What is Critical Thinking?
When doing your academic assignments and/or thesis, you must go through some research and analyze different projects, or for career decisions and/or any other decisions you must think of all the pros and cons of that decision.
However, the most important thing that allows for appropriately taking these decisions is called critical thinking.
Critical thinking is vital for both personal and professional circumstances. The process of critical thinking is the analysis of the various facts and figures of a particular situation before acting on that situation.
Critical thinking requires keen observations, creativity, and problem-solving skills which enables individuals to thoroughly evaluate the gathered information and then use this available information as a guide to making accurate decisions.
Critical thinking is needed in everyday life from doing academic works or daily activities to solving numerous large scale problems. This article will reflect on real-life examples, where critical thinking is essential.
Critical Thinking Examples in Real Life
- Critical Thinking in Problem Solving
- Critical Thinking in Analysing Risks
- Critical Thinking in Data Analysis
- Critical Thinking in Hiring Employees
- Promoting the Teamwork
- Critical Thinking in Self-Evaluation
- Critical Thinking in Choosing the Career
- Critical Thinking in Time Management
- Critical Thinking in Analysing the Fake News
- Critical Thinking in Distinguishing between Right and Wrong
- Critical Thinking in Decoding Fashion Trends
- Critical Thinking in Choosing the Suitable Diet and Exercise
- Critical Thinking in Online Shopping
- Critical Thinking in Job Search
- Critical Thinking While Driving
- Critical Thinking in Business
Critical Thinking Examples in Real Life
1. Critical Thinking in Problem Solving.
If your manager asked you to come up with an effective solution to a problem impacting the business, what would be your first step? Most people will likely begin looking for possible solutions to the problem.
Well, critical thinking must be used here. Before you start looking for a solution, you need to step back and think about the cause of the problem.
You should get feedback from other people on how this problem affects them and the business in general.
If you do develop a solution, you shouldn’t just rely on one solution; you should always have several backups, in case the first solution does not go as expected.
Most people think they are good problem solvers, but if they are not using all of these steps, above, before they arrive at a decision, they are not critical thinkers.
Critical thinking will allow people to find solutions best possible to any problem. Critical thinking is an important component of problem-solving skills, and people need to use multiple perspectives on any issue, since in many cases, your decisions impact other people as much as they impact you.
2. Critical Thinking in Analysing Risks
Risk assessment requires the same type of critical thinking. Risk assessment occurs in different fields. In fact, every day, children are assessing the risk of eating junk food on their health, while large businesses are assessing the risk of certain policies on the growth of the company.
Now, let’s understand what critical thinking will mean for risk assessment in some examples.
When a building is built, the engineers have to assess every potential risk or hazard that could occur on the construction site. This prevents workers from participating in unsafe work.
If the engineers or the project managers do not use critical thinking for the risk assessment, there would be a greater possibility of injury or loss of life of employees, which would ultimately ruin the workforce and the business reputation of the project managers.
When the government wants to implement certain regulations or rules, it also has to assess risks in regard to the effects of their decisions on people and the economy of the country.
Decisions that look very easy on paper, may be much more difficult in real life and have negative consequences if critical thinking is not applied.
In financial institutions, the authorities have to evaluate the effects of implementing current or new policies on clientele. In doing so, they must employ various dimensions of critical thinking -think creatively to visualize the possible scenarios could arise, analyze various laws and policies, and evaluate existing clients, to make better policies.
In other words, if banks or insurance companies do not use critical thinking, they may suffer major loss.
3. Critical Thinking in Data Analysis.
Whether evaluating the performance of the students in the schools or assessing the business growth of a multinational corporation, the ability to analyze data is very important.
In the modern world, almost every field requires analysts who can properly assess the data or information provided to them to extract useful conclusions.
In addition, with the evolution of technology, the numerous tasks of data analysis, such as determining profit and loss, preparing balance sheets, generating invoices, etc. can all be done with the aid of any number of different software applications, but that does not mean that the skill of individuals is no longer needed.
Various software applications can simply convert large amounts of data into some simplified and readable format, but it is the human skill of critical thinking that is essential in interpreting the data properly and then using the insight arrived at, for some legitimate purpose.
Data analysis can even help to forecast trends and to recognize possible pitfalls in decision-making processes.
4. Critical Thinking in Hiring Employees.
One important trait of critical thinking is the ability to observe a scenario without being biased by your own beliefs, subjective judgments or thoughts.
