Do College Students Learn to Critically Evaluate Claims? A Cross-Sectional Study of Freshman and Senior Psychology Majors.

Although prior research has used a variety of methods for studying college students’ critical thinking skills, few have provided an observational account of the reasoning strategies students develop while in college. The goal of my dissertation was to observe how college students utilized experiential and scientific reasoning strategies when evaluating evidence-based claims. I considered these questions in light of the dual process model of reasoning, which views reasoning in terms of quick and intuitive experiential systems or effortful and deliberate rational systems. I also examined the relationship between students’ scientific knowledge, thinking dispositions, and prior beliefs on their experiential and scientific reasoning outcomes. Study 1 asked underclassmen to evaluate experimental studies. When not explicitly asked to think critically, students used experiential strategies over scientific strategies to evaluate evidence. Study 2 compared college freshmen with senior psychology majors and additionally examined how alluring anecdotal stories influenced the reasoning process. Students were asked to evaluate a set of flawed evidence-based claims. Half received an alluring anecdotal story alongside each claim. Students agreed more and provided more experiential evaluations when the claims contained alluring anecdotal stories. Seniors were better at evaluating the claims scientifically and provided more in-depth evaluations when compared to freshmen. Differences in students’ scientific knowledge and open-minded thinking were related to providing more scientific evaluations. Students’ prior beliefs showed the opposite relationship; when claims fit students’ prior beliefs, they agreed more with the claims and provided more experiential evaluations. My results show that college training in psychology may teach students how to evaluate claims scientifically, but alluring information and belief-basis reasoning remain key barriers towards critical thinking. However, open-mindedness may be an important characteristic that helps promote the ability to reason independently from one’s prior beliefs.PhDEducation & PsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89614/1/frodrig_1.pd