creativity and critical thinking

Over the past few years, Jody has had several dreams that apparently predicted actual events. For example, in one dream, she saw a car accident and later that week she saw a van run into the side of a pickup truck. In another dream, she saw dark black clouds and lightning and 2days later a loud thunderstorm hit her neighborhood. She believes these events are evidence that she has a psychic ability to predict the future through her dreams. Could the event have occurred by chance? State whether or not there is a problem with the person’s conclusions and explain the problem (if there is one).

Responses were scored based on the rubric provided in the original measurement ( Lawson et al., 2015 ). If no problem was identified the participants would receive zero points. If a problem was recognized but misidentified, the participants would receive one point. If the main problem was identified and other less relevant problems were identified, the participants received two points. If participants identified only the main problem, they received three points. Following the rubric, four graduate students independently rated the students’ critical thinking task. The Cronbach’s Alpha of the expert ratings was acceptable for both vignettes (0.773 and 0.712). The average of the four scores given by the experts was used as the final score for the participants.

California Critical Thinking Skills Test

This objective measure of critical thinking was developed by Facione and Facione (1994) . We used CCT to measure a few of the multidimensions of critical thinking such as evaluation, logical reasoning, and probability thinking. Five sample items provided from Insight Assessment were used instead of the standard 40-min long CCT. Participants were presented with everyday scenarios with 4–6 answer choices. Participants were asked to make an accurate and complete interpretation of the question in order to correctly answer the question by choosing the right answer choice (each correct answer was worth one point). This test is commonly used to measure critical thinking, and previous research has reported its reliability as r =0.86 ( Hariri and Bagherinejad, 2012 ).

Sternberg Scientific Inquiry and Reasoning

This measure was developed by Sternberg and Sternberg (2017) as an assessment of scientific reasoning. We used this assessment as a domain-specific assessment to measure participants’ scientific creativity (generating testable hypotheses) and scientific critical thinking involved in generating experiments. For this two-part measure, participants were asked to read two short vignettes. For one of the vignettes, participants were asked to generate as many hypotheses as possible to explain the events described in the vignette. For the other, create an experiment to test the hypothesis mentioned in the vignette.

After carefully reviewing the measurement, we notice that the nature of the tasks in the first part of this measure (hypothesis generation) relied on heuristics, requiring participants to engage in divergent thinking. The number of valid hypotheses provided (i.e., fluency) was used to represent the performance of this task. We, therefore, deem that this part measures creativity. In contrast, the second part of the measure, experiment generation, asked participants to use valid scientific methods to design an experiment following the procedure of critical thinking such as evaluation, problem-solving, and task evaluation. Its scoring also followed algorithms so that a correct answer could be achieved. For the above reasons, we believe hypotheses generation is a measurement of creativity and experiment generation is a measurement for critical thinking.

Based on the recommended scoring manual, one graduate student calculated the fluency score from the hypothesis generation measurement. Four experts read through all students’ responses to the experiment generation. They discussed a rubric on how to score these responses, using a four-point scale, with a “0” representing no response or wrong response, a “1” representing partially correct, a “2” representing correct response. An additional point (the three points) was added if the participant provided multiple design methods. Based on the above rubric, the four experts independently scored this part of the questionnaire. The Cronbach’s Alpha of the four expert ratings was 0.792. The average score of the four judges was used to represent their critical thinking scores on this task.

College Experience Survey

Participants were asked about their past research experience, either specifically in psychology or in general academia. Participants were asked to choose between three choices: no research experience, intermediate research experience (i.e., research work for class, research work for lab), and advanced research experience (i.e., professional research experience, published works).

Demographic and Background Questionnaire

Series of standard demographic questions were asked, including participants’ age, gender, and ethnicity.

We performed a Pearson correlation to examine the relationship between creativity and critical thinking (the two-c), which include performances on three measures on creativity ( creativity originality , creativity fluency , and hypothesis generation ) and three measures on critical thinking ( experiment generation , CCT , and PCT ).

Most of the dependent variables had a significantly positive correlation. The only insignificant correlation was found between Sternberg hypothesis generation and CCT, r (247) =0.024, p =0.708 (see Table 1 ).

Table 1 . Correlation coefficients for study variables.

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted by applying SEM through AMOS 21 software program and the maximum likelihood method. One-factor and two-factor models have been analyzed, respectively (see Figure 1 ).

Figure 1 . The comparison of the two confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models: one-factor vs. two-factor.

As it is demonstrated in Table 2 , the value ranges of the most addressed fit indices used in the analysis of SEM are presented. Comparing two models, χ 2 /df of the two-factor model is in a good fit, while the index of the one-factor model is in acceptable fit. The comparison of the two models suggest that the two-factor model is a better model than the one-factor model.

