondents report that they have solid critical thinking skills, and about 67 percent of respondents say their reasoning skills have improved over time. But it seems that there’s a reality gap, and people are simply overstating their reasoning skills. Many respondents report engaging in practices that don’t show much critical thinking. For instance, we found that 47 percent of them don’t typically plan where they will obtain information while doing research. And around 27 percent use only one source of information while making a decision. The lack of critical thinking skills is particularly apparent online. For example, we found that over one-third of respondents consider Wikipedia, a crowd-sourced website, to be the equivalent of a thoroughly vetted encyclopedia. What’s more, people rely on Wikipedia almost as much as they rely on government websites for factual research, according to our study. Many do not do enough to question the accuracy of social media. People believe the accuracy of more than a third of what they read on Twitter and Facebook, for instance. Respondents are also far more likely to engage with informal, non-vetted sources for information, and just under 40 percent say they regularly read blogs instead of institutional publications like newspapers. The public says they engage opposing views, but they rarely do. Nearly 87 percent of respondents say that considering an opposing view is an important and useful exercise. But few engage in the practice, and less than a quarter of respondents actually seek out views that challenge their own. For instance, 24 percent of respondents say they avoid people with opposing views. Another 25 percent rarely or never seek out people who have different views than theirs. In other words, many people claim they solicit the views of others. But, in practice, they don’t do nearly enough to “stress test” their opinions, despite the wealth of evidence showing that engaging in opposing views is crucial to richer forms of critical thinking. (5)

What is critical thinking? We define critical thinking broadly, and we believe it is a type of reflective thought that requires reasoning, logic and analysis to make choices and understand problems. Key elements of critical thinking include seeking out opposing viewpoints, using evidence, and engaging in debate.

Introduction and Background

Critical thinking is not new. Nor are claims about its importance. The philosopher Socrates is credited with saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” For Socrates and many other ancient philosophers, reflective thinking was the ultimate human pursuit, the most important endeavor of any meaningful life.

In some ways, things have not changed at all since the time of Socrates. The unexamined life is still not worth living. But at the same time, critical thinking has become far more consequential —  and far more urgent. Today, reasoning is at the center of a 21st century society, the engine of the modern world. Technology is driving much of the need for deeper critical thinking skills. It is the primary force behind our changing economy, in which richer forms of reasoning have become some of the best predictors of economic success. Technology is also driving shifts in our social and political worlds, from the debate over alleged “fake news” to the algorithms that track our every move online. While the Internet has provided many benefits, it has made it harder to figure out fact from fiction. In more traditional forms of media, such as newspapers, there have long been clear demarcations that separate opinion pieces from reported articles. Online, however thoroughly-reported news items, op-eds, and totally unverified information are often promoted in similar ways without much distinction among them. Social media makes this problem far worse. It is now fairly easy to push out maliciously false information online, and many sites and bots aim to spread information with questionable sources. Recently, Facebook removed almost 600 pages that continually posted misleading information. (6)   One of those pages had more than 100,000 followers. (7)

Social media also pushes people to live in an echo chamber. According to Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein, sites like Twitter and Facebook encourage people to engage only with claims that align with their own views, fostering a type of societal myopia. “I wouldn’t say that we are now more isolated from diversity; there’s a lot of diversity out there, in terms of how isolated people are from diversity,” Sunstein once explained. “But many people do like to isolate themselves, and that’s a big problem.”

