How to Develop Critical-Thinking Skills
Foundations of Critical Thinking
Why Critical Thinking Is Important
| University of the People | University of the People | 2026
Describes how critical thinking supports independence, better decisions, communication, creativity, and effective problem-solving.
Critical Thinking
| David Hitchcock | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2022
Examines the meaning, history, educational value, components, and philosophical foundations of critical thinking.
Critical Thinking: A Model of Intelligence for Solving Real-World Problems
| Diane F. Halpern and Dana S. Dunn | Scientific American | 2021
Argues that intelligence should include the ability to apply reasoning skills effectively to consequential problems in everyday life.
Critical Thinking and Other Higher-Order Thinking Skills
| Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning | University of Connecticut | 2020
Explains how analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and other higher-order thinking processes move learners beyond memorizing information.
Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts
| Peter A. Facione | Insight Assessment | 2015
Summarizes the expert-consensus definition of critical thinking and identifies interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, and self-regulation as central skills.
Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
| University of Tennessee at Chattanooga | UTC | Date not listed
Introduces questioning, discussion, reflection, and collaborative problem-solving strategies that help people develop sound reasoning skills.
Critical Thinking: Where to Begin
| Richard Paul and Linda Elder | Foundation for Critical Thinking | Date not listed
Presents a practical starting point for recognizing the intellectual standards, questions, and habits associated with disciplined thinking.
Our Concept and Definition of Critical Thinking
| Richard Paul and Linda Elder | Foundation for Critical Thinking | Date not listed
Defines critical thinking as the deliberate improvement of reasoning through analysis, assessment, and reconstruction.
Defining Critical Thinking
| Foundation for Critical Thinking | CriticalThinking.org | Date not listed
Collects influential definitions that describe critical thinking as purposeful, reflective, self-correcting judgment.
Critical Thinking and Education
| Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy | University of Tennessee at Martin | Date not listed
Reviews philosophical approaches to critical thinking and considers how educators can cultivate rational judgment and intellectual responsibility.
Asking Better Questions
Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Effective Learning Objectives
| Teaching Innovation and Pedagogical Support | University of Arkansas | 2022
Shows how progressively demanding questions can develop application, analysis, evaluation, and creative thinking.
Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
| Patricia Armstrong | Vanderbilt University | 2010
Introduces a hierarchy of cognitive activities that can be used to design exercises requiring increasingly sophisticated reasoning.
The Miniature Guide to the Art of Asking Essential Questions
| Linda Elder and Richard Paul | Foundation for Critical Thinking | 2005
Offers a structured framework for asking analytical, evaluative, academic, and self-reflective questions.
The Socratic Method: What It Is and How to Use It in the Classroom
| Rob Reich | Stanford University | 2003
Explains how disciplined dialogue can help participants investigate claims, articulate reasons, and reconsider unsupported beliefs.
The Art of Powerful Questions
| Eric E. Vogt, Juanita Brown and David Isaacs | University of Manitoba | 2003
Explores how open, meaningful questions can reveal assumptions, generate alternatives, and stimulate collective learning.
Questions to Provoke Critical Thinking
| Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning | Brown University | Date not listed
Provides question stems that progress from basic understanding to analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and reflective judgment.
Using Questions to Promote Critical Thinking
| Center for Teaching Innovation | Cornell University | Date not listed
Shows how carefully sequenced questions can challenge assumptions and encourage deeper examination of evidence and conclusions.
Socratic Questioning
| Richard Paul and Linda Elder | Foundation for Critical Thinking | Date not listed
Introduces systematic questioning techniques for clarifying ideas, examining assumptions, evaluating evidence, and exploring consequences.
Asking Good Questions
| Learning Center | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Date not listed
Encourages learners to turn confusion and curiosity into focused questions that guide research and deepen understanding.
Question Formulation Technique
| Right Question Institute | Right Question Institute | Date not listed
Teaches a repeatable process for producing, improving, prioritizing, and using one’s own questions.
Evaluating Arguments and Evidence
Logical Reasoning
| Matthew McKeon | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2022
Examines what it means for a conclusion to follow logically from premises and why validity matters when assessing arguments.
Fallacies
| Hans V. Hansen | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2020
Surveys common errors in reasoning and explains why identifying a fallacy requires attention to context as well as argument structure.
A Guide to Good Reasoning: Cultivating Intellectual Virtues
| David C. Wilson | Open Textbook Library | 2020
Connects argument analysis with intellectual virtues such as honesty, fairness, courage, patience, and openness.
How to Spot a Bad Argument
| Robert Michael and Stuart Clark | The Conversation | 2017
Offers practical guidance for detecting unsupported premises, irrelevant conclusions, false choices, and other argumentative weaknesses.
Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking
| Matthew J. Van Cleave | Open Textbook Library | 2016
Provides an accessible introduction to arguments, deductive and inductive reasoning, fallacies, probability, and moral reasoning.
Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning
| Stanford History Education Group | Stanford University | 2016
Reports that many students struggle to judge online evidence and identifies essential skills for evaluating digital information.
Deductive and Inductive Arguments
| Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy | University of Tennessee at Martin | Date not listed
Explains the differences between deductive certainty and inductive probability and provides criteria for evaluating both forms.
Informal Fallacies
| Bradley Dowden | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy | Date not listed
Catalogs reasoning mistakes involving relevance, ambiguity, unjustified assumptions, weak evidence, and misleading appeals.
Evaluating Sources
| Cornell University Library | Cornell University | Date not listed
Presents questions for assessing a source’s authority, purpose, evidence, relevance, objectivity, and publication context.
Critical Appraisal Tools
| Critical Appraisal Skills Programme | CASP UK | Date not listed
Supplies checklists for systematically evaluating research design, methodology, results, limitations, and applicability.
Recognizing Cognitive Biases
List of Cognitive Biases
| Wikipedia Contributors | Wikipedia | Continuously updated
Provides a broad reference list of documented biases that can be used as a starting point for further study and self-examination.
Cognitive Biases: What They Are and How They Affect Us
| Kendra Cherry | Verywell Mind | 2023
Provides an accessible overview of cognitive biases and their effects on memory, perception, decisions, and social judgments.
Cognitive Biases and Decision-Making
| Vincent Berthet | Frontiers in Psychology | 2022
Reviews evidence showing how overconfidence, anchoring, confirmation bias, and related tendencies affect professional judgments.
The Backfire Effect Is Elusive
| Laura Hazard Owen | Nieman Lab | 2019
Challenges simplistic claims that correcting misinformation normally causes people to embrace false beliefs more strongly.
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
| Elizabeth Kolbert | The New Yorker | 2017
Reviews research on confirmation bias, group reasoning, and the persistence of beliefs after supporting evidence has been discredited.
How to Debias Your Organization
| Jack B. Soll, Katherine L. Milkman and John W. Payne | Harvard Business Review | 2015
Recommends structured practices for reducing bias, expanding alternatives, challenging assumptions, and improving decisions.