Table 2 . Recommended values for evaluation and the obtained values.

Cross-Cultural Differences in Critical Thinking and Creativity

We conducted a 2 (Country: the United States vs. China)×2 (Two-C: Creativity and Critical Thinking) ANOVA to investigate the cultural differences in critical thinking and creativity. We averaged scores of three critical thinking measurement ( experiment generation , PCT , and CCT ) to represent critical thinking and averaged three creativity scores ( creativity originality , creativity fluency , and hypothesis generation ).

This analysis revealed a significant main effect for the type of thinking (i.e., creative vs. critical thinking), F (1,247) =464.77, p <0.01, η p 2 =0.653. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between country (i.e., the United States vs. China) and type of thinking, F (1,247) =62.00, p <0.01, η p 2 =0.201. More specifically, Chinese students ( M =1.32, SD =0.59) outperformed American students ( M =1.02, SD =0.44) on critical thinking. In contrast, American students ( M =2.59, SD =1.07) outperformed Chinese students ( M =2.05, SD =0.83) on creativity.

Influence of Research Experience on Critical Thinking and Creativity

The last hypothesis states that having college research experience (through courses or research lab) would enhance students’ creativity and critical thinking from both countries. We performed a 2 (Two-C: Creativity and Critical Thinking)×2 (Country: the United States vs. China)×3 (Research Experience: Advanced vs. Some vs. No) ANOVA to test this hypothesis. This analysis revealed a significant main effect for research experience, F (2,239) =4.05, p =0.019, η p 2 =0.033. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between country (i.e., the United States vs. China) and research experience, F (2,239) =5.77, p =0.004, η p 2 =0.046. In addition, there was a three-way interaction among country, two-C, and research experience. More specifically, with an increase of research experience for American students, both critical thinking and creativity improved. In contrast, for Chinese students, the impact of research experience was not significant for creativity. However, some research experience positively impacted Chinese students’ critical thinking (see Figure 2 ).

Figure 2 . Estimated marginal means of Two-C for the United States and Chinese samples.

The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between creativity and critical thinking, how culture influences creativity and critical thinking, and how college research experience affects creativity and critical thinking. Our results supported the first hypothesis regarding the positive correlation among all of the dependent variables. The mean correlation between the measures of creativity and critical thinking was 0.230. This result was in line with the findings from previous research ( Gibson et al., 1968 ; Gadzella and Penland, 1995 ; Siburian et al., 2019 ; Akpur, 2020 ; Qiang et al., 2020 ). Moreover, our confirmatory factor analysis yielded similar results as analysis of Wechsler et al. (2018) and Akpur (2020) and provides more evidence of the relative independence between creativity and critical thinking. We found that at the latent variable level, the two skills are highly correlated to each other ( r =0.84). In addition, we found that although the one-factor model was an acceptable fit, a two-factor model was a better fit for analysis. This result suggests that despite the correlation between creativity and critical thinking, the two skills should be studied as separate factors for an appropriate and comprehensive analysis.

The results of this study partially confirmed our second hypothesis and replicated the findings from past studies ( Niu et al., 2007 ; Lun et al., 2010 ; Wong and Niu, 2013 ; Tang et al., 2015 ). As predicted, there was a significant main effect for culture in students’ performance for all six measures in the two-C analysis model. United States students performed better than Chinese students in all three creativity measures, and Chinese students performed better than United States students in all critical thinking measures. Given the diversity in the type of measures used in this study, the results suggest that United States and Chinese students’ performance aligns with the stereotype belief found in study of Wong and Niu (2013) . The findings from the current study suggest that the stereotype belief observed in both United States and Chinese students (United States students generally perform better on creativity tasks, while Chinese students perform typically better on critical thinking tasks) is not entirely unfounded. Furthermore, the clear discrepancy in performance between United States and Chinese students provides more evidence to suggest that creativity and critical thinking are relatively autonomous skills. Although, a high correlation between these two skills was found in our study, the fact that students from two different cultures have two different development trajectories in critical thinking and creativity suggests that these two skills are relatively autonomous.

Lastly, the results also confirmed our third hypothesis, that is, college research experience did have a positive influence on students’ creativity and critical thinking. Compared to students with no research experience, students with some research experience performed significantly better in all measures of creativity and critical thinking. This finding is consistent with the previous literature ( Mill et al., 1994 ; Penningroth et al., 2007 ; Stevens and Witkow, 2014 ; Stevens et al., 2016 ; Kuo et al., 2018 ). The result of our study suggests that college research experience is significant to enhance both creativity and critical thinking. As research experience becomes a more essential component of college education, our results suggest that it not only can add credential for applying to graduate school or help students learn skills specific to research, but also help students enhance both creativity and critical thinking. Furthermore, it is worth noting that this nature held true for both Chinese and American students. To our knowledge, this is a first investigation examining the role of research experience in both creativity and critical thinking cross-culturally.