At the same time, technology has eroded critical thinking. Our devices are making us less able to reflect and rationalize. Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor and director of the University of California, Los Angeles Children’s Media Center, has found that as our reliance on technology has grown, our critical thinking skills have declined. We read less and consume more visual media, which does not allow for the analysis and reflection required of critical thinking. (9) As if that weren’t enough, the democratization of the media in recent decades has put more and more responsibility on individuals to ferret out truth from fiction. While institutions have taken some steps to limit falsehoods, individuals increasingly must take steps to avoid becoming prey to dishonest information. In this sense, the recent crisis over so-called “fake news” is really a crisis of our own making. Jim VandeHei, co-founder and CEO of the news site Axios, recently wrote, for example, that “each of us is very much to blame” for the phenomenon of fake news. He implored news consumers to think critically online. “Quit sharing stories without even reading them. Spend a few minutes to verify the trustworthiness of what you read,” he wrote. (10) But, too often, people aren’t provided enough training in robust critical thinking to be able to do that. Our schools, in particular, fall short of empowering students with better reasoning skills. This is particularly evident online. One recent Stanford University study revealed that 93 percent of college students did not know that a lobbyist website was one-sided. Fewer than 20 percent of high-schoolers were aware that just one online photo does not prove something took place. (11)

A large chunk of the public is also unskilled in using social media, often passing along “information” they’ve found online without doing their homework — that is, checking the original sources. One recent study, conducted by Columbia University, revealed that close to 60 percent of people share news-related pieces on Twitter that they have not clicked on to read at length. In other words, the headline alone was enough to confirm its legitimacy, then pass it along. (12) Problems of critical thinking are not new, of course. Long before social media, philosophers argued for better ways to challenge the unjustifiably self-assured. The most notable is the Socratic method, a still-popular instructional technique. A recent summary of the method makes its application still highly relevant: “We can consider alternative interpretations of the data and information. We can analyze key concepts and ideas. We can question assumptions being made.” (13) Ancient philosophers, then, offer both a warning and a solution. More exactly, they remind us that we need to do more to question our  assumptions and to consider alternative interpretations. Data must be more at the center of our reasoning, and no doubt, the stakes are higher than ever. To inelegantly paraphrase Socrates, an unexamined society will not survive.

Methodology and Design

As part of our research, we surveyed more than 1,100 adults using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform from September 19, 2018, to September 25, 2018. A crowdsourcing tool, Mechanical Turk has increasingly been used for surveys and other experiments, and generally researchers praise the use of the platform. “Mturk is a fast and cost-effective way to collect nonprobability samples that are more diverse than those typically used by psychologists,” noted one recent research paper. (14) We used Mturk because of its speed and convenience. The platform also allowed us to include some items on the survey that were experimental in nature, like the “heat map” question related to search results. Mturk-based surveys have limitations, to be sure. Like many online surveys, they provide convenience samples, and people using the Mturk site are younger and whiter than the population at large. (15) To make our findings generalizable, we weighed our sample data with survey weights generated by doing iterative post-stratification on our data so that the marginal sample distributions on gender, income, and age match the corresponding marginal population distributions as reported by the American Community Survey for the year 2017. (16) For the survey questions regarding critical thinking in daily life, we relied on items from the Youth Life Skills Survey. We first uncovered the series of survey items in “A Study of Critical Thinking Skills in International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme.” (17)  The items were developed by Claudia Mincemoyer, Daniel Perkins, and Catherine Munyua of Penn State. (18) The data on parents came from a subsection of the survey that only asked questions of adults who have children. To examine demographic data, we conducted crosstabs across age, income, and gender. 

Two experts in survey design and implementation provided technical advice. They are Joe McFall of The State University of New York, Fredonia and Srikant Vadali of St. Anselm College. They are not responsible for any of the interpretations of the data contained in this document For the full data results, a copy of the survey instrument or any other survey-related questions, please email Reboot Foundation advisor Ulrich Boser. He can be reached at [email protected] .

Major Findings

The public thinks critical thinking is crucial but believes young people lack such skills. In the study, nearly all respondents (more than 95 percent) say critical thinking skills are necessary in today’s world, and nearly the same percentage believe we should think more critically in our everyday lives. This opinion crossed demographic lines – men and women, rich and poor, old and young. They all agreed that critical thinking is important, and we should do more of it.

