Critical Thinking Skills: As a Consumer

PSYCH/626

Critical Thinking Skills: As A Consumer

Throughout our daily lives there has come a time or two where thinking outside the box was necessary. This form of thinking enables a person to examine a problem, analyze its validity, apply scientific thinking, and ask questions, all in a hope of drawing a conclusion to a particular issue. This intellectual form of thinking has branched out of the psychological, scientific field, and has moved towards a consumer’s way of thinking. The objective of this paper is to locate a current article published within the last six months, provide a brief summary of the issued presented, evaluate the article’s strengths and weaknesses, analyze the source’s credibility, explain the importance of critically evaluating information, and provide the utility of the information for a behavioral health researcher.

Brief Summary of the Issue Presented Within the Article Located

The article that I located was found within Emerson College on line database. Author Dan O’Brien (2014) published, Ask for Evidence Spawns Critical Thinking in March of this year. The text spoke about a new research endeavor supported by a donor funded Consumer Awareness Project grant created to help Emerson students develop their critical thinking skills as consumers. According to O’Brien (2014),”The Ask for Evidence Campaign is part of a national campaign to improve consumer awareness and truth in advertising” (para.2). The campaign teaches its students to ask questions and investigate claims made to consumers through advertisements, such as news reports and allegiant expert testimonies. Students are putting their scientific and critical thinking skills to work, asking questions to some of these skeptical advertised companies through emails, letters, social media platforms, and phone calls (O’Brien, 2014). All of this effort is to discover if their claims are able to be researched and still hold their validity. However, after reading the article it was discovered that some of the advertisement was unfounded or misleading (O’Brien, 2014).

Ask for Evidence Spawns Critical Thinking Strengths

This article had several strengths composed within the text. After reading the entire article, the first and main strength was that it encouraged critical thinking skills. This process involved clarifying questions the students wanted to ask to the company representative, organizing the data, if any, that was collected as a response from the individual, and conducting their own research. The professors within the college encouraged their students to develop these skills. Vashlishan Murray, a Molecular Biologist, who teaches science at Emerson, says Ask for Evidence can help students in a variety of academic fields and also develops important life skills (O’ Brien, 2014). She explains, “In the sciences, it’s a way to teach research skills in terms of how to ask questions and what to be skeptical of” (para. 8). Another strength to this article is the campaign originated with only Emerson student’s participation, and now it has branched out into the public and everyone is encouraged to share their evidence and findings. Finally, the supervisors of the campaign are headed up by experienced faculty members in the departments of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Marketing Communication, Communication Studies, and the Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies (O’ Brien, 2014).

References

O’Brien, D. (2014). Ask for evidence spawns critical thinking. Retrieved from http://www.emerson.edu/news-events/emerson-college-today/ask-evidence-spawns-critical-thinkingStraub, R. O. (2012). Health psychology: A biopsychosocial approach [University of Phoenix Custom Edition eBook]. New York, New York: Worth Publisher. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, PSYCH626 website.