Critical Thinking and Decision Making: Common Sense and Science

Critical Thinking
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Critical Thinking and Decision Making
Critical thinking is vastly affected by the perceptions that one has from past experiences and what they have been taught growing up. Belief perseverance is one of the aspects that is common among most people and it involves maintaining ones beliefs despite the presence or presentation with new information, which is largely contradictory to the beliefs in question (Pope, 1998).
The two main psychological factors that affect critical thinking are past experiences and the beliefs that one holds. Past experiences form perceptions about a certain topic, while the beliefs leads to resistance to any new information that contradicts the beliefs. These are crucial are they form part of hindrance towards achieving critical thinking skills when interacting with new information.
This is quite crucial when it comes to the decision making process, relative to the fact that, this is a process that require critical thinking skills. However, more often than not, it is also a process that is affected by the persona beliefs that one has acquired along the way (Douglas, 2000). Beliefs are also part of what fuels aspects of what can b...