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
| Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman | Science | 1974
Introduces foundational research demonstrating how mental shortcuts can produce systematic errors in judgment.
Confirmation Bias
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | Date not listed
Explains the tendency to seek and interpret evidence in ways that support beliefs one already holds.
Motivated Reasoning
| Psychology Today | Psychology Today | Date not listed
Describes how emotions, loyalties, and desired conclusions can influence the way people select and evaluate evidence.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | Date not listed
Examines why limited knowledge can prevent people from accurately recognizing deficiencies in their own understanding.
Media and Information Literacy
How to Teach Students Critical-Thinking Skills to Combat Misinformation
| Zara Abrams | American Psychological Association | 2024
Reviews evidence-based approaches for helping students identify manipulation, investigate sources, and resist misinformation.
SIFT: The Four Moves
| Mike Caulfield | Hapgood | 2019
Introduces four practical verification moves: stop, investigate the source, find better coverage, and trace claims to their original context.
Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise
| Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew | Stanford University | 2017
Shows that professional fact-checkers evaluate unfamiliar websites by leaving them and consulting independent sources.
Verification Handbook
| European Journalism Centre | European Journalism Centre | 2014
Explains professional techniques for verifying online content, eyewitness reports, photographs, video, and user-generated evidence.
Media Literacy Is Vital for Informed Decision-Making
| Learning for Justice | Southern Poverty Law Center | Date not listed
Recommends fact-checking, lateral reading, source comparison, and analysis of word choice, omission, and media bias.
Civic Online Reasoning
| Digital Inquiry Group | Digital Inquiry Group | Date not listed
Offers lessons and assessments for determining who is behind online information, what evidence supports it, and what other sources report.
Check, Please! Starter Course
| Mike Caulfield | Check, Please! | Date not listed
Provides hands-on exercises for checking online claims, images, sources, and quotations efficiently.
Evaluating News Sources
| Harvard Library | Harvard University | Date not listed
Discusses the benefits and limitations of media-rating charts and encourages readers to evaluate individual evidence and reporting practices.
News Literacy Project Checkology
| News Literacy Project | News Literacy Project | Date not listed
Provides interactive lessons on news judgment, misinformation, algorithms, sources, evidence, and press freedom.
How to Spot Fake News
| Cornell University Library | Cornell University | Date not listed
Offers a step-by-step method for checking authorship, supporting evidence, publication history, dates, bias, and corroboration.
Scientific and Statistical Reasoning
How to Read a Scientific Paper
| Elisabeth Pain | Science | 2016
Collects advice from researchers on examining methods, figures, assumptions, results, limitations, and citations.
P-Values and Statistical Significance
| American Statistical Association | ASA | 2016
Warns against treating statistical significance as proof that a hypothesis is true or that a result is important.
The ASA Statement on P-Values
| Ronald L. Wasserstein and Nicole A. Lazar | The American Statistician | 2016
Establishes six principles for interpreting p-values and drawing more responsible conclusions from statistical analyses.
Understanding Risk
Explains how relative-risk figures can make effects appear larger when the corresponding absolute risk is small.
How to Spot Bad Science
| Andy Brunning | Compound Interest | 2014
Identifies warning signs such as tiny samples, uncontrolled experiments, cherry-picked results, and unsupported causal claims.
How to Read and Understand a Scientific Paper
| Jennifer Raff | Violent Metaphors | 2013
Presents a practical sequence for interpreting research papers without relying solely on abstracts or media summaries.
Understanding Science: How Science Really Works
Explains science as an iterative process involving evidence, testing, peer scrutiny, revision, and engagement with the wider community.
Correlation and Causation
| Philip B. Stark | University of California, Berkeley | Date not listed
Clarifies why statistical association alone does not demonstrate that one variable causes another.
Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World
| Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West | University of Washington | Date not listed
Provides lessons for detecting misleading statistics, visualizations, algorithms, causal claims, and scientific reporting.
Spurious Correlations
| Tyler Vigen | Spurious Correlations | Date not listed
Uses humorous examples to demonstrate why a strong statistical correlation does not necessarily indicate causation.
Decision-Making and Problem-Solving
Problem-Solving Strategies and Obstacles
| Kendra Cherry | Verywell Mind | 2023
Outlines problem identification, information gathering, alternative generation, testing, implementation, and evaluation.
How Experts Make Complex Decisions
| Andrew Campbell and Jo Whitehead | Harvard Business Review | 2015
Examines how experienced decision-makers combine pattern recognition with deliberate checks against bias and premature conclusions.
Before You Make That Big Decision
| Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony | Harvard Business Review | 2011
Offers a checklist for detecting bias in recommendations before leaders approve major decisions.
The Hidden Traps in Decision Making
| John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney and Howard Raiffa | Harvard Business Review | 1998
Explains how anchoring, the status quo, sunk costs, framing, and overconfidence can distort important choices.
A Framework for Ethical Decision Making
| Markkula Center for Applied Ethics | Santa Clara University | Date not listed
Provides a systematic method for gathering facts, identifying stakeholders, comparing ethical perspectives, and evaluating possible actions.
The OODA Loop: How to Turn Uncertainty into Opportunity
| Farnam Street | Farnam Street | Date not listed
Introduces a recurring cycle of observation, orientation, decision, and action for adapting judgments as conditions change.
Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions
| Shane Parrish | Farnam Street | Date not listed
Encourages examining problems through multiple conceptual models instead of depending on a single familiar explanation.
How to Make Smart Decisions Without Getting Lucky
| Shane Parrish | Farnam Street | Date not listed
Recommends recording assumptions, expectations, reasoning, and confidence so that decision quality can be evaluated separately from outcomes.
Creative Problem Solving
| Mind Tools Content Team | Mind Tools | Date not listed
Presents techniques for defining problems accurately and generating, comparing, and implementing possible solutions.
Six Thinking Hats
| De Bono Group | De Bono Group | Date not listed
Describes a structured method for separating factual, emotional, critical, optimistic, creative, and process-oriented perspectives.
Reading, Writing, and Discussion
How to Disagree Productively and Find Common Ground
| Julia Dhar | TED Ideas | 2018
Explains how separating ideas from identity can make disagreement more analytical, constructive, and open to revision.
Critical Reading: What Is Critical Reading, and Why Do I Need to Do It?
| Writing Center | Cleveland State University | Date not listed
Explains how readers can identify an author’s purpose, assumptions, evidence, reasoning, and intended audience.
Critical Reading Strategies
| Center for Student Achievement | Salisbury University | Date not listed
Offers annotation, questioning, summarizing, prediction, and comparison techniques for active engagement with texts.
Critical Reading Towards Critical Writing
| Writing Advice | University of Toronto | Date not listed
Shows how evaluating sources and arguments while reading improves the quality and originality of analytical writing.
