Practice-Oriented Paper
Reducing the Negative Impact of
Cognitive Biases on Critical Thinking
Instruction
Guy SmithInternational Christian University
In recent years, the concept of cognitive bias has become fairly well known amongst teachers
and they are also generally aware that such bias can have negative outcomes for criticalthinking. However, the question of what to do about such problems caused by cognitive
bias in the classroom is one many teachers wonder about. This article firstly provides
background knowledge important for considering how to take action in countering thenegative impact of cognitive bias on student classroom critical thinking tasks and thestudent decision making processes involved in these tasks. Next, the specific challenges
in mitigating these biases’ associated negative impacts are discussed. The article proposesthat mitigation of the negative effects of cognitive bias in the classroom can be a difficult
task due to two main obstacles. Firstly, in many cases cognitive bias filters thinking at an
unconscious level which makes any conscious awareness of, and reaction to, the influenceof the bias a daunting task. The second obstacle is the sheer number of potential biases that
could be manifesting in different students at different times. To respond to these challenges
in mitigating cognitive bias, this article suggests a classroom approach teachers could takebased on what is currently known about reducing these biases. The strategy is to implement
consistent blanket interventions that will act to reduce the potential negative impact ofvarious cognitive biases on important factors for successful classroom critical thinking tasks.
One significant negative outcome of a number of cognitive biases for critical thinking is
examined, providing sample lessons to illustrate how the approach can be applied. Finally,some of the issues for teachers concerning the future direction of cognitive bias mitigationin critical thinking teaching are explored.

With the publication of bestselling books such as Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)by Economic Sciences Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and Predictably
Irrational (Ariely & Jones, 2008) which explored evidence on how the mind can
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make consistently seemingly irrational choices, the notion of cognitive bias has
become generally well known to people interested in effective thinking practices
in areas including medicine, business, and education. A cognitive bias is generally
understood to be a distorted or unbalanced cognitive interpretation of realitythat can lead to benefits or desired outcomes for the individual, but can also comewith other undesirable outcomes. Bias is often at the unconscious level of thinking
processes which means that conscious detection is very difficult, and secondly,that bias often acts to work as a filter on conscious thought (Kristal & Santos,2021). For example, the tendency known as the in-group bias. This cognitive bias
gives people a preference for their in-groups. This bias has been useful throughout
long human existence as hunter gatherers because it has primarily been in-groups
that have supported and protected people and it is to their benefit to favor theirin-groups. However, in-group bias can also have troubling negative outcomes fora modern society in which diverse communities and peoples live together in one
place or as one nation potentially contributing to unfairness, discrimination, andtribalism (Wright, 2013).
While whether a cognitive bias represents an “error” in that it canmisrepresent reality, or is on the other hand a successful adaptive cognitive
strategy, can depend on which field of study the question is approached from,there is little doubt that cognitive biases can have potentially negative influencesthat are problematic for critical thinking.
Paul and Elder define critical thinking as “the art of analyzing and evaluating
thinking with a view to improving it” (2001, p. 2). Within this broad definition,some of the skills that teachers believe have value for practicing and developing
critical thinking are perspective taking, evaluating evidence, a questioning
stance, considering assumptions, and fairmindedness. However, one example ofa problem emerging from cognitive bias for such critical thinking can be seen in
myside bias defined by Mercier as, “people have a myside bias: a tendency to findarguments that defend their position, whether this entails supporting a position
they agree with, or refuting a position they disagree with” (2017, p. 107). A
myside bias which results in a preference for egocentric desirable interpretations
can work powerfully against an unbiased examination and interpretation of63

Smithfacts and evidence. This raises serious problems for the analyzing and evaluatingprocess of critical thinking. Another example can be seen in the halo effect(Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Bak, 2010) which is, for example, when a positive
impression of a person (attractiveness, confidence, or seeming expertise) has aneffect on how the opinions of that person are regarded and evaluated. For criticalthinking this can mean the withholding of different or unpopular opinions dueto hesitation in not wanting to offend someone well-regarded, or that a wellregarded person’s opinion is given more weight than it actually deserves. In orderto evaluate thinking, one important strategy is to compare that thinking fairly
against other diverse and differing perspectives. The halo effect has the potential
to be a significant obstacle in achieving this critical thinking goal.
In regard to the pedagogical issues concerning cognitive bias and criticalthinking, it is firstly important for teachers to understand how cognitive
bias works and the potential negative outcomes of cognitive biases on criticalthinking tasks and student thinking dispositions. Then, teachers can look to
more practical considerations as to how to mitigate or prevent the negative
impact of these cognitive biases on their classroom critical thinking tasks andhow to teach their students to self-mitigate these negative effects. This article
reflects on the author’s work exploring the current body of research on cognitive
bias and consideration of approaches on how to buffer critical thinking tasks
against the potential negative outcomes of the effects of various cognitive biases.
Based on this, the article makes recommendations for realistic approaches thatare practical and easily implemented into a teacher’s critical thinking teachingapproach.