In addition to the report of our findings, we would like to address some limitations of our study. First, we would like to note that this is a correlational and cross-sectional study. A positive correlation between research experience and the two dependent variables does not necessarily mean causation. Our results indeed indicate a positive correlation between research experience and the two-C variables; however, we are not sure of the nature of this relationship. It is plausible that students with higher creativity and critical thinking skills are more engaged in research as much as it is to argue in favor of a reversed directional relationship. Second, we would like to note the sample bias in our study. Majority of our participants were female, majoring in the social sciences and a relatively high number of participants chose not to report their gender. Third, we would like to note that our study did not measure all creativity and critical thinking dimensions, we discussed in the introduction. Instead, we focused on a few key dimensions of creativity and critical thinking. Our primary focus was on divergent thinking, convergent thinking, and scientific creativity as well as few key dimensions of critical thinking (evaluation, logical reasoning, and probability thinking), scientific critical thinking involved in problem solving and hypothesis testing. Moreover, our results do not show what specific components of research training are beneficial for the enhancement of creativity and critical thinking.

For future research, a longitudinal design involving a field experiment will help investigate how different research training components affect the development of creativity and critical thinking. In addition, a cross-cultural study can further examine how and why the students from different cultures differ from each other in the development of these two potentials. As such, it might shed some light on the role of culture in creativity and critical thinking.

Conclusion and Implication

The result of our study provides few insights to the study of creativity and critical thinking. First, creativity and critical thinking are a different construct yet highly correlated. Second, whereas Americans perform better on creativity measures, Chinese perform better on critical thinking measures. Third, for both American and Chinese students, college research experience is a significant influence on the enhancement of creativity and critical thinking. As research experience becomes more and more essential to college education, its role can not only add professional and postgraduate credentials, but also help students enhance both creativity and critical thinking.

Based on our results, we recommend that research training be prioritized in higher education. Moreover, each culture has strengths to develop one skill over the other, hence, each culture could invest more in developing skills that were found to be weaker in our study. Eastern cultures can encourage more creativity and Western cultures can encourage more critical thinking.

To conclude, we would like to highlight that, although recognized globally as essential skills, methods to foster creativity and critical thinking skills and understanding creativity and critical thinking as a construct requires further research. Interestingly, our study found that experience of research itself can help enhance creativity and critical thinking. Our study also aimed to expand the knowledge of creativity and critical thinking literature through an investigation of the relationship of the two variables and how cultural background influences the performance of these two skills. We hope that our findings can provide insights for researchers and educators to find constructive methods to foster students’ essential 21st century skills, creativity and critical thinking, to ultimately enhance their global competence and life success.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Institutional Review Board at Pace University. The participants provided their informed consent online prior to participating in the study.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

This work was supported by the International Joint Research Project of Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University (ICER201904), and a scholarly research funding by Pace University.

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Watson, G. B., and Glaser, E. M. (1938). The Watson-Glaser Tests of Critical Thinking. New York, NY: Institute for Propaganda Analysis.

Watson, G. B., and Glaser, E. M. (1980). WGCTA Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal Manual: Forms A and B. San Antonio: The Psychological Corporation.

Wechsler, S. M., Saiz, C., Rivas, S. F., Vendramini, C. M. M., Almeida, L. S., Mundim, M. C., et al. (2018). Creative and critical thinking: independent or overlapping components? Think. Skills Creat. 27, 114–122. doi: 10.1016/j.tsc.2017.12.003

Wong, R., and Niu, W. (2013). Cultural difference in stereotype perceptions and performances in nonverbal deductive reasoning and creativity. J. Creat. Behav. 47, 41–59. doi: 10.1002/jocb.22

Zydney, A. L., Bennett, J. S., Shahid, A., and Bauer, K. W. (2002). Faculty perspectives regarding the undergraduate research experience in science and engineering. J. Eng. Educ. 91, 291–297. doi: 10.1002/j.2168-9830.2002.tb00706.x

Keywords: creativity, critical thinking, cross-cultural differences, college, research experience

Citation: Park JH, Niu W, Cheng L and Allen H (2021) Fostering Creativity and Critical Thinking in College: A Cross-Cultural Investigation. Front. Psychol . 12:760351. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.760351

Received: 18 August 2021; Accepted: 11 October 2021; Published: 11 November 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Park, Niu, Cheng and Allen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Li Cheng, [email protected]

† These authors have contributed equally to this work and share first authorship

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How to think critically – a guide to creative and critical thinking.