Using Evidence
| Writing Center | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Date not listed
Explains how to select, introduce, interpret, and connect evidence to an argument rather than merely inserting quotations.
Argument
| Writing Center | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Date not listed
Distinguishes reasoned academic argument from disagreement and shows how claims, reasons, evidence, and counterarguments work together.
Counterargument
| Writing Center | George Mason University | Date not listed
Demonstrates how acknowledging and responding to opposing views can test and strengthen an argument.
Reverse Outlining
| Writing Center | George Mason University | Date not listed
Teaches writers to identify the purpose and evidence of each paragraph so they can uncover gaps, repetition, and weak reasoning.
Reflective Writing
| Writing Center | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Date not listed
Encourages writers to examine experiences, assumptions, changes in understanding, and lessons for future judgment.
How to Participate in a Discussion
| RMIT University | RMIT Learning Lab | Date not listed
Recommends listening carefully, asking clarifying questions, supporting claims, and engaging respectfully with competing viewpoints.
Teaching and Practicing Critical Thinking
Five Ways to Teach Critical Thinking in Challenging Times
| Amy L. Eva | Greater Good Science Center | 2026
Recommends perspective-taking, resistant reading, inquiry, respectful disagreement, and examination of hidden assumptions.
Conceptualizations and Instructional Strategies on Critical Thinking in Higher Education
| Paola Andreucci-Annunziata and colleagues | Frontiers in Education | 2023
Reviews definitions and teaching strategies and concludes that critical thinking includes trainable skills and dispositions.
Critical Thinking Skills in Education: A Systematic Literature Review
Maps major research themes and trends concerning critical-thinking instruction across educational curricula.
Improving Critical-Thinking Skills in College Students
| Megan Mahavongtrakul | University of California, Irvine | 2020
Reviews instructional practices that ask learners to interpret evidence, identify assumptions, justify answers, and reflect on reasoning.
The Value of Intellectual Humility
| Tenelle Porter and colleagues | Greater Good Science Center | 2017
Explains why recognizing the limits of one’s knowledge supports learning, constructive disagreement, and belief revision.
Strategies for Teaching Students to Think Critically: A Meta-Analysis
| Philip C. Abrami and colleagues | Review of Educational Research | 2015
Finds that explicit instruction combined with opportunities to apply critical-thinking skills can significantly improve student performance.
Problem-Based Learning and Critical Thinking
| Center for Teaching Innovation | Cornell University | Date not listed
Explains how working through authentic, open-ended problems promotes investigation, collaboration, evidence evaluation, and self-directed learning.
Case-Based Learning
| Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning | Yale University | Date not listed
Shows how complex cases give learners practice interpreting incomplete information, comparing solutions, and defending decisions.
Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations
| John Templeton Foundation | John Templeton Foundation | Date not listed
Reviews research on acknowledging uncertainty, responding to evidence, and separating confidence from competence.
Reflection, Open-Mindedness, and Lifelong Development
Determining Factors for the Development of Critical Thinking
| Diego Luis Jiménez Gómez and colleagues | Healthcare | 2025
Reviews physiological, psychological, educational, family, and sociocultural factors that influence critical-thinking development.
How to Improve Your Critical-Thinking Skills: Five Tips
| Universities of Wisconsin Extended Campus | UW Extended Campus | 2025
Recommends asking precise questions, gathering relevant information, testing conclusions, considering alternatives, and reflecting on assumptions.
The Big Idea: The Simple Trick That Can Sabotage Your Critical Thinking
| Amanda Montell | The Guardian | 2024
Examines thought-terminating clichés and explains how familiar phrases can discourage questioning and oversimplify complex issues.
The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t
| Julia Galef | Effective Altruism | 2021
Contrasts defending preferred beliefs with trying to construct the most accurate possible picture of reality.
Metacognition: Ideas and Insights from Neuro- and Educational Sciences
| Shirley L. Bryce and colleagues | npj Science of Learning | 2020
Reviews how awareness and regulation of one’s thinking contribute to learning, problem-solving, and independent judgment.
How to Think Like a Philosopher
| Dailys Toussaint | Psyche | 2020
Introduces philosophical reflection as a practice of defining concepts, testing reasons, considering objections, and examining values.
How to Become a Better Thinker
| Mark Leary | Psychology Today | 2018
Recommends recognizing uncertainty, considering alternative explanations, seeking disconfirming evidence, and delaying judgment.
Metacognition
| Center for Teaching | Vanderbilt University | Date not listed
Explains how monitoring one’s comprehension, strategies, confidence, and mistakes can improve learning and reasoning.
The Benefits of Journaling for Reflective Thinking
| Learning Center | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Date not listed
Encourages learners to examine what they understand, identify confusion, evaluate strategies, and plan improvements.
Open-Mindedness
| Wayne Riggs | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | Date not listed
Examines open-mindedness as a willingness to engage seriously with possibilities that conflict with one’s current beliefs.
Understanding and Assessing Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking: A Student Guide
| Oxbridge Essays | Oxbridge Essays | 2026
Explains how students can question information, compare perspectives, evaluate evidence, and form independent judgments.
Critical Thinking Tutorial
| University Library | University of Saskatchewan | 2026
Provides a structured tutorial covering argument analysis, assumptions, evidence, inferences, explanations, and reflective judgment.
Summary of Analyzing Arguments
| University Library | University of Saskatchewan | 2026
Presents a concise framework for identifying conclusions, premises, hidden assumptions, and weaknesses in arguments.
Learning to Analyze and Critically Evaluate Ideas, Arguments, and Points of View
| IDEA Center | IDEA Education | Date not listed
Explains why examining competing claims and testing one’s own arguments are essential to becoming an autonomous thinker.
Critical Thinking
| Skills for Learning | Leeds Beckett University | Date not listed
Offers practical guidance on developing a thesis, analyzing evidence, structuring paragraphs, and moving beyond description.
Critical Thinking Skills
| SkillsYouNeed | SkillsYouNeed | Date not listed
Introduces observation, interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and self-regulation as interconnected thinking skills.
Critical Thinking
| Student Academic Success | Monash University | Date not listed
Helps learners distinguish critical analysis from description and develop conclusions supported by appropriate evidence.
Critical Thinking and Critical Analysis
| Learning Development | University of Plymouth | Date not listed
Shows how questioning assumptions, identifying relationships, and evaluating alternative interpretations strengthen academic work.
Critical Thinking at University
| Skills Hub | University of Sussex | Date not listed
Explains how university-level critical thinking involves examining evidence, recognizing uncertainty, and developing a justified position.
What Is Critical Thinking?
| The Open University | OpenLearn | Date not listed
Introduces critical thinking as an active process of questioning claims, evaluating support, and reflecting on one’s reasoning.
Analyzing Claims and Arguments
An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments
| Ali Almossawi | Book of Bad Arguments | 2013
Uses illustrations and concise examples to explain common fallacies that weaken everyday and public arguments.