But respondents are deeply concerned that schools do not teach critical thinking. Only half of survey respondents say their experience in school gave them strong critical thinking skills. Men are 8 percentage points more likely than women to believe that their schools gave them strong critical thinking skills (50 percent for men vs. 42 percent for women). In addition, more than 80 percent of respondents believe that critical thinking skills are lacking in today’s youth, and in the survey, people point to a range of reasons for the lack of critical thinking. Some 27 percent of respondents believe that modern technology inhibits critical thinking; interestingly, women are 12 percent more likely than men to think modern technology is at fault. Another 30 percent believe that society devalues critical thinking skills. Notably, 26 percent of respondents say that critical thinking skills are lacking because of a flawed educational system. Young people are more likely to feel this way than those in older demographics, and in the 18-to-40-year-old category, 41 percent of respondents think schools are to blame. In contrast, just 28 percent of people in the 61-to-81-year-old group believe that schools are culpable. Not surprisingly, older respondents are more likely to blame technology for a lack of critical thinking. Those in the 18-to-40 age range are less critical of modern tools, with only 21 percent saying they are the cause of poor thinking. In contrast, 33 percent of 41-to-60-year-olds blame modern technology on today’s lack of critical thinking skills. There’s a gender gap as well, and women are 12 percent more likely than men to think modern technology is at fault for the crisis in critical thinking. Whatever the demographic differences, though, these findings suggest that there is a growing awareness that the modern world has deeply complicated critical thinking. Across lines of age, gender, and income, people believe that critical thinking is more important than ever. This is good news. After all, when people are aware of a problem, they’re more willing to address it. There’s a lack of clarity about when and where critical thinking should be taught. Despite the public’s enthusiasm for critical thinking skills, respondents are split over what age is appropriate for developing such skills. In our survey, 20 percent say critical thinking skills develop best in early childhood, or ages 5 and under. Another 35 percent say critical thinking is best developed during ages 6 to 12, and another 27 percent think ages 13 to 18 are best. About 13 percent say any age is good for developing critical thinking skills. There are differences along demographics lines. Women are more likely than men to favor teaching critical thinking skills during the early years. For example,  24 percent of our survey’s female respondents believe in teaching critical thinking skills to children 5 and under, whereas just 17 percent of male respondents  share that belief. There are also differences among income groups. Higher-income respondents are more likely to believe that parents should teach critical thinking during the early years. For instance, 29 percent of people in the $100,000-and-above category believe that critical thinking should be taught to children younger than 6 years of age. But just over 15 percent of those making less than $50,000 per year think that critical thinking should be taught to children younger than 6 years of age.

There is also a lack of clarity about who should be responsible for teaching critical thinking. About 74 percent of the parents surveyed say educators should be at least partially responsible for teaching young people how to think critically. Another 89 percent say they  — the parents — should be responsible. Perhaps most surprising, 22 percent of respondents believe that children themselves should be responsible for learning how to think critically. The respondents believed this idea despite the fact that most experts argue that parents, educators, and others can help improve critical thinking among young people. (19) When it comes to teaching critical thinking, the public believes that schools should play an important role. About 92 percent of respondents say that K-12 schools should require courses that develop those skills. Another 90 percent of respondents think critical thinking courses should be required in colleges and universities. 

While it is encouraging that many Americans believe that critical thinking is a shared responsibility, the lack of consensus over what inhibits it as well as how and when to teach it helps explain why people often don’t acquire better thinking skills. It is a problem of too many cooks in the critical thinking kitchen: with everyone in charge, no one is in charge.

Parents also do not typically help their children develop other important critical thinking skills. For instance, only a third of parents have their children regularly discuss issues without a right or wrong answer, despite evidence supporting the practice. (20)   What’s more, only 26 percent of parents frequently help their children evaluate evidence, which is a key skill when it comes to better reasoning.