Debiasing

One usage of the term “debiasing” is to refer to attempts made to prevent or
mitigate the negative impact of cognitive bias. One approach to such debiasing
might be to carefully monitor a class, identify the bias as it emerges, and then react
to any potential negative impact by applying a debiasing technique. In general,
this kind of reactive intervention can be an effective strategy in the classroom.
For example, a teacher may notice that a classroom discussion is not moving
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forward smoothly and react to that by applying an intervention to redirect orreignite the discussion momentum. However, the challenging difficulty of thiskind of reactive approach in addressing cognitive bias has been noted in previous
work (Beaulac & Kenyon, 2018). In an environment as complex as a classroom,
it is practically impossible to identify a single cognitive bias that is negatively
impacting on a task or thinking process. This is because it would involve being
able to decipher the mental state of the student and identify which cognitive bias,
or more likely multiple biases, they were being influenced by. Even if this was
possible for a single student, the teacher would then be faced with the challengeof doing this for a class of students. A much more practical approach is to assume
that because cognitive biases are such an integral part of thinking processes, they
will emerge and have frameworks already in place that will act to reduce thepotential negative impacts if they do.
This approach has been applied in other settings. For example, several
public orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic hold blinded anonymous
auditions behind a screen as a way to counter any potential bias due to gender,
race, or appearance. The goal is not to target a single bias but use a blanket
strategy approach that will target and reduce a range of bias. The strategy does
not try to predict and identify biases emerging, it assumes the possibility of bias
and has an intervention in place prior to the audition that will act to preventor reduce influence of race, gender, or appearance bias. Another application iswhen teachers use blind grading. When grading, it is likely that teachers arebeing affected by cognitive biases that they are unaware of, by removing names
when grading essays or other student work teachers can counter in advance thepotential negative effect of a number of biases on them that could be triggered byprevious associations with the student.

Cognitive Bias and Open-mindedness

It is generally recognized that open-mindedness is a valuable disposition for criticalthinking (Southworth, 2021). However, one of the negative outcomes of several
cognitive biases is reduced open-mindedness. As discussed earlier, myside bias
creates a tendency for people to give more weight to their own preferred opinions
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Smithand beliefs, thus potentially reducing their openness to a range of perspectives. The
halo effect can work to inflate the value of the opinions of attractive, confident,
and well-regarded people and also thus reduce the consideration of various
diverse and perhaps unpopular viewpoints. Other biases can also reduce openmindedness. One example is the authority bias (Cialdini, 2007). This bias is whenpeople hesitate to question, or confer greater accuracy and weight to, the opinions
of a perceived authority figure. This could emerge in a classroom setting when astudent is designated as the “leader” or has clearly superior communicative skills.
In addition to the biases briefly mentioned here, there are many other cognitive
biases that could reduce open-mindedness. Therefore, if teachers structure theircritical thinking approaches and discrete tasks to include consistent attention topromoting open-mindedness, teachers can be reasonably confident that they will
have strategies in place that will reduce the negative impact on open-mindednessof a considerably large group of cognitive biases that might influence thinking
processes and outcomes. In previous work, blanket strategies that will work to
mitigate any emerging negative outcomes due to groups of cognitive biases havebeen noted as a practical strategy for debiasing (Beaulac & Kenyon, 2018) andpractical classroom ideas based on this approach have been recently suggested(Peloghitis & Smith, 2020; Smith & Peloghitis, 2020)
There is a large body of evidence in the critical thinking literature supporting
the promotion of open-mindedness. Thus, teachers can safely incorporate openmindedness promoting tasks into their lesson structure without overly worrying
about negative outcomes. Below are two sample lesson plans that have included
consistent attention to promoting open-mindedness in the planning to preventor reduce any potential negative effects of cognitive bias on open-mindedness.
a) Sample lesson 1 for college beginner level students
Goal - discussing the “best” pet
Step 1 - brainstorming individually - avoid e.g., groupthink / halo effect
Step 2 - collect ideas and present anonymously via e.g., via Google docs
Step 3 - create red teams* whose job it is to ask for reasons for all pet ideas
Step 4 - rank top ten pets
Step 5 - stop the discussion and introduce a few unusual pets for students to66