The Use of Argument Mapping to Improve Critical Thinking
| Martin Davies | Higher Education | 2012
Examines how argument-mapping software helps learners construct, analyze, and revise complex reasoning.
Argument Maps Improve Critical Thinking
| Tim van Gelder | Perspectives on Psychological Science | 2007
Reviews evidence that visually mapping argument structures can produce substantial improvements in critical-thinking performance.
The Toulmin Method
| Purdue Online Writing Lab | Purdue University | Date not listed
Explains how to analyze arguments by identifying claims, grounds, warrants, backing, qualifiers, and rebuttals.
Organizing Your Argument
| Purdue Online Writing Lab | Purdue University | Date not listed
Presents several methods for arranging claims, reasons, evidence, counterarguments, and responses into a coherent argument.
Logic in Argumentative Writing
| Purdue Online Writing Lab | Purdue University | Date not listed
Introduces logical relationships and shows how writers can connect evidence to conclusions without relying on unsupported assumptions.
Fallacies
| Purdue Online Writing Lab | Purdue University | Date not listed
Describes common reasoning errors such as hasty generalization, false cause, slippery slope, and circular argument.
Developing Strong Thesis Statements
| Purdue Online Writing Lab | Purdue University | Date not listed
Explains how a precise, arguable thesis helps organize reasoning and keeps supporting evidence focused on a defensible claim.
Argument Mapping
| ReasoningLab | University of Melbourne | Date not listed
Introduces visual argument maps as tools for revealing relationships among claims, reasons, objections, and responses.
Your Logical Fallacy Is
| Jesse Richardson and colleagues | School of Thought | Date not listed
Provides an accessible reference for identifying straw-man arguments, false dilemmas, appeals to emotion, and other fallacies.
Evidence and Source Evaluation
The CRAAP Test
| Sarah Blakeslee | California State University, Chico | 2010
Offers criteria for evaluating information according to currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose.
Evaluating Sources Using the CRAAP Test
| Milner Library | Illinois State University | Date not listed
Applies five source-evaluation criteria to articles, websites, books, and other forms of information.
Evaluating Sources: Authority, Accuracy, Coverage, Objectivity and Date
| Sheridan Libraries | Johns Hopkins University | Date not listed
Provides questions for examining who produced a source, how claims are supported, and whether the material is sufficiently current.
Evaluating Information
| MIT Libraries | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Date not listed
Encourages researchers to investigate authorship, evidence, publication practices, relevance, and potential conflicts of interest.
Evaluating Web Sources
| Harvard Library | Harvard University | Date not listed
Explains why researchers should assess the authority, motivation, documentation, and context of online materials.
Source Evaluation
| Yale University Library | Yale University | Date not listed
Provides strategies for comparing sources and judging credibility within a particular research question and discipline.
Evaluating Sources Critically
| Stanford Libraries | Stanford University | Date not listed
Encourages readers to examine a source’s creators, intended audience, evidence, context, and relationship to other scholarship.
Evaluating Information Resources
| University Library | University of California, Berkeley | Date not listed
Presents standards for evaluating scholarly, popular, primary, secondary, and web-based information.
Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources
| Cornell University Library | Cornell University | Date not listed
Explains how different source types contribute distinct forms of evidence and interpretation to research.
Reading Academic Articles Critically
| Academic Skills Community | University of York | Date not listed
Shows how to evaluate an article’s purpose, theoretical framework, evidence, methodology, findings, and limitations.
Bias, Judgment, and Intellectual Error
Biases and Heuristics in Judgment and Decision Making
| Alain Samson | Behavioral Economics | Date not listed
Explains how mental shortcuts simplify judgment while sometimes causing predictable errors.
Anchoring Bias
| The Decision Lab | The Decision Lab | Date not listed
Describes how an initial number or piece of information can exert excessive influence over later judgments.
Availability Heuristic
| The Decision Lab | The Decision Lab | Date not listed
Explains why events that are vivid or easily recalled may seem more frequent or probable than evidence warrants.
Framing Effect
| The Decision Lab | The Decision Lab | Date not listed
Shows how logically equivalent information can produce different choices depending on whether it is framed as a gain or loss.
Sunk Cost Fallacy
| The Decision Lab | The Decision Lab | Date not listed
Examines why people continue ineffective actions because they have already invested time, money, effort, or emotion.
Survivorship Bias
| The Decision Lab | The Decision Lab | Date not listed
Explains how concentrating on visible successes while ignoring failures can create distorted conclusions.
Fundamental Attribution Error
| The Decision Lab | The Decision Lab | Date not listed
Describes the tendency to overemphasize personality and underestimate circumstances when explaining other people’s behavior.
Hindsight Bias
| The Decision Lab | The Decision Lab | Date not listed
Explains why people often believe an outcome was more predictable after learning that it occurred.
Illusory Truth Effect
| The Decision Lab | The Decision Lab | Date not listed
Shows how repeated exposure can increase the perceived truthfulness of a statement even when it is false.
Groupthink
| Psychology Today | Psychology Today | Date not listed
Examines how pressure for agreement can suppress dissent, weaken evidence evaluation, and produce defective group decisions.
Scientific Skepticism and Research Literacy
Levels of Evidence
| Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine | University of Oxford | 2011
Provides a hierarchy for considering the strengths and limitations of different kinds of clinical evidence.
How to Critically Appraise an Article
| Debra A. Hoppin | Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology | 2008
Describes how to evaluate research questions, methods, analysis, results, validity, and applicability.
How to Read a Paper: Statistics for the Non-Statistician
| Trisha Greenhalgh | The BMJ | 1997
Explains how non-specialists can assess statistical tests, confidence intervals, sample sizes, and the clinical importance of findings.
A Rough Guide to Scientific Evidence
| Sense about Science | Sense about Science | Date not listed
Helps readers ask who conducted a study, how it was designed, what was measured, and whether conclusions match the evidence.
How to Read Health News
| National Health Service | NHS | Date not listed
Offers questions for assessing health headlines, study designs, sample sizes, causal claims, and conflicts of interest.
Testing Treatments: Promoting Critical Thinking About Treatment Claims
| James Lind Initiative | Testing Treatments Interactive | Date not listed
Explains how fair comparisons, randomization, systematic reviews, and transparent reporting improve medical evidence.
Understanding Clinical Trials
| National Library of Medicine | ClinicalTrials.gov | Date not listed
Introduces clinical-study designs, intervention groups, outcomes, eligibility requirements, and phases of research.
Understanding Observational Studies
| Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine | University of Oxford | Date not listed
Catalogs biases that can affect health research, including selection, measurement, reporting, and publication bias.
Publication Bias
| Catalogue of Bias Collaboration | University of Oxford | Date not listed
Explains how the preferential publication of statistically significant results can distort the apparent state of evidence.
