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Teaching Critical Thinking About Difficult Topics
Present Research Methods as Methods for Eliminating Particular Biases
It is all too easy for students to mistakenly come to believe that research methods form a
set of practices that one follows simply to qualify as a researcher. Students who believe that
their personal experience-based beliefs do not need to be evaluated will never consider
using those practices to evaluate those beliefs. If research methods are instead presented as
a set of methods for eliminating particular reasoning biases, students will be able to under-
stand how those methods might be applied to their experience-based reasoning.
The two best examples of this strategy are probably the evaluation of causal beliefs and
the elimination of confirmation bias (Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979). The reason that we
randomly assign participants to groups in experiments is not that some researchers’ code
tells us to do so. We do so because we want to be in a position to answer the challenge
“How do you know that the groups were not different to begin with?”. Similarly, we use
blinded measures not because we want to conform to other researchers’ behaviors, but
because we want our measurements to be free of the effects of confirmation biases.
Be Conscious of the Way Debates Are Framed
The intuitive theologian is especially wary of a trade-off between a sacred moral value and
a more mundane concern. It may be more effective for teachers to frame alternative points
of view as competing moral values. Politicians are quite aware of this principle, which is
why both sides of a political debate are always in favor of cherished values, and neither
wants to be accused of opposing a different value. A politician would rather be seen as
defending our freedom (“prochoice”) or defending the helpless (“prolife”) from the oppos-
ing side in a debate; in a one-sided debate between values and secular concerns, values will
triumph. Teachers should keep in mind, though, that framing presentations in terms of
moral values may not increase critical thinking by itself. The best that can be hoped is that
engaging the intuitive theologian framework with two contradictory values will reduce the
utility of the framework long enough for the professor to model more rational arguments.
Be Aware of Audience Effects
Anything that makes the audience of an argument salient will increase the need for social
accountability and thus more firmly engage the intuitive theologian. This is particularly
problematic if someone seen as an enforcer of values is part of the audience—students may
feel a more pressing need to affirm their values if a representative of those values is watch-
ing. Under these conditions it would be normal to see ad hominem attacks on representa-
tives of the counternormative view. Decreasing the salience of the attitude may help to
some extent to keep students focused on the critical thinking task at hand.
Keep in mind, though, that even if students can learn important analytical skills on
material that is not connected to their moral values, it is not realistic to expect them
to transfer these skills smoothly. It is possible that forewarning them, and asking them to