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discuss* a red team is a person or group whose assigned role in a discussion is to ask
for reasons, ask questions, and challenge ideasb) Sample lesson 2 – for more advanced level students, developing anargumentative essay position
Step 1 - have students individually research sides of an issue - avoid e.g.,
myside bias / halo effect
Step 2 - collect pros and cons, present them anonymously via e.g., Google
docs
Step 3 - create red teams to challenge the pros and cons
Step 4 - require students to underline or re-read arguments they do not agree
withStep 5 - students review the class notes and then decide their individual essay
positionIn the above steps of sample lessons a and b, at times cognitive biases suchas the myside bias, halo effect, and authority bias may be emerging and having anegative impact on the task by reducing open-mindedness. However, it should
be recognized that they also may not. With the various open-mindedness
promoting tasks in place beforehand, the practically impossible task of trying to
identify if, when, and which cognitive bias is emerging in the class or in student
thinking and then applying mitigating strategies does not fall upon the teacher.
The open-mindedness promoting tasks will reduce to some extent any negative
effects on open-mindedness.
Individual brainstorming before group work, which is included in the firststeps of both lesson plans above, also has the potential to sidestep a large numberof the social cognitive biases that are activated when groups form and thus
promote greater open-mindedness. In general, group brainstorming as a first stepin a creative process to generate ideas has been shown to be not that successful.
Sawyer comments, “multiple studies have confirmed … that brainstorming
groups, on average, generate half as many ideas as a similar number of solitary
individuals” (p.236, 2011). As humans are primarily social animals, a significant
number of influential cognitive biases are connected to social contexts. For
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Smithexample, these social cognitive biases include the halo effect, groupthink, ingroup bias, courtesy bias, authority bias and many others. While it is impossible
to say definitively that these biases will appear and work to reduce the successof the group work, by taking away the group element the potential for this islargely removed. For teachers, starting with individual brainstorming and thenmoving to activities such as sharing and reviewing ideas, debating reasons, and/or ranking the ideas in groups is likely to result in better outcomes for these kindsof critical and creative thinking tasks.
For teachers concerned about and interested in mitigating the negative effectsof cognitive bias the problem can be made manageable by firstly identifying key
important negative outcomes for critical thinking potentially stemming from
cognitive bias, e.g., open-mindedness. If teachers then incorporate appropriate
and consistent environmental interventions aiming at generally promoting
positive thinking behaviors that will counter these potentially key negative
outcomes, then they can be reasonably confident that they are countering thesenegative impacts of bias. This represents a practical and realistic approach,considering what is currently known about how cognitive bias works.

Issues Surrounding Cognitive BiasThus, there are certainly debiasing strategies that teachers interested in this area
can employ to take action to mitigate important negative impacts of cognitive
bias on their critical thinking tasks and general student thinking. Teachers canidentify important negative effects of groups of biases and then incorporate
appropriate and regular environmental interventions that will work to reduce
any emerging bias. However, at the moment the research into cognitive bias andits effects on critical thinking is still quite undeveloped and there is a considerable
amount that is not understood about the full role, or roles, cognitive biases playin thinking processes. For example, the negative impacts of cognitive bias havereceived considerable attention and there are many studies and illustrations of
how biases work to cause systematically irrational thinking and poor judgment
and decision-making outcomes. On the other hand, in the past 15 to 20 years
with the emergence of different perspectives across fields of research, the assisting68Reducing the Negative Impact of Cognitive Biasess, OCJSI 4, pages 62-71

and constructive role of biases in thinking has been gaining attention (see forexample, Rollwage & Fleming, 2021). More is being discovered about in what
way cognitive biases may also play a constructive role in thinking and how they
may work together holistically to provide thinking benefits. However, at the
moment there is not enough understanding of these areas to be able to apply the
research to classrooms.