Randomised Controlled Trials
| C. J. Torgerson and D. J. Torgerson | The BMJ | Date not listed
Introduces randomization, control groups, blinding, outcomes, and other principles used to test interventions fairly.
Digital and News Literacy
AP Fact Check
| Associated Press | AP News | Continuously updated
Provides evidence-based examinations of disputed statements, viral rumors, manipulated media, and political claims.
PolitiFact’s Process
| PolitiFact Staff | PolitiFact | 2018
Describes how political claims are researched, sourced, reviewed, rated, and updated.
Four Moves and a Habit
| Mike Caulfield | Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers | 2017
Presents a practical routine for quickly investigating unfamiliar claims and finding more authoritative coverage.
Evaluating Digital Sources
| University of Washington Libraries | University of Washington | Date not listed
Provides a framework for checking authority, evidence, relevance, purpose, and publication context in digital research.
Reverse Image Search
| First Draft | First Draft News | Date not listed
Explains how reverse-image tools can reveal when photographs have been recycled, altered, or removed from their original context.
InVID Verification Plugin
| InVID Project | European Union Research Project | Date not listed
Introduces tools for checking videos, analyzing keyframes, examining metadata, and tracing images to earlier appearances.
Google Fact Check Explorer
| Google | Google Fact Check Tools | Date not listed
Allows users to search published fact checks before accepting or sharing a disputed online claim.
FactCheck.org: A Project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center
| FactCheck.org Staff | Annenberg Public Policy Center | Date not listed
Explains a transparent process for selecting claims, consulting evidence, contacting sources, and correcting errors.
Reuters Fact Check: How We Work
| Reuters Fact Check Team | Reuters | Date not listed
Explains how journalists verify social-media claims using primary sources, experts, visual analysis, and open-source research.
Media Bias and News Reliability
| University of Michigan Library | University of Michigan | Date not listed
Offers resources for recognizing misinformation, comparing coverage, investigating publishers, and understanding bias.
Productive Dialogue and Perspective-Taking
How to Have Better Political Conversations
| Jeremy Adam Smith | Greater Good Science Center | 2019
Recommends curiosity, active listening, intellectual humility, shared values, and careful questioning during political disagreement.
How to Talk Across the Political Divide
| Kirsten Weir | American Psychological Association | 2019
Reviews psychological research on polarization and identifies communication practices that can support mutual understanding.
The Psychology of Listening
| Elizabeth Bernstein | Greater Good Science Center | Date not listed
Explains how attentive listening can improve comprehension, reveal assumptions, and reduce defensive reactions.
Active Listening
| Mind Tools Content Team | Mind Tools | Date not listed
Provides techniques for concentrating, paraphrasing, clarifying, withholding premature judgment, and responding constructively.
Perspective Taking
| Greater Good Science Center | University of California, Berkeley | Date not listed
Defines perspective-taking and explains how considering another person’s viewpoint supports empathy and more complete reasoning.
Constructive Disagreement
| Program on Negotiation | Harvard Law School | Date not listed
Offers strategies for separating people from problems and exploring underlying interests during disagreement.
Difficult Conversations
| Program on Negotiation | Harvard Law School | Date not listed
Explains how examining intentions, emotions, identities, and competing stories can improve high-stakes discussions.
Steelmanning: How to Build the Strongest Form of an Argument
| Effectiviology | Effectiviology | Date not listed
Encourages thinkers to reconstruct opposing arguments in their strongest reasonable form before responding.
The Principle of Charity
| Philosophy Department | Lander University | Date not listed
Explains why interpretations should initially favor the most coherent and reasonable version of another person’s argument.
The Science of Intellectual Humility
| John Templeton Foundation | John Templeton Foundation | Date not listed
Explores the benefits of recognizing fallibility, taking opposing evidence seriously, and revising beliefs when warranted.
Problem-Solving and Systems Thinking
Wicked Problems
| Jon Kolko | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 2012
Explains why some social problems resist simple definitions and require iterative, interdisciplinary, and participatory approaches.
Premortem Analysis
| Gary Klein | Harvard Business Review | 2007
Asks decision-makers to imagine that a plan has failed and identify possible causes before committing to it.
Scenario Planning
| Pierre Wack | Harvard Business Review | 1985
Shows how constructing multiple plausible futures can challenge assumptions and prepare decision-makers for uncertainty.
The Five Whys
| American Society for Quality | ASQ | Date not listed
Introduces repeated causal questioning as a way to move beyond symptoms and identify a problem’s underlying causes.
Root Cause Analysis
| American Society for Quality | ASQ | Date not listed
Presents structured methods for investigating why problems occur and identifying corrective actions that address causes rather than symptoms.
Fishbone Diagram
| American Society for Quality | ASQ | Date not listed
Explains how cause-and-effect diagrams organize possible explanations and support systematic investigation.
Systems Thinking
| Michael Goodman | The Systems Thinker | Date not listed
Introduces feedback, interdependence, delays, unintended consequences, and other concepts needed to understand complex systems.
Introduction to Systems Thinking
| Waters Center for Systems Thinking | Waters Center | Date not listed
Offers tools for examining patterns, relationships, feedback loops, assumptions, and long-term consequences.
Design Thinking
| IDEO | IDEO | Date not listed
Introduces an iterative process of understanding people, defining problems, developing ideas, prototyping, and learning through testing.
The Design Thinking Process
| Hasso Plattner Institute of Design | Stanford University | Date not listed
Provides practical activities for investigating needs, reframing problems, generating alternatives, and evaluating prototypes.
Learning Through Inquiry and Reflection
The Effect of Inquiry-Based Learning on Critical-Thinking Skills
Reviews research on inquiry-based science learning and identifies features associated with stronger critical-thinking outcomes.
Effects of Inquiry-Based Approaches on Higher-Order Thinking
Reports that inquiry-based approaches have a substantial positive effect on students’ higher-order thinking skills.
Inquiry-Based Learning: A Complete Guide
| Paul Main | Structural Learning | 2021
Explains how placing questions before answers promotes independent investigation, reflection, and increasingly sophisticated reasoning.
Retrieval Practice and Higher-Order Thinking
| The Learning Scientists | Retrieval Practice | 2018
Explains how recalling foundational knowledge can support application, comparison, analysis, and problem-solving.
What Is Inquiry-Based Learning?
| Heather Wolpert-Gawron | Edutopia | 2016
Shows how learner-generated questions can guide research, discussion, interpretation, and meaningful problem-solving.
Elaborative Interrogation
| The Learning Scientists | The Learning Scientists | 2016
Recommends repeatedly asking how and why facts are true so that new information becomes connected to existing knowledge.
Dual Coding
| Megan Sumeracki | The Learning Scientists | 2016
Explains how combining verbal explanations with meaningful visuals can expose relationships and strengthen understanding.
Project-Based Learning
| Buck Institute for Education | PBLWorks | Date not listed
Describes how sustained investigation of authentic questions develops analysis, research, collaboration, and evidence-based communication.