Find out why critical thinking is such a valued and in-demand skill and how you can improve your own critical thinking abilities.

The ability to analyse arguments, evaluate evidence, and distinguish between fact and opinion is a valuable skill. As a result, critical thinking is a highly sought after ability that can benefit you at work and in your personal life. But what is critical thinking? And how do you think critically?

We explore some of the key concepts behind critical thinking, examine some examples, and outline how you can improve your own skills in this area. We’ll also highlight some useful courses and resources that can help you think critically.

What is critical thinking?

Let’s start things off with a critical thinking definition. Depending on where you look, you might find differences between definitions. First, we’ll rely on a simple definition: critical thinking is the analysis of factual evidence to form a judgement.

However, a closer inspection of the term and its meaning shows that there are many aspects to critical thinking. What’s more, studies have highlighted a broad range of definitions. A thorough way of defining critical thinking is made by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . They summarise the core concepts of critical thinking as the process of ‘careful goal-directed thinking.’

We can also turn to our open step on critical thinking at university , which features this definition:

“Good critical thinking includes recognising good arguments even when we disagree with them, and poor arguments even when these support our own point of view.”

The open step goes on to outline some of the critical thinking processes that tie into the definitions we’ve seen. These critical thinking skills include:

As you can see, the characteristics of critical thinking are numerous, and it’s a skill made up of many other abilities.

Thinking critically and creatively

Creative thinking is often contrasted with critical thinking. However, the two certainly have their overlaps. Thinking creatively often requires exploring new possibilities, finding unique angles, and using unconventional solutions.

Critical thinking is more focused on a logical and rational process of evaluating that which exists already. However, both types of thinking can be used to solve problems and make decisions, and a combination of the two is often helpful.

University of Leeds Critical Thinking at University: An Introduction Find out more

Why is critical thinking important?

So, in essence, critical thinking is about thinking in certain ways to make informed judgements. But why is this such a valuable skill? In a world where we’re provided with an almost constant stream of information and decisions to make, the ability to think critically can help us make the right choices and understand the world around us.

As highlighted in our course on logical and critical thinking , assessing the reasons we are given to do or believe things calls upon us to think critically and logically. We are constantly being told to believe things, such as to buy a product, support a cause, accept a job or judge someone innocent or guilty, and so on. Critical thinking helps us choose whether to believe these things.

Whether you’re working or in education, critical thinking is a desirable soft skill. The benefits of critical thinking are that it can help you:

What’s more, critical thinking and problem solving often go hand-in-hand. Employers are always looking for people who possess both skills.

Critical thinking examples

Examples of critical thinking are all around us. On a daily basis, we process information to determine its validity and whether we believe what’s being told to us. However, it’s useful to see the process of critical thinking in action.

In our open step on good and bad arguments , there are several such examples of critical reasoning. These examples follow a particular set of steps to evaluate whether or not an argument is valid and/or sound. This includes:

This process can seem quite complex, but many of us do it without thinking. There are other practical examples of critical thinking we can highlight as well, for example:

Obstacles to thinking critically

So, critical thinking is a valuable skill and one that many of us practise on a daily basis. However, that doesn’t mean it’s something that we do all of the time. There are some common psychological obstacles and reasoning fallacies that trip even the smartest among us up.

According to our open step on critical and logical thinking, some of the most common obstacles to thinking critically include:

How to think critically

If you want to try and avoid some of the common obstacles to critical thinking, there are several methods you can use in developing critical thinking skills. Below, we’ve outlined some of the steps you can take to analyse arguments, evaluate evidence, and distinguish between fact and opinion.

Although the critical thinking process will differ between individuals, there are some useful steps:

How to improve critical thinking skills

The steps above seem simple enough, yet with the various obstacles and emotions involved in decision making, it can sometimes be hard to let your head rule above your heart. So how can you improve your critical thinking skills?

There are several ways that you can achieve the benefits of critical thinking, including:

Use scrutiny and scepticism

It requires little effort to accept things at face value and believe what you’re being told. However, doing so is not particularly helpful for critical thinking. Instead, you should question what’s in front of you, ask what the motivations are, and how accurate the information is.

Eliminate the less useful and unreliable information

It can be difficult to make effective decisions or draw informed conclusions when you’re surrounded by inaccurate information. Using your critical eye and scepticism, you can start to discount the bad arguments and biased claims.

Use reliable sources

When you’re researching a topic to make an informed decision, always pay attention to the source. Look at evidence-based information from reliable outlets and be careful of how statistics are presented to you. Try and explore past the surface-level claims of studies to find out what they’re actually telling you, and whether there is enough of a sample size to make a conclusion.

