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The call for more critical thinking often hides a very pessimistic view of our mental capacities.\u00a0We would be irreparably the prey of our “biases”, these influences which escape all control and make us act in an irrational way.\u00a0And so we would be generally ready to believe everything.\u00a0Thus, the critical spirit would be an ideal often very difficult to reach.<\/p>\n
However, very often, when information is presented to us, we spontaneously ask ourselves questions.\u00a0Who is this message from?\u00a0Is it a reliable source, who wants us good, and has no interest in lying to us?\u00a0Is the person really competent on the subject on which they decide?\u00a0Does she have knowledge that we ourselves do not have?\u00a0Does his argument seem plausible?<\/p>\n
As soon as we are recommended a restaurant or a film, we attend a debate or we hear a judgment on a person, a whole grid of criteria is agitated in our head, feeding doubts and positions.\u00a0And this type of instant intellectual reaction manifests very early.\u00a0From the age of three, children activate strategies to assess what they are told or asked.<\/p>\n
Take these examples – real experiences that we will summarize schematically.\u00a0A child of kindergarten age is watching two videos.\u00a0In the first, an adult names a number of objects.\u00a0All but one are familiar to the child.\u00a0Adult (A) calls it “snegg”.\u00a0In the second video, another adult (B) is ready to exercise.<\/p>\n
However, when he arrives at the object that the child does not know, he presents it under the name “hoog”.\u00a0We then ask the child what this object is called, and we repeat the same experience with several children.<\/p>\n
The adult (A) is well known to children, since it is their mistress.\u00a0But adult (B) teaches in another school.\u00a0And it is the response of the first person that the young participants from 3 to 5 years immediately choose.<\/p>\n
Conclusion: children do not accept all information in the same way and they do not choose\u00a0their informant<\/a>\u00a0at random.\u00a0In this specific case, they use an implicit criterion: that of familiarity, which can be interpreted as an indication that the adult has no interest in deceiving the child.<\/p>\n Familiarity is not everything, however.\u00a0In another experiment conducted with children aged 3 to 4 years, in all similar points, one of the two adults makes several mistakes in naming the objects.\u00a0For example, he calls a cup a “ball”.\u00a0Children must now choose who to ask for the name of an unknown object.\u00a0The results of the experiment show that their preferences go to the adult who is not mistaken with known objects: they therefore choose in this case the best informed adult.<\/p>\n A third experiment makes it possible to compare the effects of familiarity with those of the accuracy and precision of the answers.\u00a0In this case, the known informant is also the least precise.\u00a0And we see that the criteria used change with age.\u00a0For 3 year olds, familiarity trumps skill;\u00a0the mistakes of people they know don’t shake them.\u00a0On the contrary, for 5-year-olds, the accuracy of the answers becomes decisive.<\/p>\n Other clues<\/a>\u00a0used by the child to gauge the reliability of the informant were thus highlighted: the child pays attention to the approval that his interlocutor receives from other adults and to his skills.<\/p>\n After such a good start, how to explain the common misconceptions about the protocols of science, the resistance to explanations yet widely accepted by the research community (such as human responsibility in\u00a0climate change<\/a>\u00a0)?\u00a0How to explain that we adhere to questionable explanations, and let them circulate freely?\u00a0How can we explain our lack – at least apparent – of critical thinking?<\/p>\n An important point to note in the examples described above: the criteria that we, adults and children, use to assess the quality of information provided by others can be more or less sophisticated and demanding in cognitive terms.<\/p>\n In fact, if we wanted to be very selective, we would have to put in place more expensive criteria, which assess confidence by adapting to the circumstances;\u00a0for example, recognizing that the same person may be competent or ignorant depending on the area in question.<\/p>\n But we are not always able or willing to do it.\u00a0We therefore rely on general indices – such as familiarity, group membership, prestige – which, moreover, guarantee us other advantages (that of settling fully in a social group, of following a recognized source).\u00a0However, these indices can be misleading or inappropriate for the circumstances, too simplistic for fine distinctions.<\/p>\n In any case, the natural mechanisms of our critical mind are\u00a0not infallible<\/a>\u00a0.\u00a0Worse, these clues can lead us to make mistakes or be used against us.\u00a0Thus, the prestige of a source can be actively and voluntarily manipulated on the Internet by adding fictional “likes” to it, thereby creating an impression of reliability.<\/p>\n The natural critical mind therefore needs to be equipped: equipped with appropriate criteria, knowledge.\u00a0For example to know if a\u00a0Wikipedia<\/a>\u00a0page\u00a0deserves our trust, we need to know the operating mode of the most consulted encyclopedia in the world: who writes there, in what ways is a page accepted and modified, what does this mean? it when we are told that references are missing, etc.<\/p>\n This knowledge will allow us to grant our trust in a more reasoned and therefore reasonable manner thanks to the development of appropriate tools for the assessment of the reliability and benevolence of information sources.\u00a0If these sources have a good\u00a0reputation<\/a>\u00a0, we would be able to judge where it comes from, and whether it is deserved on the basis of real expertise.Misleading clues<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Tools to acquire<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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