options. Suppose you were in Mrs. Perez’s place. What would your thinking
be like?”
At this point, the subject might agree that Mrs. Perez had not examined
the options and identified some alternatives. However, maybe not, in which
case the interviewer advanced to step 3, asking point blank for options and
discovering whether or not the subject was able to devise them.
This three step procedure for the Perez story and a number of others re-
flects the dispositional triad. Step 1, a test of sensitivity, gives a chance for the
subject to recognize a thinking shortfall on his or her own and respond to it.
Step 2, a gauge of inclination, alerts the subject to the potential shortfall and
determines whether the subject thinks it’s worth attention. Step 3 probes abil-
ity directly by asking the subject to generate options.
A number of interesting findings have emerged from this series of studies.
Details are reported in Perkins and Tishman (2001) and Perkins et al. (2001).
Here the trends are summarized.
Measuring the Contribution of Sensitivity
and Inclination
The most important finding, confirmed over and over again in our work,
showed that dispositional considerations more than abilities limited thinking.
Sensitivity was by far the greatest bottleneck, followed by inclinations. One
index of this looked at the successful response rate at step 1 versus step 2 ver-
sus step 3. To derive a score, the simple comment that a situation called for
attention (e.g. “Mrs. Perez should have considered other options”) counted
as one hit, with each mention of an option or possible solution or pro or con,
depending on the kind of story, counting as one more.
One study involved 64 eighth graders responding to four stories, each with
two thinking shortfalls embedded in them for eight shortfalls in all. Two of
the stories concerned decision making and two problem solving, and the
shortfalls, distributed over the stories in a counterbalanced way, concerned
looking for alterative options and examining the other side of the case. Thus,
the Perez story included a shortfall of failing to seek alternative options in the
context of decision making.
Analysis based on the scoring system mentioned earlier showed that by
step 3 most subjects could identify some alternative options or other-side ar-
guments. For instance, subjects offered the sorts of options for the Mrs. Perez
story mentioned above. The analysis also examined the distribution of when
subjects responded with awareness of the thinking shortfall and alternative
options or other-side reasons—at step 1, step 2, or step 3. If the dispositional
contribution to thinking were small, those subjects who performed at all well
would do so right away at step 1. Frequencies of response would fall off
sharply from step 1 to 2 and step 2 to 3.
- WHEN IS GOOD THINKING? 363