Listen actively

Active listening is a technique that ensures the listener concentrates, understands, responds to, and remembers what’s being said. It’s also about observing behaviour and body language. This type of active listening can help you fully understand what’s being said and why, and what the pros and cons of the argument are.

Use empathy

Being able to put yourself in the shoes of another person allows you to understand their point of view, motivations, and aspirations. In doing so, you’re better able to appreciate why they hold a particular belief or think in a certain way.

Final thoughts

So, critical thinking is a valuable skill that can help us make better decisions and judgements. However, all of us must overcome some thought-obstacles to be able to think critically and creatively. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways in which we can do so, as outlined in this post. If you’re interested in learning more about critical thinking, our logical and critical thinking course is a great place to start. You’ll learn more about how to think more critically and construct and evaluate arguments.

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Impact update, at the intersection of creativity and critical thinking.

Creativity and critical thinking sit atop most lists of skills crucial for success in the 21st century. They represent two of the “Four Cs” in P21 ’s learning framework (the other two being communication and collaboration), and they rank second and third on the World Economic Forum ’s top ten list of skills workers will need most in the year 2020 (complex problem solving ranks first).

The various lists of 21st-century skills grant creativity and critical thinking such prominence in part because they are human abilities robots and AI are unlikely to usurp anytime soon. The picture of the near future that emerges from these compilations of skills is one in which people must compete against their own inventions by exploiting the most human of their human qualities: empathy, a willingness to work together, adaptability, innovation. As the 21st century unfolds, creativity and critical thinking appear as uniquely human attributes essential for staving off our own obsolescence.

Like many things human, however, creativity and critical thinking are not easily or consistently defined. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s list of “ Deeper Learning Competencies ,” for example, identifies creativity not as its own competency but as a tool for thinking critically. Bloom’s Taxonomy treats the two as separate educational goals, ranking creativity above critical thinking in the progression of intellectual abilities. Efforts to pin down these skills are so quickly muddled, one is tempted to fall back on the old Justice Stewart remark regarding obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” Unfortunately, that yardstick isn’t much help to teachers or students.

Definitions of creativity tend toward the broad and vague. One of the leading researchers in the area, Robert Sternberg, characterizes creativity as “a decision to buy low and sell high in the world of ideas.” While this is itself a creative approach to the problem of defining creativity, it is not a solution easily translated into a rubric.

Definitions of critical thinking don’t fare much better. According to one group of researchers , “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” Again, a curiously self-demonstrating definition, but not one ready-made for the classroom.

Generally speaking, creativity is associated with generating ideas, while critical thinking is associated with judging them. In practice, however, the two are not so easy to separate. As parents and teachers know well, creativity without critical judgment tends toward the fanciful, the impractical, the ridiculous. “Creative thinking” becomes a nice way of saying that someone’s ideas have run amok.

At the same time, critical thinking gets short shrift when reduced to making a judgment, since, at its best, critical thinking is also a way of making a contribution. It is fundamentally creative in the sense that its aim is to produce something new: an insight, an argument, a new synthesis of ideas or information, a new level of understanding.

Our grasp of creativity and critical thinking is improved when we see them in symbiotic relationship with one another. Creativity benefits from our recognizing the role of critical thinking in ensuring the value of novel ideas. In turn, critical thinking comes into clearer focus when we recognize it as a creative act that enriches understanding by giving rise to something that wasn’t there before.

What does this symbiotic relationship look like in the classroom? Here are a few educational contexts in which creativity is disciplined by critical thinking and critical thinking is expanded through recognition of its creative function:

The skills today’s students will need for success are, at a most basic level, the skills that humans have always relied on for success — the very things that make us human, including our creativity and our capacity for thinking critically. The fact that our defining qualities so often defy definition, that our distinctive traits are so frustratingly indistinct, is just another gloriously untidy part of us that robots will never understand.

For more, see:

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Critical & Creative Thinking

Key Concepts

This chapter will prepare you to:

In the Introduction , we presented the idea of metacognition, which is the first step in applying critical and creative thinking to our study of the humanities. We all view the world through a lens; one shaped by our personal experiences. So, to objectively analyze a news story, cartoon, painting, photograph, essay, song, or any number of ways we express our human experience, we begin by being aware of how our brain works.

You may hear the phrase “critical thinking” used many times in a humanities course. In the context of humanities, critical thinking is the process of reflection about our personal values, paradigms, and experiences. Creative thinking is another important tool for studying the humanities. By “creative thinking,” we mean challenging what you think you know and asking you to think outside the box. Creative thinking also acknowledges and explores how other people may see or experience the world differently from us.