When it comes to parents and critical thinking, there are important differences along gender lines. For instance, women report doing more critical thinking skill development with their children than men do. For instance, women are about 6 percentage points more likely than men to report that they help children evaluate evidence and arguments every day (12 percent for women, 4 percent for men).

This gender split can likely be attributed to the fact that, historically, women have been the primary caregivers of children and are, on average, at home more often. While there is room for improvement for all parents in teaching critical thinking skills, it seems that male parents in particular have the most ground to make up.

While a majority of respondents say that their critical thinking skills have improved over the years, they often don’t engage in robust critical thinking practices. When it comes to critical thinking, there’s a large gap between what people believe and how they behave.   

For instance, 67 percent of our survey respondents say they have improved their reasoning skills since graduating high school. But many respondents also report making use of specific practices that reveal weak critical thinking.

We discovered, for example, that almost 50 percent of people do not typically plan where they will obtain information before engaging in research. Our survey also reveals that around one-third of respondents will use only one source of information when making a decision. 

Again, demographics make a difference. Older people, for instance, are more likely to use more than one source of information before making a decision. Case in point: people older than 60 are 19 percentage points more likely to always use more than one source than people younger than 40 (51 percent for the older group vs. 32 for the younger group). The lack of highly developed critical thinking skills is particularly apparent when people are online. For example, we found that over one-third of people consider Wikipedia, a crowd-sourced website, to be the equivalent of a thoroughly vetted encyclopedia. Income and age have a bearing on the perception of Wikipedia as a modern day encyclopedia. Fifty percent of respondents making $50,000 or less annually say that Wikipedia is a modern version of an encyclopedia. In contrast, just 16 percent of people making $100,000 or more share that belief. Similarly, 48 percent of those 18 to 40 years old think that Wikipedia is a modern day encyclopedia. In contrast, just 25 percent of those in the 41-to-60-year age range think the technology as a robust as an encyclopedia. Social media practices also suggest a lack of critical thinking. For instance, we found that more than 40 percent of people’s online reading is made up of blogs and other informal news sources. The other 60 percent consists of material from institutional sources, like a newspaper or traditional media outlet. Not too astonishing, most younger people are more likely to read blogs. Respondents 18 to 40 years of age, for example, report that about 41 percent of what they read online tend to be blog items, whereas people in the 61-to-81-year range report their blog intake at an average of 11 percentage points less. Our results also showed that people simply don’t look at enough sources while doing online research. According to our survey, only 33 percent of respondents examine more than 5 results during an Internet search. This means that two-thirds of people rely on very limited number of sources while doing online research. 

How Young Is Too Young? At What Age Can Children Start to Engage in Critical Thinking? At first glance it may appear that young children do not have the capacity to think critically. After all, most 3-year-olds struggle to even tie their shoes. But there’s growing evidence showing that very young children have rich thinking skills. One study released this year found that preschoolers can engage in causal reasoning. (21)  Research also shows that children as young as 3 start to realize that some beliefs don’t necessarily jibe with reality. (22) Another study found that between the ages of 3 and 5, children begin to understand that what another person says is not necessarily “true” but is often more a reflection of his or her beliefs. For instance, most young children know that a statement like “the best dessert in the whole world is ice cream” is a belief, not a fact. Recent evidence suggests that different teaching methods can promote more critical thinking in young children, especially when the strategies take advantage of changes in brain development. For instance, prior to age 10, a child’s emotional intelligence takes precedence over the intellectual. So teachers and parents should allow a child to explain how she came to a conclusion without insisting she use facts to support it. This helps build self-esteem and teaches the child, at an early age, that no one person, agency or institution holds the key to the “truth,” according to researchers like Sebastian Dieguez at the University of Fribourg. During later stages, ranging from pre-adolescence to the mid-teens, teaching critical thinking is a bit trickier. Children’s brains are constantly in flux, both physically and in the ways they receive information: in class, from friends, and on social media. At these stages, research says that it is important to equip children with the skills necessary to navigate this constant, often muddied, river of information. 

