Barriers to Critical Thinking

Identify 3 barriers that influence your critical thinking and write at least 100 words for each, describing how you can overcome them.

Barrier 1:

The first barrier that influences my critical thinking is reliance on main stream television, newspapers, and other media for information. I feel this is a barrier many people have, especially in today’s society where it is very easy to upload something to the internet or how easy it is to edit information found on the internet. I am an avid user of google, however I have an issue with differentiating between what is actually true and not true in what I read.

Some people believe everything they read on the internet is true, therefore being a barrier, and that is clearly not the case. In order to avoid this ignorance and to overcome this barrier we need to do our own research, check the reliability of our sources, and to use more sources than just one, i.e. internet, different websites, news stations, and newspapers, not solely rely on just one source.

Barrier 2:

The second barrier that influences my critical thinking is lack of relevant background information or ignorance. Without enough information it is hard to be a critical thinker, have thoughts on the matter, or base your opinion. With a lack of information you do not have the whole story, therefore having a gap in your critical thinking. An example of how lack of information could be a barrier is: you got into an argument with your sibling, your sibling told you parents their side, and without even hearing your side they had their decision made about what happened and the punishment.

I feel that would prevent them from being able to critically think about it due to having a lack of background information, they only had one side of the story. To overcome this we can try to not rely only on the first thing you hear and to do our research and ask questions when needed to gather more information.