Throughout this book are Questions for Critical & Creative Thinking . These questions may present novel situations or be tough to answer. They are designed to help you reflect on why you perceive the world the way you do and perhaps why someone else might see things differently. Some questions may prompt you to expand your personal perspective.

The Looking Exercises and Listening Exercises included at the end of this chapter will help you practice these approaches to critical and creative thinking.

Creative Approaches to Critical Thinking

What is critical thinking.

A key component of critical thinking is analyzing a person or event from multiple perspectives . The opposite of critical thinking would be characterizing a group of people based on a singular experience with one individual. Not only does this limited perspective interfere with critical and creative thinking, but it may also lead us to treat people or situations with unrealistic expectations.

Credit: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. “ The Danger of a Single Story .” TEDGlobal 2009. July 2009. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discusses the damage caused by people’s limited perceptions. She starts by sharing her perceptions of people from her childhood in Nigeria. She then moves on to other people’s perceptions of her and Nigerian culture when she was a student in the United States.

Questions for Critical & Creative Thinking

What Do We Know?

Our reaction to information—whether it comes via images, sound, or words—is informed by our value systems. Our value systems, in turn, are shaped by personal experience and learned knowledge.

Consider something as fundamental as clothing. The sight of a man wearing a skirt in Salt Lake City would be unusual enough that he would probably elicit some stares. However, maybe not from people living in Scotland or the Pacific islands. This is an example of a response informed by cultural context. In this case, about what is regarded as normal or acceptable attire for men to wear in public. There are also historical imperatives. In present-day society, men and women frequently wear jeans or pants. However, 100 years ago, a woman wearing pants was neither a common nor acceptable fashion statement.

Can you choose which of the following historical factors were at play to allow women in the United States the freedom to wear “men’s” clothing?

Think about what people considered normal in earlier historical settings and reflect on your own reaction.

Let us look at another example, this time a symbol most likely associated with negative reactions. The swastika symbol was adopted by the Nazi party during World War II. Because of this, most people perceive the swastika as a symbol of murder and destruction.

The origins of this symbol reach back much further than 20 th -century Germany. The oldest known swastika is estimated to be about 15,000 years old , which puts it in the Paleolithic Period (Stone Age). Throughout history, the swastika was used in regions all over the world, including China, Japan, India, and southern Europe. It has been used to represent good luck, prosperity, and the sun. If not equipped with this knowledge before traveling abroad, it would be easy to assume that Nazi sympathizers had lived in these countries.

Questions to Critical & Creative Thinking

What Is a Creative Approach to Critical Thinking?

As you might imagine from the swastika example, challenging long-held values or beliefs can cause conflict among people, and perhaps discomfort for an individual person. However, it is important to remember that critical and creative thinking does not require you to change your mind but rather, evaluate how you got there. One way to look at it is to imagine that critical thinking is like taking something apart, while creative thinking is like recycling or repurposing something. In the end, you may still end up with the same beliefs. Or you may discover you have acquired some new values.

Again, the goal is to get you thinking about how you think. In an early scene from the movie, The Matrix (1999) , the character Orpheus offers the protagonist Neo a blue pill and a red pill.

“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Likewise, by encouraging you to think critically and creatively, this course offers you a similar choice. You can superficially engage with the various artifacts presented throughout this book, skip the critical and creative thinking questions, and finish the book with your points of view pretty much unchanged. Or you can accept occasionally feeling uncomfortable as you delve deeper into how people across the centuries and around the world have tried to make sense of the human condition. Blue pill or red pill? You choose!

How to Approach an Artifact

Another critical thinking tool is the use and analysis of artifacts. A humanities artifact could be a piece of writing, music, painting, drawing, sculpture, dance, film, or any number of created works. In her article “ A Method for Reading, Writing, & Thinking Critically ,” Kathleen McCormick explains that we should consider the historical and cultural context when analyzing an artifact of written text. Additional contexts for approaching any type of artifact include economic, political, geographical, social, and religious, to name a few. These contextual pieces offer clues as to what may have motivated a person to compose or create an artifact. Analyzing context can also help us to determine how relevant an artifact is to our contemporary experiences.

In addition to considering context, it is important to ask a series of questions when approaching an artifact of the humanities. Critical and creative thinking encourages us to be actively engaged with a piece of text, music, or art. Some questions you should be asking yourself as you engage with the artifacts presented in this chapter, as well as the rest of the book include:

When we engage with humanities artifacts and then apply critical and creative thinking, we are not merely going through a process of decoding. Hopefully, this book helps you understand that analyzing the humanities using this approach is a sincere thoughtful process that helps broaden your understanding of what the humanities are and why understanding them is so important.