Giving young people effective thinking strategies can help. For example, one useful metaphor is telling children that possessing knowledge is like being in the driver’s seat of your own car. You, no one else, is in control. Research has also shown that giving young people thorough instruction in better thinking can yield very positive results; it makes for better students and higher grades. (23)

While the public claims that they engage opposing views, they don’t actually engage other views in practice. Nearly 87 percent of respondents say that considering an opposing view is an important and useful exercise.

This is an encouraging finding, given the large body of evidence that shows that considering opposing views improves problem-solving. For instance, Scott Page at the University of Michigan has studied diversity of opinion and concluded that exposure to others’ perspectives leads to better outcomes. In fact, he found that diversity is more important than ability when it comes to problem-solving. (24) But when asked to detail how they engage in such practices in their daily lives, only 25 percent are willing to regularly have debates with people who disagree with them. A surprising 24 percent of respondents say they regularly avoid talking to people with opposing views. In other words, people might say that they want to engage other views in theory, but they rarely do so in practice. Research helps explain this gap. Decades’ worth of studies show that people prefer to socialize with those who have similar backgrounds and beliefs. The scientific term is “homophily,” or, as one study puts it, the principle that “contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people.” (25) 

Because of these homophilic tendencies, many people are uncomfortable engaging with individuals whose views differ significantly from their own. They live in something of a bubble, where they continually reinforce their own beliefs, including incorrect information about people unlike themselves, without being challenged.

The results of homophily are clear in our politics. One recent study found that half of the Republicans and Democrats surveyed found talking politics with their rivals “stressful and frustrating.” (26) And even more (65 percent Republican, 63 percent Democratic) said that, when speaking with their counterparts, they discover they have less in common politically than previously thought. In our study, men in particular are unwilling to engage in critical discussions. They are roughly 20 percentage points more likely than women to avoid people with whom they disagree (33 percent vs. 13 percent). Along income lines, the difference is comparable: respondents in the lowest income bracket are at least 20 percentage points more likely than those in the highest income bracket to do the same (66 percent vs. 54 percent). In the end, our data suggests the public overestimates its willingness to engage views that are different than its own, a crucial part of being a good critical thinker. Without these critical thinking skills, we risk becoming bad choosers. When we don’t consider the available evidence, when we settle for what is ideologically comfortable, we make incomplete decisions and we risk polarization. 

Where do you click?  An experimental approach to measuring critical thinking online.

As part of our research into critical thinking, we relied on a more experimental approach to measuring how people engage with online sources, and we created a simulation of a real-life scenario to see what links people might click on while doing online research.  Specifically, we asked respondents: “Imagine you are helping a child with a school research project about the U.S. Capitol. You have just conducted an online search through a search provider. Where would you click next?”  We used technology to measure people’s clicks similar to a “heat map,” and as shown in the image below, we found that people are almost just as likely to click on Wikipedia as they are to click on the government’s actual website.  On the positive side, respondents avoided the Capitol’s Twitter social media handle, which appears to provide the least relevant as well as least accurate set of results. (Note that the color red in the image below indicates more clicks. Green indicates fewer clicks.)

But without robust approaches to thinking, we risk deepening our own biases. We risk becoming susceptible to “fake news,” conspiracy theories and phishing scams. We risk increasing polarization, partisanship and infighting among the biggest challenges we face as a nation.

(1)* Sheera Frenkel, “Facebook Tackles Rising Threat: Americans Aping Russian Schemes to Deceive,” New York Times, October 11, 2018.

(2)* Heather A. Butler, Christopher Pentoney., Mabelle P. Bong, “Why Do Smart People Do Foolish Things?” Scientific American, Springer Nature America, Inc., October 3, 2017, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-smart-people-do-foolish-things/

(3)* Heather Butler, “Predicting real-world outcomes: Critical thinking ability is a better predictor of life decisions than intelligence,” ScienceDirect, Thinking Skills and Creativity. Volume 25, September 2017, https://www.sciencedirect.com.

