How IB hinders CT

I am thankful to the National University of Medical Sciences who invited me to speak about the relationship of Implicit Biases and Critical Thinking . Here I am sharing the summary of my talk for all of you to ponder upon.

Critical Thinking to me is the process between receiving the information from senses and believing it as authentic piece of information. I usually describe it in three major elements:

1. Gather information using multiple sources of knowledge in alternate systems of thought
2. Challenge or question the theoretical assumptions and existing set of knowledge
3. Assess evidence and evaluate alternate assumptions then accept or?create new knowledge

Higher-order thinking skills in Bloom's Taxonomy— analyzing, evaluating, and creating—align closely with the elements of critical thinking. Going through these levels one reaches the highest level of creativity, which involves diverse ideas to generate innovative solutions or perspectives, demonstrating the culmination of critical thinking. Together, these higher-order skills embody the essence of critical thinking, as they demand a systematic, reflective, and evidence-based approach to learning and problem-solving.

Where do the biases come from - as we grow; we are taught to perceive our strengths and weaknesses in comparison to others. This idea of us and them, developed stereotypes, and prejudices. Sometimes intentionally and mostly unintentionally our behaviors and attitudes are under the influence of the learned emotional and cognitive biases against "other" people and groups. The discrimination on the basis of age, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, language power, position, resources, affiliations, and dis/abilities are outcomes of those explicit and implicit biases. Implicit biases are more dangerous because they remain in "blindspots" at sub-conscious level and we only realise these when we have already made an un-just, un-fair, or a wrong decision.

Hindsight, Bandwagon, and Dunning-Kruger effects are the common ones, across all professions and practices. We tend to judge new situations on past experiences, following the patterns of what is commonly done by everyone else and then trying to defend our practice by posing that we know it all. What actually happens is that every new situation has some new element that we ignore due to these three major cognitive biases. Responsible persons at home, in community, or Teachers, Doctors, Engineers and many other professionals and practitioners unknowingly work under these biases and never realize how these biases restricted their higher order thinking skills.

Anchoring on the first piece information presented to us limits our tendency to search for alternate pieces of information. Availablity of limited set of information captivates our mind and we unknowingly begin to believe it. Once we believe it then all we do further is Confirmation of what we already believe and ignore every evidence that contradicts, no matter how significant that is. These three cognitive biases integrate and correlate so much that one tends to draw conclusions with much confidence. Without realising how important pieces of information are excluded from the process of inquiry we adopted.

The above six and many other cognitive biases actively work in our daily work and personal life experiences. We remain under the influence and never get a chance to re-visit our own beliefs and behaviors. The begining point for all of us can be conscious effort of "Reflection in Action" and "Reflection on Action". Holding our thoughts in the moments of analysing, evaluating, and concluding. Taking more time, gathering more information, and considering every alternate assumption no matter what and where it is coming from- can help us alot in outsmarting these implicit biases and becoming better critical thinkers and change agents.