In the business setting, hiring managers must utilize critical thinking in order to sort through multiple resumes and help to select the most suitable candidates for any position.
Here, critical thinking provides hiring managers the opportunity to not hire the candidate on all sorts of and/or in huge part to factors like gender, age, religion, or country; factors that sometimes (if ever so, unconsciously) become factors in the hiring managers decisions.
The hiring manager tends to choose or hire a subjectively biased candidate, not considering or using critical thinking; therefore, hiring managers can use critical thinking methods to ensure they bring on the best possible people for the purpose of doing so, eventually leading to success as a company.
5. Promoting the Teamwork.
In a team, every team member is unique and has their own distinct ideas for addressing the problem at hand. It is the responsibility of the team leader to understand from where each team member is coming from and to lead the team to complete the task together.
You might find the opinion of the team members irrelevant and unhelpful, that, however, does not mean you have to dismiss their opinion automatically; you have to take the logical step of looking at their ideas and instead of disregarding them, calmly and effectively share your point of view on the issue at hand.
If the team leader was to not use critical thinking but instead to ram his/her opinion on others were to happen, you can certainly expect the team to fail.
6. Critical Thinking in Self-Evaluation.
Critical thinking is an important component of self-evaluation. The skills involved in critical thinking allow you to evaluate your performance honestly. Critical thinking allows you to minimize subjective biases.
Everyone should evaluate their responses to situations, and their ways of think ing throughout their life. This may allow for deeper understanding of the way they think, and even potentially improve their thinking processes in order to make appropriate decisions.
Self-evaluation is also key within professional settings. Imagine your manager assigns a new target to the company.
This requires every employee to evaluate their performance, and weigh their contribution towards achieving that target.
If you understand your contribution, you are better positioned to combine that analysis with other evaluations of performance, and to create a plan of improvement in the areas that you are not performing well.
7. Critical Thinking in Choosing the Career.
Almost all of us face dilemmas throughout our life choosing the stream, what type of job to pursue, choosing between regular colleges or online programme. Whichever option we select, there will always be positives and negatives.
The difficult part is utilising critical thinking to mentally balance out the positives and negatives of each option that is available to us, and decide which choice provides us with a greater benefit than the inconvenience.
The easiest way to do this is to list the pros and the cons and then critique. Of course this does not just apply to choosing the career path we want to pursue it also applies in other situations both professionally and personally.
For example, we could write the pros and cons WHY we going to work for a particular company based on job description/salary or consider options related to insurance in making sure we have the most relevant type of insurance for an event has good and bad options depending on the needs of the individual.
It is often seen that our choices can be influenced significantly by the choices of individuals who know our friends or parents; however one should understand that aspersions for wants or behaviours is not always the same.,
This means that if the career path, or job is right for others it does not always mean that is necessarily the only choice available for everyone. If we are to choose a career path, we will require critical thinking.
8. Critical Thinking in Time Management.
Time is our most valuable asset so we have to manage it wisely. Using critical thinking for time management will allow you to allocate time to tasks and activities by importance.
For example, if you’re spending most of your time on a task that isn’t providing you with the return, you might need to rethink your timing and spend more time on the tasks with larger returns.
9. Critical Thinking in Analysing the Fake News.
When a friend tells you something you heard in the news. Do you even bother to figure out if it’s true? Most of us just send it around to others without noticing that it could be a piece of fake news.
A study done by Stanford University indicated that about 82 percent of teenagers couldn’t tell the difference between real news and sponsored content.
Some people suggest that the issue comes from the lack of critical thinking skills being taught in the current education model, because of the assumption that everyone is equipped with those skills.
The critical thinking of our children can also be improved by adding some lessons or activity that may develop knowledge development or overall thinking skills.
It’s not just children we see this fake news, print articles, and posted information hoodwink adults as well, that circulate on multiple social media platforms.
Before a person buys into a piece of information their should be several questions to think about:
- Where it comes from – publication
- What was the purpose of the original article
- The organization/individual that wrote the article
- Was there a practical agenda in writing the article
Critical thinking allows us to examine and evaluate information before simply believing it.
10. Critical Thinking in Distinguishing between Right and Wrong.
People, especially teenagers, often care greatly about how their friends or family view their behavior.
Remember when you thought something was cool because your friends thought it was cool, then started acting in that way to fit in with your friends without regard to if the behavior was good or bad, or whether your actions were consistent with your beliefs or not?
Everyone should recognize that when behavior is cool to some persons, it may also be bad to others.
