234 Chapter 7 Thinking and Intelligence
People who are quasi-reflective thinkers rec-
ognize that some things cannot be known with
absolute certainty and that judgments should be
supported by reasons, yet they pay attention only
to evidence that fits what they already believe.
They seem to think that because knowledge is
uncertain, any judgment about the evidence is
purely subjective. Quasi-reflective thinkers will
defend a position by saying, “We all have a right
to our own opinion,” as if all opinions are created
equal. One college student, when asked whether
one opinion on the safety of food additives was
right and others were wrong, answered, “No. I
think it just depends on how you feel personally
because people make their decisions based upon
how they feel and what research they’ve seen. So
what one person thinks is right, another person
might think is wrong. If I feel that chemicals cause
cancer and you feel that food is unsafe without it,
your opinion might be right to you and my opin-
ion is right to me.”
Finally, some people become capable of
reflective judgment. They understand that
although some things can never be known with
certainty, some judgments are more valid than
others because of their coherence, their fit with
the available evidence, and their usefulness. They
are willing to consider evidence from a variety
of sources and to reason dialectically. This inter-
view with a graduate student illustrates reflective
thinking:Interviewer: Can you ever say you know for sure
that your point of view on chemical additives is
correct?
Student: No, I don’t think so [but] I think that
we can usually be reasonably certain, given
the information we have now, and considering
our methodologies... [I]t might be that the re-
search wasn’t conducted rigorously enough. In
other words, we might have flaws in our data
or sample, things like that.
Interviewer: How then would you identify the
“better opinion”?
Student: One that takes as many factors as pos-
sible into consideration. I mean one that uses
the higher percentage of the data that we have,
and perhaps that uses the methodology that has
been most reliable.
Interviewer: And how do you come to a conclu-
sion about what the evidence suggests?
Student: I think you have to take a look at the
different opinions and studies that are offered
by different groups. Maybe some studiesoffered by the chemical industry, some stud-
ies by the government, some private stud-
ies.... You have to try to interpret people’s
motives and that makes it a more complex
soup to try to strain out.
Sometimes people are able to think reflec-
tively about some issues even though they think
preflectively on other issues that hold deep emo-
tional meaning for them (Haidt, 2012; King &
Kitchener, 2004). But most people show no evi-
dence of reflective judgment until their middle or
late 20s, if ever. A longitudinal study found that
many college students graduate without learning
to distinguish fact from opinion, evaluate conflict-
ing reports objectively, or resist emotional state-
ments and political posturing (Arum & Roksa,
2011). Yet there’s reason for hope. When students
get ample support for thinking reflectively, have
opportunities to practice it in their courses, and
apply themselves seriously to their studies, their
thinking tends to become more complex, sophisti-
cated, and well-grounded (Kitchener et al., 1993).
You can see why, in this book, we emphasize
thinking about psychological findings and not just
memorizing them.One reason that Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker became
world famous and has been much imitated is that it
captures so perfectly the experience of thinking
reflectively.