Looking Exercises: Architecture and Painting

These exercises will help you practice using critical and creative analysis of a humanities artifact through a couple of visual examples: building architecture and political painting.

The visual arts are a broad umbrella encompassing artifacts that are appreciated by looking at them. These arts include painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, printmaking, crafts, architecture, textiles, and much more. These artifacts are the result of people trying to make sense of their physical and inner worlds, and conveying that understanding to other people.

An important first question to ask when considering a visual arts artifact is, was the work commissioned? Meaning, was the piece created at the request of someone else, such as a government, individual, nonprofit group, political group, or otherwise? Naturally, the sentiment embodied in the artifact and the intended audience will likely align with the values of the group or person who commissioned it rather than the artist who created it.

Other important questions might include, when was the piece created? What political issues were prominent at the time? What historical events were happening? By gathering as much contextual information as possible about the artifact, we are better equipped to interpret the artifact’s message or intention.

Architecture

The built environment reflects the age and cultural context in which it was produced. Architecture gives us easy access to visual arts artifacts for analysis. Some contextual questions we can ask:

Architecture may also reflect a building’s function. Public buildings tend to be open and inviting. Some buildings may be designed to deflect attention. The nondescript architecture of homeless shelters helps conceal the vulnerable people living there. This kind of architecture is known as hostile architecture.

For this exercise, use the contextual questions listed above (as well as ones of your own) to analyze the architectural artifact presented by the White House in Washington DC, which was built in 1792. And compare it with Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall, built in Los Angeles in 2003.

Looking at a piece of art, we can ask whether what we see relates to our contemporary setting. Sometimes, in order to fully understand an artifact, we must be familiar with the historical, political, or social context surrounding its creation.

The painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso was first displayed in Paris on May 1, 1937. He painted it during the midst of the Spanish Civil War (July 1936–April 1939) as an artistic reaction to the Nazi’s bombing of the Basque town on April 26, 1937 . The painting is monochromatic, to show the misery inflicted by the aerial bombardment. The images in the painting present the tragedy and suffering of the war: a dismembered soldier and nurse; an all-seeing eye; and the Spanish symbols of a bull and a horse.

One contextual question to ask is, does Picasso’s painting only hold relevance to the Spanish Civil War? Two examples of contemporary situations demonstrate that this painting can be relevant beyond what Picasso may have originally intended. In fact, this artifact presents timeless relevancy to the perception, interpretation, and expression of our human experiences during a war.

On February 28, 1974 , Tony Shafrazi entered the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and red-spray painted the words “Kill Lies All” over the Guernica. Shafrazi said this was “ a protest against the release on bail of the lieutenant later convicted for his role in the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.” The red paint was easily removed, as Guernica was heavily varnished.

On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell delivered a speech at the United Nations (UN) headquarters to make the case for war with Iraq. He was standing in front of a tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica, which hangs in the UN as a reminder of the horror of war and the need for diplomacy first. The tapestry was covered with a blue sheet.

Reports of the UN’s position behind this action vary and the organization did not release an official statement. However, using contextual information, such as the painting’s history, we can deduce some logical reasons. The New York Times reported the UN started covering the tapestry because they were afraid a horse’s screaming head would be visible next to chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix while he spoke. The article offered an alternative reason , “Mr. Powell can’t very well seduce the world into bombing Iraq surrounded on camera by shrieking and mutilated women, men, children, bulls and horses.”

An article in the Toronto Star ran the quote , “A [un-named] diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings.”

Listening Exercises: Songs and Music

These two exercises apply to how our values shape our listening choices, both in conversations and songs. As described, we prefer listening to speech and music that agree with our values and ideas. In other words, we gravitate to news channels, influential people, and song lyrics that support our world view. This tendency to seek out similar viewpoints ends up reinforcing our world view rather than expanding it.

There are several reasons for this behavior:

Listen to 15 minutes of news on a network that represents viewpoints contrary to yours.

The same behaviors influence how we listen to music. Music presents an artifact with many contextual facets. Some people listen to music for entertainment value. Others listen to find meaning in either the music or lyrics, or both. Very often, we attach meanings to music depending on where we were or what was happening when we heard it. Composers will have an inspiration or recall their personal experiences when creating music. Therefore, when analyzing music, it is important to consider the context that includes our personal response, the composer’s motivation, and perhaps outside influences, such as historical events or political movements.

There are fundamental questions we can ask regardless of musical genre:

Modern Song Lyrics

The two examples in this exercise present music artifacts from very different genres. The first is “ Blurred Lines ,” a song written by Pharell Williams and Robin Thicke. Released on March 26th, 2013, it was immediately involved in a legal dispute. Marvin Gaye’s family sued on the grounds that the song was “ noticeably ripped off ” from Marvin Gaye’s song “ Got To Give It Up .” The plaintiffs won their case and were awarded $5.3 million dollars in damages and 50% of royalties from future sales.