You should not alter your behavior based on the approval of a few particular people, rather you should look, and think deeper about the bigger picture, and whether you action is morally right or wrong.
11. Critical Thinking in Decoding Fashion Trends
Some people are so overly obsessed with fashion trends nowadays they blindly follow every trend that some famous actor, actress, or fashion influencer promotes.
If you are a critical thinker you may have wondered why a certain trend that was once popular seems ridiculous now, or how a trend that looks foolish anyway can be so popular.
Is the same fashion trend that looks good on a particular person going to look as good on you? Critical thinking or a lack thereof, can prevent people from being a victim of the bandwagon fallacy, which is the fallacy where people start believing something is good or bad because the majority of the population believes it too. Fashion trends are a perfect example of bandwagon fallacy.
12. Critical Thinking in Choosing the Suitable Diet and Exercise.
You have probably heard of diets like the Keto diet, Whole 30 diet, gluten-free diet, vegan diet and etc. It seems hard to choose which diet is best for you.
What most people do is search the web, watch a few videos and their diet choice is based on the diet that appeared to have produced the best results for the person in the video. The problem with this is that choosing the best diet should incorporate critical thinking.
Critical thinkers who follow a specific diet weight out the pros and cons of the specific diet on their own body, and rather than take the advice from a random person on social media they ask professional dieticians about the most suitable diet for them.
Just like finding the right diet, finding the right exercise routine requires critical thinking. For example: What do you want to achieve? How are you going to achieve this? When are you going to exercise? Are you injured, and will the exercise exacerbate it?
Critical thinkers will do a lot of those questions and then they will use the knowledge they have about training, follow a exercise routine for a few weeks, and see what results occur, and use that information to construct a training schedule.
13. Critical Thinking in Online Shopping.
These days, online shopping seems to be the choice of shoppers. Digital commerce has its various tactics, and psychological tricks such as the anchoring effect, Stroop effect, Serial position effect, etc.
These effects are used by the many e-commerce websites to trick consumers to buy more items or things they may not even need!
Being a critical thinker can help people buy things intelligently and not be duped by these effects or tactics.
When making the purchase just buy the item you want and think about the price you are paying for that item, not the discount you are getting on that item, because the price you are paying for that item is most likely not worth it even if it is discounted.
14. Critical Thinking in Job Search.
Critical thinking is important in the Job search. When applying for a job, consider the following advice to increase your chance of landing the job.
Use Keywords in your Resume: It is always wise to explore the job post and the job requirements before applying for the job.
Moreover, it is wise to revise your resume in accordance with the job, and to include some of the keywords (identified in the job requirements) in your resume in order to gain attention.
If you have any critical thinking skills; problem-solving skills, analytical skills, communication skills, creativity skills or some others listed in your resume, it is best to include that in your resume.
However, you should refrain from putting any random critical thinking skills that you do not possess on your resume.
Cover Letter: The hiring manager likely receives hundreds of resumes on a daily basis. Therefore, the chances of the hiring manager really reading the resumes are relatively thin. You can differentiate your resume from others by adding a good cover letter.
You can add some of the critical skills you have on your resume, but it is better to elaborate a bit about the tasks or activities you have performed, previously, and exhibited the skills you have previously referenced.
This provides the recruiting manager assurance that you aren’t just writing random skills and that you possess those specific qualities.
Interviews: Some interviewers today present the interviewee with hypothetical stories, to test their critical thinking. It could be asking you how you think about the given situation or the first reaction when viewing the given image. You are required to solve any random problem and then provide an explanation to the recruiter about your thought processes when addressing the random problem.
The interviewer is focused more on your thought processes and how you draw a conclusion, than the conclusion itself. Your thought processes provide the interview the opportunity to analyze and evaluate your approaches to diverse problems.
15. Critical Thinking While Driving
You’re driving down a busy road when your phone begins ringing. It’s an important call, possibly urgent, and you need to answer it.
Now you must think about this call, you can either answer the call but risk crashing your car, or, you can play it safe and pull your car over to the side of the road and answer your call.
It takes critical thinking to make decisions while behind the wheel, such as: how do you find a reasonable place to park the car, can I pass the car through the narrow street, or how do I deal with the animal that suddenly jumped in front of my car? Critical thinking is a skill that enables you to drive.
16. Critical Thinking in Business
One of the most important qualities a business owner must have is critical thinking. A business owner needs to make several crucial decisions, communicate with clients, hire relevant employees, take on various risks, and deal with the ups and downs of business and much more, all of which requires critical thinking.