The Future of Critical Thinking

Although there is a general belief amongst teachers of the benefits of criticalthinking and considerable attention is being paid to critical thinking in
educational frameworks, the research itself suggests a mixed picture of theactual success of critical thinking teaching in the classroom (Corriera, 2016;
Pasquinelli, Farina, Bedel & Casati, 2021). One reason for this may have been
the still limited understanding of, and empirical data on, the human mind’s
structural design and natural limits, the influences and interplay of conscious
and unconscious thinking processes, and the effect of these factors on thinking
and decision-making processes and outcomes. In recent years, there has beensignificant progress in the understanding of the human mind’s cognitive processes
as work from various fields including economics, general psychology, cognitive
psychology, and neuroscience, along with rapid advances in technology havesignificantly contributed to developing a better understanding of the area.
One way to look at improving critical thinking is to look at desired
outcomes and then design strategies or teaching approaches that lead closer tothese outcomes. In a very broad sense, this can be said to have been the generalapproach behind critical thinking philosophy. However, claiming to improvecritical thinking without adding a better understanding of how the mind actuallyworks seems to be missing an important part of the picture. For example, it is
now understood that many cognitive biases often operate more or less at an
unconscious level and that to improve critical thinking, frameworks need to bein place that do not completely depend on a directing of conscious attention andreaction. Some outcomes may just not be possible due to the way the brain works
and the inbuilt constraints and limits of the human brain. As the psychological/
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Smithneurological perspective in which a greater understanding of how the humanmind functions and develops is integrated into critical thinking, it will become
more possible to further identify what the mind can do, and what it cannot.
From this practical starting point, we can then look at both the capabilities
and the limitations of the human mind for considering what critical thinking
strategies and interventions will be more successful and effective in classrooms.
This represents a very exciting future as the development of criticalthinking frameworks that feature greater integration of this psychological/
neurological perspective and expanded empirical research supporting thisemerge. In classrooms, teachers can then expect to be more able to select tasks
and accompanying interventions and frameworks that have a higher probabilityof success in facilitating student critical thinking work and leading to improved
student critical thinking skills and dispositions.

References

Ariely, D., & Jones, S. (2008). Predictably irrational. Harper.
Bak, P. M. (2010). Sex differences in the attractiveness halo effect in the online
dating environment. Journal of Business and Media Psychology, 1(1), 1–7.
Beaulac, G., & Kenyon, T. (2018). The scope of debiasing in the classroom.
Topoi, 37(1), 93–102
Cialdini, R. B., (2007). Influence: The psychology of persuasion. Collins.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan.
Kristal, A. S., & Santos, L. R. (2021). GI joe phenomena: Understanding thelimits of metacognitive awareness on debiasing. Harvard Business School
Working Paper 21-084, 1–54. https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20
Files/21-084_436ebba8-c832-4922-bb6e-49d000a77df3.pdf
Mercier, H. (2017). Confirmation bias-Myside bias. In R. F. Pohl (Ed.),
Cognitive illusions: Intriguing phenomena in thinking, judgment andmemory (pp. 99–114). Routledge.
Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). The halo effect: Evidence forunconscious alteration of judgments. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 35(4), 250–256.
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Pasquinelli, E., Farina, M., Bedel, A., & Casati, R. (2021). Naturalizing criticalthinking: Consequences for education, blueprint for future research incognitive science. Mind, Brain, and Education, 15(2), 168–176.
Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2001). The miniature guide to critical thinking: Concepts &tools. Foundation for Critical Thinking.
Peloghitis, J., & Smith, G. (2020). Exploring debiasing strategies to improvesmall group reasoning and decision making outcomes. ICU Language
Research Bulletin, 35, 75–83.
Rollwage, M., & Fleming, S. M. (2021). Confirmation bias is adaptive whencoupled with efficient metacognition. Philosophical Transactions of theRoyal Society B, 376(1822), 20200131.
Sawyer, R. K. (2011). Explaining creativity: The science of human innovation.
Oxford University Press.
Smith, G., & Peloghitis, J. (2020). Critical thinking and debiasing:Experimentation in an academic writing course. In P. Clements, A. Krause,& R. Gentry (Eds.), Teacher efficacy, learner agency (pp. 443–450). JALT.
https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTPCP2019-51
Southworth, J. (2021). How argumentative writing stifles open-mindedness.
Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 20(2), 207–227.
Wright, R. (2013). Why can’t we all just get along? The uncertain biologicalbasis of morality. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/why-we-fightand-can-we-stop/309525/

Author Bio

Guy Smith works at International Christian University in the English for Liberal
Arts program teaching academic reading and writing. He is particularly interested
in what the implications of the emerging research on cognition and cognitive bias
mean for practical critical thinking instruction. guys@icu.ac.jp
Received: October 29, 2021
Accepted: September 27, 2022

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