Self-Explanation
| Eberly Center | Carnegie Mellon University | Date not listed
Shows how explaining reasoning to oneself can reveal gaps, correct misunderstandings, and promote knowledge transfer.
Reflective Practice
| Reflection Toolkit | University of Edinburgh | Date not listed
Provides prompts for examining experiences, assumptions, emotional responses, outcomes, and future improvements.
Applying Critical Thinking in Everyday Life
How Charts Lie
| Alberto Cairo | National Geographic | 2019
Shows how visualizations can mislead through distorted scales, selective data, confusing design, and missing context.
Data Visualization and Truthful Communication
| Jonathan Schwabish | PolicyViz | 2018
Explains how clear labeling, appropriate scales, and suitable chart forms help people interpret evidence accurately.
Spotting Bad Statistics
| Tom Chivers | BBC Future | 2018
Offers practical questions for evaluating averages, samples, percentages, causal claims, and selectively reported results.
Ten Simple Rules for Responsible Big Data Research
| Matthew Zook and colleagues | PLOS Computational Biology | 2017
Discusses privacy, bias, context, interpretation, transparency, and accountability when drawing conclusions from large datasets.
How to Make Decisions
| Mind Tools Content Team | Mind Tools | Date not listed
Presents a process for defining decisions, gathering information, generating options, evaluating risks, and reviewing results.
Decision Matrix Analysis
| Mind Tools Content Team | Mind Tools | Date not listed
Shows how weighted criteria can make the comparison of several alternatives more explicit and transparent.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
| Will Kenton | Investopedia | Date not listed
Introduces a framework for comparing expected benefits, costs, risks, and opportunity costs before making a decision.
Fermi Problems and Estimation
| Carnegie Mellon University | Carnegie Mellon University | Date not listed
Uses estimation problems to develop decomposition, numerical reasoning, assumption testing, and plausibility checking.
How to Detect Misleading Graphs
| Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West | Calling Bullshit | Date not listed
Demonstrates how truncated axes and other design choices can exaggerate or conceal patterns in numerical data.
Baloney Detection Kit
| Carl Sagan | Center for Inquiry | Date not listed
Summarizes practical tools for checking independent confirmation, examining evidence, testing alternatives, quantifying claims, and rejecting fallacies.
Causal Reasoning and Explanations
Causal Reasoning
| David Lagnado | Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science | 2024
Explains how people construct causal models and use them to interpret evidence, predict events, assign responsibility, and make decisions.
Causal Inference
| Christopher Hitchcock | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2020
Introduces causal models and explains how they can represent interventions, counterfactuals, dependence, and causal structure.
Counterfactual Theories of Causation
| Michael McDermott | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2020
Examines the idea that causes can be understood by asking what would have happened if the suspected cause had been absent.
Causal Diagrams: Draw Your Assumptions Before Your Conclusions
| Miguel A. Hernán and James M. Robins | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health | 2020
Shows how explicit causal diagrams and assumptions can help researchers reason more carefully about observational evidence.
Bradford Hill Criteria
| Catalogue of Bias Collaboration | University of Oxford | 2019
Introduces considerations such as temporality, consistency, plausibility, and dose-response relationships for evaluating causal claims.
Causal Mechanisms
| Samuel G. B. Johnson and Woo-kyoung Ahn | Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning | 2017
Explores why understanding how a proposed cause produces an effect can be more informative than observing correlation alone.
Causal Learning
| Patricia W. Cheng and Marc J. Buehner | UCLA Reasoning Lab | 2012
Reviews psychological research into how people infer causal relationships from observations, patterns, interventions, and prior knowledge.
Theory-Based Causal Induction
| Thomas L. Griffiths and Joshua B. Tenenbaum | Psychological Review | 2009
Examines how people combine observations with existing theories when deciding whether one event causes another.
Causation in the Sciences
| Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy | University of Tennessee at Martin | Date not listed
Surveys major philosophical theories about causes, effects, mechanisms, regularities, probability, and counterfactual dependence.
Confounding
| Catalogue of Bias Collaboration | University of Oxford | Date not listed
Explains how an unaccounted-for variable can create or conceal an apparent association between an exposure and an outcome.
Probability and Uncertainty
Bayesian Epistemology
| Hanti Lin | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2022
Examines how probability theory can represent rational degrees of belief and responses to new information.
Bayes’ Theorem
| Joyce Fienberg | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2003
Explains how probabilities should be updated when new evidence becomes available.
Natural Frequencies Improve Bayesian Reasoning
| Gerd Gigerenzer and Ulrich Hoffrage | Psychological Review | 1995
Demonstrates that expressing probabilities as natural frequencies can make conditional reasoning easier and more accurate.
Conditional Probability
| Khan Academy | Khan Academy | Date not listed
Introduces the idea that the probability of an event can change when relevant conditions or evidence are known.
Base-Rate Fallacy
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | Date not listed
Explains why people sometimes focus on specific evidence while neglecting the underlying frequency of an event.
The Prosecutor’s Fallacy
| David Spiegelhalter | Understanding Uncertainty | Date not listed
Shows how confusing the probability of evidence with the probability of guilt can produce serious reasoning errors.
Risk Literacy
| Harding Center for Risk Literacy | University of Potsdam | Date not listed
Uses fact boxes and absolute numbers to help people compare the potential benefits and harms of medical interventions.
Understanding Uncertainty
| Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication | University of Cambridge | Date not listed
Provides articles and interactive resources about probability, risk, evidence, statistics, and uncertain predictions.
Confidence Intervals
| T. D. V. Swinscow | The BMJ | Date not listed
Explains how confidence intervals communicate statistical uncertainty more effectively than a single numerical estimate.
The Law of Large Numbers
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | Date not listed
Explains why results from repeated observations tend to become more stable as the number of observations increases.
Scientific Skepticism and Pseudoscience
Science and Pseudo-Science
| Sven Ove Hansson | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2021
Examines philosophical attempts to distinguish reliable scientific inquiry from doctrines that only appear scientific.
The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science
| Robert L. Park | The Chronicle of Higher Education | 2003
Lists behaviors that often accompany questionable scientific claims, including secrecy, attacks on institutions, and reliance on anecdotes.
Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence
| Theodore Schick Jr. | Skeptical Inquirer | 1998
Explains why claims that conflict with well-established knowledge require especially strong and reliable supporting evidence.
Foundations in Critical Thinking
| Melanie Trecek-King | Thinking Is Power | Date not listed
Introduces skepticism, scientific reasoning, evidence evaluation, logical fallacies, cognitive biases, and information literacy.
FLOATER: A Toolkit for Evaluating Claims
| Melanie Trecek-King | Thinking Is Power | Date not listed
Provides a memorable method for examining falsifiability, logic, objectivity, alternative explanations, tentative conclusions, evidence, and replication.