Furthermore, the song was criticized for promoting rape culture . Critics said the “blurred lines” in the title and lyrics were an assault on someone’s right to control sexual consent and the song’s message promoted the objectification of women as sexual objects.

Here are the song lyrics :

I hate these blurred lines I know you want it I hate them lines I know you want it I hate them lines I know you want it But you’re a good girl The way you grab me Must wanna get nasty Go ahead, get at me

The song faced further controversy when Miley Cyrus joined Robin Thicke on stage at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. Cyrus performed twerking dance moves in close contact with Thicke and made sexual gestures using a foam finger. Her dance performance was regarded as an endorsement of the song’s message. (Time marker 04:10)

Credit: Robin Thicke, Miley Cyrus. “Miley Cyrus VMA 2013 with Robin Thicke SHOCKED.” MTV Video Music Awards 2013. Juan Manuel Cruz . YouTube. YouTube. Fair Use of worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to access content. https://youtu.be/LfcvmABhmxs.

Classical Instrumental Music

Credit: Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Neeme Järvi, conductor. “ Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 .” SoundCloud. Fair Use of limited, personal, non-exclusive, revocable, non-assignable and non-transferable right and license to use the Platform to view Content. https://soundcloud.com/chicagosymphony/beethoven-symphony-no-6-2.

A very different example of a musical artifact is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 , written in 1808. (Making it a slightly older piece than “Blurred Lines.”). Historical context is important for analyzing the message in Beethoven’s composition. For example, what made No. 6 different from his other symphonies? A clue resides in the title Beethoven gave to this piece of music, Pastoral Symphony . According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, pastoral means “of, relating to, or composed of shepherds or herdsmen.” This suggests an agricultural theme. This is one of only two symphonies titled by the composer, rather than someone else. Beethoven had a lifelong appreciation of nature and frequently took walks in the countryside. For the premiere, he described this composition as having “ more an expression of feeling than painting .”

Listen to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 and pay attention to how the music makes you feel.

Try practicing your analytical listening skills on other instrumental pieces, such as the movie score to Fantasia , Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus , or The Lord of the Rings .

As you move through this book, you may discover information that is already familiar to you. Those cases are an opportunity to put on your critical and creative thinking cap and use it to reflect on your existing world views and values. Observe, and then, ask yourself lots of questions!

Remember, these questions are not intended to force you to shift your ideology. However, they do require you to consider how your personal perspective affects your interpretation of artifacts. And hopefully, these questions will encourage you to look at things from a different perspective than the one you are used to using.

The examples, questions, and descriptions in this book are designed to help teach you to:

For our last example, use your critical and creative thinking skills to reflect on the following quote by Lawrence Wright :

“We prefer an ordered world, regular patterns, familiar forms, and when flaws or distortions occur, provided they are not too gross, our mind’s eye tidies them up. We see what we want or expect to see.”

The Human Experience: From Human Being to Human Doing by Claire Peterson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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COMMENTS

The Synergy of Creative and Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the active, persistent and careful consideration of a belief or form of knowledge. · Creative thinking is the generation of new ideas within
Critical Thinking vs. Creative Thinking
Critical Thinking vs. Creative Thinking – Key Differences · tries to create something new, while critical thinking seeks to assess worth or validity of something
Critical and Creative Thinking (Version 8.4)
Critical and creative thinking involves students thinking broadly and deeply using skills, behaviours and dispositions such as reason, logic, resourcefulness
Thinking Critically and Creatively
While critical thinking analyzes information and roots out the true nature and facets of problems, it is creative thinking that drives progress forward when it
Creative Thinking vs Critical Thinking
What's the difference between creative thinking vs critical thinking? You can think of them as complementary skills which you use as
Fostering Creativity and Critical Thinking in College: A Cross
Creativity and critical thinking have been recognized as essential skills in the 21st century (National Education Association, 2012). Many researchers and
How to think critically
Creative thinking is often contrasted with critical thinking. However, the two certainly have their overlaps. Thinking creatively often
At The Intersection of Creativity and Critical Thinking
Creativity benefits from our recognizing the role of critical thinking in ensuring the value of novel ideas. In turn, critical thinking comes
Creativity and Critical Thinking Skills in School: Moving a shared
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE. The OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) held an international conference on “Creativity and Critical Thinking
Critical & Creative Thinking
In the context of humanities, critical thinking is the process of reflection about our personal values, paradigms, and experiences. Creative thinking is another