Thinking_and_Decision_Making

Running head: THINKING AND DECISION MAKING Thinking and Decision Making MGT 350: Critical Thinking: Strategies In Decision Making October 2008 Thinking and Decision Making Thinking is one part of human life that is very difficult to defined, even though it is the most important aspect of human lives used for absorbing and processing data every day, experts according to Kirby and Goodpaster (2007) could not even define it. Thinking is a process that receives input, processes the input and then produces some sort of output. Thinking is defined as “the activity of the brain that can potentially be communicated” (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007, p 6). The brain is the controlling center of human mind, it is processor that receives the input and then produces the output (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007). Thinking was analyzed by Kirby and Goodpaster (2007) as the process by which human brain listens, observes, reads and transforms them into speaking, acting and writing. In my mind, the human mind is constantly thinking because humans are always acting, either physically or emotionally and these are by product of some thoughts in human mind. There are various types of thinking and we will observe them in detail in the next section. Decision making is another aspect of human life that depends solely of our thinking capabilities, when one are faced with a challenge and need to make a decision as to which option is most viable one has to think to come up with that option. This leads us to the definition for decision making, which is the process of choice making when one acts. Making decision is not always an easy thing, people are usually faced with challenges like “fear, lack of knowledge, confusion and conflict of values” (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007, p 321), which makes decision making very difficult and sometime lead to misthinking. Type of thinking Thinking is very important when it comes to the point reasoning and finding a resolution to an issue, and there are various thinking type depending on the individual the issue at hand. For the purpose of this paper I will be discussing the following various methods of thinking; logical, scientific and creative thinking. These three types of thinking vary in the method of making a final decision. Creative Thinking Creative thinking is an important step in critical thinking (Paul & Elder, 2007), it allows people to open up their minds while thinking, without creative thinking people will not be able to create innovative ideas. Creative thinking can be defined as the ability to take an existing thing and transform it into new or creates a new thing from the integration of several things. Creativity can be used by anyone however the creative capability can be develop through training and other educational means as it requires the right knowledge and skill to be able to think creatively (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007). Creativity is heavily integral into thinking, in order for a person to be creative they have to be able to process ideas in their mind and sometime it take a long process of actually sleeping on the thought to fully develop an ideas (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007). Creative thinking is also known as metaphorical thinking, which is ability“to look at one thing and see another” (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007, p 126) Metaphors are used in figure of speech according to Aristotle in Kirby and Goodpaster, (2007). There two types of metaphorical thinking, brainstorming and starbursting. Brainstorming is the process of thinking through several ideas and allowing one idea to give birth to other idea (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007), which enhances thinking power, it helps thinker to have an open mind to take in several data points for analysis during the thinking process. Starbursting is a thinking process where one utilizes questions to answer questions, meaning that a thinker develops a question in his mind about the question that he wants his thought to answer. According to Kirby and Goodpaster, (2007) starbursting can start from a point and then diverse into several phases of question, this process requires a lot of creativity and innovation. Creativity is an art and it starts from “from cooking to chemistry, from art to archeology, from poetry to physics, from shanty to Chartres, from Mona Lisa to Madonna, from seamstress to surgeon, from baseball to battle, from making laws to making love” (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007, p 128). Creativity can be applied to all and everything that one does and if it is well applied it will produce good value. Creative thinking has limitations, which limits the extent to which a person can be creative. Some of these limitations are as a result personal barrier and or fear, people are sometimes scared of what people might think or say about the outcome of the thought and such people like this do not want to make the effort. Sometime personal barrier can limit ones thinking capability because people prejudge themselves and believe they just cannot be creative (Kirby and Goodpaster, 2007), as such people like this don’t make any effort to be creative. Scientific thinking According Kirby and Goodpaster (2007), scientific thinking is the process of researching based on facts and available information; it involves a systematic approach of analyzing existing data, conducting experiments and measurement against scientific issues to produce results. Scientific thinking differs from other types of thinking solely because it lays a lot of emphasis on limitations. The process of scientific thinking includes four steps (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007), observation, which is the initial step of scientific thinking and it involves observing a situation, hypothesis formulation, which is a process that involves using the information gathered during observation to formulate and approach to scientific thinking. The next step the experiment step, where experiment is performed to test the assumptions and understanding from the observation and the last but not the least is the verification phase, which is involves verifying the results of the experiment to ensure its accuracy. \Logical Thinking Logical thinking is the process of reasoning one's thoughts whether accurate or inaccurate. Logical thinking consists of two parts deductive and inductive thinking. Deductive thinking “begins with two or more premises and derives a conclusion that must follow from those premises” (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007, p.156). “Inductive reasoning usually begins with a set of evidence or observations about some members of a class, or about some events” (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007, p.156), which means that the conclusion may not be accurate even though the premises are right. Logical thinking is a very structured and systematic approach to thinking, according Albrecht (1984) deductive logical thinking is a mental process that can be learned. It is the process where an individual utilizes reasoning consistently to arrive at a conclusion. This clearly differentiates logical thinking from the other forms of thinking. Logical thinking can basically be applied to any sequential or anything that requires orderliness. For example in math a student has to move from one level of difficulty to another, it is just not quite easy to go from zero to complex calculation, one will have to follow a sequential pattern of progression. This process of going in this order requires a progressive approach to thinking, which is referred to as logical thinking (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007). Logical thinking uses more of abstract and thinking outside of the box and it is very sequential in nature. Due to the organized way of the execution of logical thinking, it makes it a little inflexible and time consuming. Logical thinking differs because it relies heavy on reasoning to make decision. Creative thinking is different from other forms because it involves creating something new or original or from the combination of several things. A creative thinker is constantly looking for way outside of human imagination to resolve issue, this difference makes a creative thinker a critical thinking in that he or she thinks out of the box. According to UoP, (2007), differentiates the scientific thinker as someone that cannot think without data, such people have to have substantial amount of data to the able to make a decision. Conclusion Thinking is very critical part of human lives and it drives the process of our decision making. The quality our thought determines the accuracy and correctness of the decisions that we make. From the paper we looked at three types of thinking human beings can engage in and we see that each of the thinking types are naturally developed in human being, however, some people’s thinking abilities are more developed than the others, most especially people that take specific training on how to develop such abilities. According to Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007 every one is a thinker but develop more skills in a particular thinking style one has to develop the knowledge and skill though training. References Kirby, G.R. & Goodpaster, J.R. (2007). Thinking: an interdisciplinary approach to critical and creative though (4th ed). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. Albrecht, K. (1984). Brain building: easy games to develop your problem-solving skills. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, Inc. Paul, R. & Elder, L. (2006). Critical thinking: tools for taking change of your learning and your life (2nd ed). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. University of Phoenix. (2007). Characteristics of critical thinking and decision making Week Two Supplement: Read Me First.  Retrieved October 26, 2008, from University of Phoenix, Resource, MGT350— Critical thinking: strategies in decision making World Wide Web site: https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/resource/resource.asp Dunbar, K., (nd) Scientific Thinking and its Development, McGill University (now at Dartmouth College) http://www.dartmouth.edu/~kndunbar/pubpdfs/DunbarMITECS.pdf Robert M. Martin (1997) Scientific thinking, Published by Broadview Press