(4)* Yuva Noah Harari, “Why Technology Favors Tyranny,” The Atlantic, Oct. 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/ (5)* Lu Hong and Scott E. Page “Groups of diverse problem-solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem-solvers,” PNAS, 101, 46 (2004): 16385–16389, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu.

(6)* Sheera Frenkel, “Facebook Tackles Rising Threat: Americans Aping Russian Schemes to Deceive,” New York Times, October 11, 2019 (8)* S Cass Sunstein, “Danger in the Internet Echo Chamber,” Harvard Law Today, March 24, 2017, https://today.law.harvard.edu .

(9)* PM Greenfield “Technology and informal education: what is taught, what is learned,” Science, 323 (5910), (2009): 69-71, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov .

(10)* Jim VandeHei, “4 ways to fix ‘fake news,” Axios Media Inc., October 21 2018, https://www.axios.com .

(11)* Wineburg, Sam and McGrew, Sarah and Breakstone, Joel and Ortega, Teresa. (2016). “Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning. Stanford Digital Repository,”  http://purl.stanford.edu/fv751yt5934

(12)* Maksym Gabielkov et al., “Social Clicks: What and Who Gets Read on Twitter?” ACM SIGMETRICS / IFIP Performance 2016, (2016), Antibes Juan-les-Pins, France, (2016), https://hal.inria.fr https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01281190

(13)* Richard Paul and Linda Elder, “Socratic Thinking,” The Foundation for Critical Thinking, (1997),  http://www.criticalthinking.org .

(14)* Jesse Chandler and Danielle Shapiro “Conducting Clinical Research Using Crowdsourced Convenience Samples,” Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 12, (2016): 53-81.   https://www.annualreviews.org . (15)* Ibid., 53-81. (16)* United States Census Bureau, Surveys and Programs, “American Community Survey (ACS),” United States Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov .

(17)* Julie Wade, Natalie Wolanin, and Trisha McGaughey, “A Study of Critical Thinking Skills in the  International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme,” International Baccalaureate, (2015), https://www.ibo.org .

(18)* Human Service Research, “Youthful Life Skills Evaluation,” Human Service Research Inc.,  http://www.humanserviceresearch.com .

(19)* Abrami, Philip C., Robert M. Bernard, Evgueni Borokhovski, Anne Wade, Michael A. Surkes, Rana Tamim,  and Dai Zhang. “Instructional Interventions Affecting Critical Thinking Skills and  Dispositions: A Stage 1 Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research 78, no. 4 (December 2008): 1102– 34. doi:10.3102/0034654308326084.1102–34. doi:10.3102/0034654308326084. doi:10.3102/0034654308326084.

(20)* Schommer, Marlene. (1990). Effects of Beliefs About the Nature of Knowledge on Comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology. 82. 498-. 10.1037/0022-0663.82.3.498. (21)* Mariel K. Goddu & Alison Gopnik, “Young Children rationally use evidence to select causally relevant variables for intervention”, (University of California, Berkeley, 2018). (22)* Kuhn, Deanna. “A Developmental Model of Critical Thinking.” Educational Researcher 28, no. 2 (1999): 16-46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1177186 .

(23)* John Perry, David Lundie & Gill Golder “Metacognition in schools: what does the literature suggest about the effectiveness of teaching metacognition in schools?” Educational Review, (2018), DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2018.1441127. (24)* Lu Hong and Scott E. Page “Groups of diverse problem-solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem-solvers,” PNAS, 101, 46 (2004): 16385–16389, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu .

(25)* Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M Cook, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks,” Annual Reviews of Sociology, 27 (2001): 415–44, http://aris.ss.uci.edu .

(26)* Pew Research Center, U.S. Politics “Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016,” Pew Research Center, June 22, 2016, http://www.people-press.org

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