What is good thinking? To ask this is to pose one of the most venerable ques-
tions of scholarship. Aristotle’s (350 B. C. E.) analysis of syllogisms, Bacon’s
(1620/1878) account of scientific inquiry, Kant’s (1785/1994) categorical im-
perative, Von Neumann and Morgenstern’s (1944) exposition of game the-
ory, Inhelder and Piaget’s (1958) notion of formal operational thinking,
Wertheimer’s (1945) formulation of productive thinking all set forth norma-
tive conceptions of various kinds of thinking. Contemporary work expands,
ramifies, and refines the analysis into many particular kinds of thinking (e.g.
Baron, 1985; Basseches, 1984; Case, 1992; Elgin, 1996; Langer, 1989; Paul,
1990; Toulmin, 1958).
Not only is the normative question important in itself, but it informs an-
other central question of psychology: “How good a thinker are you?” This is
a question about individual traits. Psychologists typically try to measure such
traits by posing tasks that sample some range of thinking and then looking
for consistent levels of performance within individuals, across tasks. When
the tasks are unfamiliar and varied, this usually leads to indices like IQ that
supposedly gauge a general capacity for handling complex cognitive chal-
lenges (e.g. Brody, 1992; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Jensen, 1980, 1998).
When the tasks range across practical problems in a particular domain, the
results may gauge practical intelligence in that domain (Sternberg & Wagner,
1986; Wagner & Sternberg, 1985, 1990).

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When Is Good Thinking?

David Perkins
Ron Ritchhart
Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education

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