Skeptic’s Toolbox Resources
| Center for Inquiry | Center for Inquiry | Date not listed
Collects guides, demonstrations, videos, and exercises for investigating paranormal, pseudoscientific, and extraordinary claims.
Understanding Science and Pseudoscience
| Melanie Trecek-King | Thinking Is Power | Date not listed
Identifies features that distinguish testable, self-correcting science from practices designed to imitate scientific credibility.
Why Anecdotes Are Not Reliable Evidence
| Melanie Trecek-King | Thinking Is Power | Date not listed
Explains how selective memory, coincidence, bias, regression to the mean, and missing controls weaken anecdotal claims.
How to Think About Weird Things
| Theodore Schick Jr. and Lewis Vaughn | McGraw Hill | Date not listed
Presents a systematic method for evaluating extraordinary, supernatural, paranormal, and pseudoscientific claims.
The Skeptic’s Dictionary
| Robert Todd Carroll | The Skeptic’s Dictionary | Date not listed
Provides skeptical examinations of paranormal beliefs, medical misinformation, questionable therapies, and reasoning errors.
Propaganda and Manipulation
Think Fast, Think Slow, Think Critical
| Liudmila Zavolokina and colleagues | arXiv | 2024
Examines whether automated explanations of propaganda techniques can encourage more analytical news consumption.
Prebunking Misinformation
| Zara Abrams | American Psychological Association | 2023
Reviews research showing how people can be warned about manipulation strategies before encountering deceptive claims.
Inoculation Theory and Misinformation
| University of Cambridge | University of Cambridge | 2019
Explains how advance exposure to weakened manipulation techniques can improve resistance to later misinformation.
Detecting Propaganda: A Critical-Thinking Challenge
| Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty | RFE/RL | 2018
Presents practical methods for examining emotionally charged messages, suspicious narratives, and unsupported accusations.
Propaganda Techniques
| Aaron Delwiche | Propaganda Critic | Date not listed
Explains common persuasion tactics such as fear appeals, glittering generalities, name-calling, testimonials, and bandwagon claims.
How to Spot Propaganda
| Media Education Lab | Mind Over Media | Date not listed
Uses real examples to help learners recognize propaganda techniques and evaluate their social and emotional effects.
Recognizing Propaganda
| University Libraries | University of West Florida | Date not listed
Provides questions for identifying emotionally manipulative language, selective evidence, oversimplification, and hidden sponsorship.
Bad News: The Game That Helps People Resist Misinformation
| DROG and University of Cambridge | Bad News | Date not listed
Lets players practice recognizing impersonation, emotional manipulation, polarization, conspiracy, discrediting, and trolling.
Harmony Square
| DROG, University of Cambridge and U.S. Department of State | Harmony Square | Date not listed
Uses an interactive game to demonstrate how political misinformation exploits outrage, division, and social-media dynamics.
Go Viral!
| University of Cambridge | Go Viral! | Date not listed
Teaches users to recognize fearmongering, fake experts, conspiracy narratives, and emotionally manipulative pandemic misinformation.
Visual and Data Literacy
Visual and Media Literacy Guide
| Claire T. Carney Library | University of Massachusetts Dartmouth | 2026
Provides tools for interpreting photographs, graphics, advertising, film, social media, and other forms of visual communication.
Data Feminism
| Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein | MIT Press | 2020
Encourages readers to examine how power, inequality, missing data, classification, and institutional priorities shape data analysis.
How to Spot Visualization Lies
| Nathan Yau | FlowingData | 2017
Identifies misleading baselines, scales, areas, transformations, labels, and selective presentations in charts.
ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards
| Association of College and Research Libraries | American Library Association | 2011
Defines the skills needed to find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create visual information responsibly.
Graphical Perception
| William S. Cleveland and Robert McGill | Journal of the American Statistical Association | 1984
Studies how accurately people perceive position, length, angle, area, volume, shading, and other graphical encodings.
Data Visualization Catalogue
| Severino Ribecca | Data Visualization Catalogue | Date not listed
Explains the appropriate uses, advantages, and limitations of numerous chart and diagram formats.
From Data to Viz
| Yan Holtz | From Data to Viz | Date not listed
Helps users select suitable visualization forms based on data types and intended comparisons.
Junk Charts Trifecta Checkup
| Kaiser Fung | Junk Charts | Date not listed
Proposes evaluating a visualization by considering its question, data, visual form, and ability to communicate a useful conclusion.
Data Detox Kit
| Tactical Tech | Data Detox Kit | Date not listed
Offers practical activities for investigating digital privacy, algorithmic influence, online persuasion, and personal data collection.
Misleading Graphs and Statistics
| Stephanie Glen | Statistics How To | Date not listed
Provides examples of distorted axes, inappropriate scales, selective intervals, and visual designs that create false impressions.
Artificial Intelligence Literacy
A Framework for Evaluating AI Systems
| National Institute of Standards and Technology | NIST | 2023
Provides a structured approach for assessing the trustworthiness, validity, safety, transparency, privacy, and fairness of AI systems.
On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots
| Emily M. Bender and colleagues | ACM FAccT | 2021
Analyzes environmental, social, linguistic, and ethical risks associated with increasingly large language models.
AI Literacy in Teaching and Learning
Encourages critical examination of AI-generated information, limitations, bias, transparency, and appropriate classroom use.
AI Literacy Framework
| Digital Promise | Digital Promise | Date not listed
Defines knowledge and practices learners need to understand, evaluate, and responsibly interact with artificial intelligence.
What Is AI Literacy?
| Rutgers University Libraries | Rutgers University | Date not listed
Introduces the ability to recognize AI systems, investigate their outputs, understand limitations, and use them ethically.
Generative AI and Information Literacy
| University of Toronto Libraries | University of Toronto | Date not listed
Provides guidance for checking AI-produced claims, citations, images, biases, and possible hallucinations.
Evaluating Generative AI Outputs
| Harvard Library | Harvard University | Date not listed
Recommends verifying AI responses through independent sources and examining accuracy, attribution, bias, and missing context.
Critical AI Literacy
| University Library | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | Date not listed
Explores generative AI’s capabilities, ethical concerns, research implications, and need for human verification.
How to Cite and Evaluate AI-Generated Content
| Gumberg Library | Duquesne University | Date not listed
Offers criteria for assessing the credibility, traceability, currency, and relevance of information produced by AI systems.
AI Hallucinations
| IBM | IBM Think | Date not listed
Explains why generative models sometimes produce confident but false statements and describes methods for reducing associated risks.
Ethical Reasoning
Consequentialism
| Walter Sinnott-Armstrong | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2023
Explores the view that actions should be evaluated according to the value of their consequences.
Virtue Ethics
| Rosalind Hursthouse and Glen Pettigrove | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2022
Explains an approach to ethics centered on character, practical wisdom, human flourishing, and the development of virtues.
