Thinking Quotient is nothing but the importance of Critical Thinking. Thinking Quotient is a measure of your Dynamic Intelligence, which is Intention, Awareness, Choice and Response. It measures how you emotionally react and how you cognitively react. The more self-aware you are, the greater your capacity to think in the moment, and thus the greater range in your capability. So most of your Thinking Quotient is your ability to critically think. Now, what exactly is Critical Thinking?
Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the logical connection between ideas. Critical thinking has been the subject of much debate and thought since the time of early Greek philosophers such as Plato and Socrates and has continued to be a subject of discussion into the modern age. Critical thinking might be described as the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.
Critical thinking requires you to use your ability to reason. It is about being an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information. Critical thinkers rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. They will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings represent the entire picture and are open to finding that they do not. Critical thinkers will identify, analyse and solve problems systematically rather than by intuition or instinct.
Now we all should be aware that none of us think critically all the time. We think in almost all ways but critically. For example, when our self-control is affected by anger, grief or joy or when we are feeling just plain ‘bloody minded’. On the other hand, the good news is that, since our critical thinking ability varies according to our current mindset, most of the time we can learn to improve our critical thinking ability by developing certain routine activities and applying them to all problems that present themselves. Once you understand the theory of critical thinking, improving your critical thinking skills takes persistence and practice.
The skills that we need in order to be able to think critically are varied and include observation, analysis, interpretation, reflection, evaluation, inference, explanation, problem-solving, and decision making.
We need to be able to:
There are many ways to improve, but here are a few.
Identification: The first step in the critical thinking process is to identify the situation or problem as well as the factors that may influence it. Once you have a clear picture of the situation and the people, groups or factors that may be influenced, you can then begin to dive deeper into an issue and its potential solutions. How to improve: When facing any new situation, question or scenario, stop to take a mental inventory of the state of affairs and ask the following questions: Who is doing what? What seems to be the reason for this happening? What are the end results, and how could they change?
Research: When comparing arguments about an issue, independent research ability is key. Arguments are meant to be persuasive—that means the facts and figures presented in their favour might be lacking in context or come from questionable sources. The best way to combat this is independent verification; find the source of the information and evaluate.
How to improve: It can be helpful to develop an eye for unsourced claims. It’s also important to know that not all sources are equally valid—take the time to learn the difference between popular and scholarly articles.
Identifying biases: This skill can be exceedingly difficult, as even the smartest among us can fail to recognise biases. Think of yourself as a judge in that you want to evaluate the claims of both sides of an argument, but you’ll also need to keep in mind the biases each side may possess. It is equally important and arguably more difficult to learn how to set aside your own personal biases that may cloud your judgement.
How to improve: Challenge yourself to identify the evidence that forms your beliefs, and assess whether or not your sources are credible.
Inference: The ability to infer and draw conclusions based on the information presented to you is another important skill for mastering critical thinking. Information doesn’t always come with a summary that spells out what it means. You’ll often need to assess the information given and draw conclusions based upon raw data. The ability to infer allows you to extrapolate and discover potential outcomes when assessing a scenario. It is also important to note that not all inferences will be correct.
How to improve: An inference is an educated guess, and your ability to infer correctly can be polished by making a conscious effort to gather as much information as possible before jumping to conclusions. When faced with a new scenario or situation to evaluate, first try skimming for clues things like headlines, images and prominently featured statistics and then make a point to ask yourself what you think is going on.
Determining Relevance: One of the most challenging parts of thinking critically during a challenging scenario is figuring out what information is the most important for your consideration. In many scenarios, you’ll be presented with information that may seem important, but it may pan out to be only a minor data point to consider.
How to improve: The best way to get better at determining relevance is by establishing a clear direction in what you’re trying to figure out. If you figure out your end goal, you can use this to inform your judgement of what is relevant.
Curiosity: It’s incredibly easy to sit back and take everything presented to you at face value, but that can also be also a recipe for disaster when faced with a scenario that requires critical thinking.
How to improve: While it might seem like a curious mind is just something you’re born with, you can still train yourself to foster that curiosity productively. All it takes is a conscious effort to ask open-ended questions about the things you see in your everyday life, and you can then invest the time to follow up on these questions.
In conclusion we’d like to say that thinking critically is vital for anyone looking to have a successful college career and a fruitful professional life upon graduation. Your ability to objectively analyse and evaluate complex subjects and situations will always be useful. Hence, Critical Thinking is very important.
