Study: Political climate in the first 25 years of life can determine critical thinking ability

Critical thinking ability can be attributed to political climate within the first 25 years of life. Pexels (Pixabay)

Does critical thought require a democratic society? A new study suggests it does, particularly within the first 25 years of someone’s life – a window of ‘developmental thinking’ that is shaped by political, social, and economic factors.

The study comes from an international team of researchers from UCLA, Romania and Israel, who aimed to determine how society can influence an individual’s ability to weigh and evaluate presented ‘facts.’

“Whether we are monitoring various news sources or scrolling through a busy Twitter feed, we are constantly encountering diverse viewpoints about topics ranging from politics to films,” said one of the study’s authors, Amalia Ionescu, a doctoral student in psychology at UCLA, in a press release. “Some of these topics carry infinitely more weight than others, but ultimately, we are using the same sort of mechanism when deciding how to make sense of contrasting viewpoints.”

The ability to contrast viewpoints and avoid absolutist thinking, researchers say, is closely linked to someone’s access to information, education, and technology – all resources that democratic societies prioritize.

By surveying respondents from Romania, a country under an authoritarian regime from 1965 to 1989, researchers identified key differences in ‘truth’ evaluations between different age groups.

This was done by reviewing three cohorts of Romanians: those born after the democratic revolution (18 to 30 years old), those who lived their late adolescence and early stages of adulthood under the authoritarian regime (aged 45 to 59), and those who have spent a minimum of 45 years under an authoritarian regime (75 and older). The three groups of respondents were given a series of written scenarios in which two characters carried competing views, and then were asked to evaluate which view was the most “truthful.”

The findings, which were published in the journal PLOS One, found those who adjusted to a democratic society later in their adult life (ages 45 and older) were more likely to carry absolutist thinking about these open-ended scenarios than those who transitioned to a democratic society at a younger age. Younger Romanians, therefore, were more capable of considering contrasting viewpoints and engaging in critical analysis.

Raluca Furdui, a master’s student at Romania West Univerisity of Timisoara, attributes these differences to factors such as censorship and education.

“For most of their lives, [Romanians 75 and older] had only one TV program to watch, and all books, news, movies and music were under communist censorship,” she said in the press release. “They learned to respect the authority of the teachers in schools, and some never even had the chance to go to high school.”

“In contrast,” Furdui added, “we, the youngest generation in our study — currently between 18 and 30 — were challenged by our teachers to express our opinions, think critically and check information.”

The researchers determined that evaluativism—a line of reasoning dependent on logic and evidence—was most common for those with the highest levels of education. Increases in absolutism—which leads people to think using black-and-white reasoning—was correlated with lower levels of education and higher social media use.

Patricia Greenfield, a UCLA distinguished professor of psychology, says the social environment conducive to a democratic society leads people to “abandon the assumption that there is one right answer and evaluate multiple possibilities.”

“We found that there is indeed a sensitive developmental period for acquiring cultural ways of thinking.”

Although democratic societies are crucial for fostering critical thought, they certainly don’t guarantee it. According to the authors of this study, an overload of personal opinions, a result of social media, along with authoritative dismissal of truth, such as political screams of “fake news,” could lead evaluative thinking the opposite way—towards absolutist thought and authoritarian politics.

“Along with the rise of the internet and social media, there has been, in the United States, a rise in the importance of personal opinion, along with a decline in the importance of agreed-upon facts,” Greenfield said.

Study co-author Michael Weinstock, an associate professor of education at Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev, said in the news release that changes in democratic values can reverse people’s ability to think critically about presented facts.

“Based on our research, one would predict that that the opposite change in the environment—towards more authoritarianism—would lead to the opposite direction of change towards more absolutist thinking.”

The study pointed out that changes in authoritarian direction happened in the U.S. under the Trump administration, and such shifts, recently occurring in other countries around the world, could weaken people’s ability to rationally consider information.