1.1 Thinking critically in everyday life
Scenario one
You’re waiting for a tram. The electronic timetable says the tram will arrive in one minute, but you can see for miles down the road and the tram is nowhere in sight.
Your critical thinking skills tell you not to believe what the electronic sign says, because you know the tram can’t reach you in one minute. You deduce that there’s probably a delay and the sign hasn’t updated yet, and check the public transport website for more details. Without critical thinking skills, you would believe the timetable without questioning it or analysing the facts around you, and be surprised and confused when the tram didn’t arrive on time.
Scenario two
A colleague makes a negative comment about a country (you’ve never been to) and its culture and expects you to agree with her.
Without critical thinking skills, you’d simply accept your colleague’s opinion as fact. However, you decide not to accept or reject her opinion until you have more information. There’s a lot more you need to know before forming your own opinion. Are there other people who have a different opinion? Why would your colleague’s opinion be more accurate than theirs? Did a single experience negatively affect her view of an entire culture? Does she have personal bias?
Scenario three
You have been tagged in a post on social media by your older cousin. It says that if you don’t comment on the post by midnight and share it with five people, the platform will assume you are an inactive user and deactivate your account.
As soon as you see the post, your critical thinking skills activate! This post seems suspicious. Surely the platform would have sent out messages to every user instead of checking how active people are in this way. Why would they deactivate accounts anyway – don’t they get money and data from having more users? What is the source of the post? It doesn’t even have any of the company’s branding on it. You decide you’re not really in danger of having your account deactivated and ignore the post. You’ve just critically analysed and evaluated the situation and come to a logical conclusion, without even realising you were doing it.
Scenario four
You’ve been tasked with choosing a restaurant for dinner with a small group of friends. You recently got a new job, and there’s a fancy restaurant you’d like to try. However, one friend in your group is looking for a job at the moment, and another one is worried that she might be laid off soon.
Although it’s tempting to organise the dinner at the expensive restaurant you want to go to, you reevaluate your choice of venue after considering the individual situations of your friends. If your friends are worried about the cost, they won’t enjoy the meal – in fact, they might not even come to the dinner! You decide to keep looking for a restaurant that will suit everyone’s budget.