Deontological Ethics
| Larry Alexander and Michael Moore | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2020
Examines ethical theories that emphasize duties, permissions, prohibitions, rights, and the nature of actions.
Moral Reasoning
| Henry S. Richardson | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2018
Examines how people deliberate about values, duties, principles, consequences, and competing moral considerations.
Ethics
| James Fieser | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy | Date not listed
Introduces major areas of ethical inquiry and explains how philosophical reasoning can clarify difficult moral decisions.
Justice and Fairness
| Manuel Velasquez and colleagues | Markkula Center for Applied Ethics | Date not listed
Presents questions for evaluating whether benefits, burdens, opportunities, and penalties are distributed fairly.
Rights
| Manuel Velasquez and colleagues | Markkula Center for Applied Ethics | Date not listed
Explains how respect for autonomy, dignity, truth, privacy, and freedom can guide ethical judgment.
The Common-Good Approach
| Manuel Velasquez and colleagues | Markkula Center for Applied Ethics | Date not listed
Encourages decision-makers to consider shared institutions and social conditions that benefit an entire community.
Care Ethics
| Maureen Sander-Staudt | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy | Date not listed
Examines ethical reasoning based on relationships, vulnerability, interdependence, empathy, and responsibility for others.
Ethical Relativism
| Manuel Velasquez and colleagues | Markkula Center for Applied Ethics | Date not listed
Evaluates the claim that moral standards depend entirely on cultures or individuals and identifies problems with extreme relativism.
Creativity and Flexible Thinking
Analogical Reasoning
| Paul Bartha | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2022
Examines when similarities between situations provide legitimate support for conclusions and when analogies become misleading.
Abductive Reasoning
| Igor Douven | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2021
Examines inference to the best explanation and the criteria used to compare competing explanations.
Reframing Problems
| Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg | Harvard Business Review | 2016
Explains how changing the way a problem is framed can reveal overlooked causes and more effective solutions.
Brainstorming Reconsidered
| Jonah Lehrer | The New Yorker | 2012
Reviews research questioning traditional brainstorming rules and considers how debate and physical environments influence creativity.
Creativity
| American Psychological Association | APA | Date not listed
Introduces psychological research into imagination, originality, innovation, problem-solving, and the conditions that support creativity.
Divergent Thinking
| Elsevier | ScienceDirect Topics | Date not listed
Explains the process of generating multiple possible solutions instead of searching immediately for a single correct answer.
Convergent and Divergent Thinking
| Interaction Design Foundation | Interaction Design Foundation | Date not listed
Shows how creative problem-solving alternates between generating possibilities and evaluating the strongest options.
The Creative Process
| IDEO | IDEO | Date not listed
Presents techniques for generating ideas, combining perspectives, suspending premature criticism, and exploring unconventional possibilities.
Lateral Thinking
| De Bono Group | De Bono Group | Date not listed
Introduces techniques for challenging dominant patterns and deliberately producing alternative concepts and solutions.
Creative Confidence
| Tom Kelley and David Kelley | IDEO | Date not listed
Argues that experimentation, prototyping, curiosity, and tolerance for failure can strengthen creative problem-solving.
Memory, Attention, and Thought
Attention and Cognitive Control
| National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine | NCBI Bookshelf | 2015
Explores how attention selects information, suppresses distractions, and supports goal-directed reasoning.
Emotion and Decision Making
| Jennifer S. Lerner and colleagues | Annual Review of Psychology | 2015
Explains how specific emotions influence judgment, risk assessment, attention, and choice.
Stress Effects on Decision-Making
| Mara Mather and Nichole R. Lighthall | Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences | 2012
Reviews how stress can change risk perception, reward sensitivity, attention, and decision strategies.
The Myth of Multitasking
| American Psychological Association | APA | 2006
Reviews evidence that switching rapidly among tasks reduces efficiency, accuracy, and depth of thought.
Working Memory
| American Psychological Association | APA | Date not listed
Explains how limited working-memory capacity affects comprehension, reasoning, learning, and complex problem-solving.
Cognitive Load Theory
| Elsevier | ScienceDirect Topics | Date not listed
Examines how task complexity and unnecessary information can overload mental resources needed for reasoning.
Sleep, Learning, and Memory
| Division of Sleep Medicine | Harvard Medical School | Date not listed
Explains how adequate sleep supports attention, memory consolidation, learning, and effective judgment.
Memory Is Reconstructive
| Cara Laney and Elizabeth F. Loftus | Noba Project | Date not listed
Shows how suggestion, expectations, later information, and questioning can alter memories of past events.
The Misinformation Effect
| Saul McLeod | Simply Psychology | Date not listed
Explains how inaccurate information encountered after an event can become incorporated into a person’s memory.
Metacognitive Awareness and Learning
| Eberly Center | Carnegie Mellon University | Date not listed
Describes methods for helping learners plan, monitor, evaluate, and adjust their approaches to difficult intellectual tasks.
Building a Personal Critical-Thinking Practice
Ten Commandments for Aspiring Superforecasters
| Walter Frick | Harvard Business Review | 2016
Summarizes practices such as breaking problems apart, updating frequently, balancing perspectives, and remaining cautiously confident.
A Guide to Critical Thinking
| John M. Maresh | DePaul University | Date not listed
Presents critical thinking as a process of uncovering assumptions, checking them against evidence, and making informed decisions.
Intellectual Standards
| Richard Paul and Linda Elder | Foundation for Critical Thinking | Date not listed
Introduces clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance, and fairness as standards for evaluating thought.
Valuable Intellectual Traits
| Richard Paul and Linda Elder | Foundation for Critical Thinking | Date not listed
Describes humility, courage, empathy, autonomy, integrity, perseverance, confidence in reason, and fair-mindedness.
Critical Thinking in Everyday Life
| Richard Paul and Linda Elder | Foundation for Critical Thinking | Date not listed
Offers strategies for recognizing emotional reactions, redefining situations, examining influences, and improving personal reasoning.
Becoming a Critic of Your Thinking
| Richard Paul and Linda Elder | Foundation for Critical Thinking | Date not listed
Encourages people to monitor the purpose, assumptions, evidence, implications, and point of view present in their own thoughts.
Keeping a Decision Journal
| AllianceBernstein | AB Insights | Date not listed
Explains how recording predictions and assumptions allows people to compare their reasoning with later outcomes.
Calibrating Confidence
| Open Philanthropy | Open Philanthropy | Date not listed
Introduces exercises for making probabilistic forecasts and aligning expressed confidence with actual accuracy.
The Good Judgment Project
| Philip Tetlock, Barbara Mellers and Don Moore | Good Judgment | Date not listed
Describes research showing how careful updating, teamwork, probability estimates, and open-mindedness improve forecasting.
The Scout Mindset in Practice
| Julia Galef | JuliaGalef.com | Date not listed
Provides resources for approaching beliefs as maps to be improved rather than positions that must always be defended.
