Think critically 3rd edtion facione gittens 2016 chapter 18

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Chapter 18
Critical Thinking in the Social
Sciences

THINK CRITICALLY, FACIONE
& GITTENS

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Learning Outcomes
• Identify the kinds of questions social
scientists ask
• Illustrate how social scientists consider
participants, situations, actions, and
motivation
• Describe the investigative methods used
in the social sciences

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& GITTENS

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Learning Outcomes
• Explain the standards used to evaluate
social science research

• Describe social science applications in
fields such as business or education

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& GITTENS

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Chapter Opening Video

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& GITTENS

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Critical Thinking Questions of Social
Scientists
• Thinking like a social scientist

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& GITTENS

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Thinking Like a Social Scientist
• Social scientists:
– Ask questions about people and human social

institutions
– Investigate empirically
– Form a large, varied, and complex
international language community

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& GITTENS

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Thinking Process of Social
Scientists
•
•
•
•

Think participants
Think situation
Think actions
Think motivation

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& GITTENS

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Think Participants

• Participant: Individual who performs,
shares, or engages in something
• Scientists are interested in identifying
characteristics or factors about the
participants
– Used to:
• Group individuals
• Make generalizations about how groups behave or
predict what someone will do in a given situation
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Think Situation
• Situation: Physical, social, and cultural
circumstances that define the
phenomenon of interest
– Helps identify patterns between human
behavior and observed circumstances
– Useful to identify factors controlled by
participants in a situation and which of those
can be altered if necessary
– Provides situational cues to participants
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Think Actions
• Actions: Processes or conditions whereby
something is done or accomplished
– Social scientists ask questions about actions
as they link the participants and the situation
– Include behaviors that people choose not to
perform

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& GITTENS

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Discussion Questions
• People who are targeted by angry taunts
and epithets experience strong reactions
– Has this happened to you?
– Thinking like a social scientist, what questions
might you ask yourself about your reactions in
those situations?

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& GITTENS

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Think Motivation

• Motivation
– Represents internal and external forces that
stimulate, maintain, and regulate human
behavior

• Research on motivation has produced a
broad and complex set of theories
• Scientists ask questions about motivation
to identify incentives to promote or
decrease certain behaviors
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Social Scientists’ Investigation
• Let the question drive the investigatory
technique

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& GITTENS

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Let the Question Drive the
Investigatory Technique
• Investigators use critical thinking skills to
decide on relevant evidence to answer

social science questions
• Scientists require evidence to ensure that
the preconceptions are true

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Let the Question Drive the
Investigatory Technique
• Data gathering techniques
– Interviewing participants
– Focus groups

• Decision mapping enables to analyze
people’s narratives about their decisions

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Let the Question Drive the
Investigatory Technique
• Practical and logistical challenges
– Scientists encounter the problem of feasibility
while gathering data

• Motivations and temptations
– Political, economic, and professional practice
concerns motivate the questions scientists are
asked to investigate
– Scientists must rigorously adhere to the
empirical investigatory process
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Let the Question Drive the
Investigatory Technique
• I’m on Camera effect
• Social science questions provide answers
about what happens to most humans
• Behavior changes when the conditions are altered

–Hawthorne Effect
• Observable tendency of people to exert more effort
or perform better if they know they are participating
in a research

–Blind study - Overcomes the risk of the validity
of research
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& GITTENS

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How do Social Scientists Think
About Standards?
• No simple explanations of complex
phenomena
• Proceeding with warranted confidence
• Risks inherent in all human judgments

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No Simple Explanations of Complex
Phenomena
• Human behavior is the product of complex
personal, situational, cultural, and
biological factors
• Scientists do not attempt to produce a final
answer about human social phenomena
• Empirical reasoning used in social
scientific research is probabilistic

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Proceeding with Warranted
Confidence
• Immeasurable and uncontrollable
influences affect behavior inevitably under
investigation
• Statistical analyses
– Used to:
• Answer questions about possible relationships
• Describe a set of data
• Compare relationships between two or more
factors
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Proceeding with Warranted
Confidence
– Statistically significant: Probability that an
obtained result has not occurred by chance

• Narrative analyses
– Researchers use other techniques to achieve
the standard of warranted confidence in
findings
• Describe findings as practically significant

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& GITTENS

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Risks Inherent in all Human
Judgments
• Social scientists are vulnerable to:
– Biased thinking
– Dominance structuring
– Snap judgments
– Misapplication of cognitive heuristics

• Critical thinking self-regulation
– Maintaining an open mind and engaging in a
constant process of self-checking and selfregulating is essential
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Risks Inherent in all Human
Judgments
• We are what we study
– Social scientists must carry out their analyses
carefully to draw warranted inferences
– Scientists are vulnerable to errors by
misunderstandings and misinterpretations

about human behavior

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& GITTENS

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Risks Inherent in all Human
Judgments
• We affect what we study
– People influence human behavior through
research
– Critical thinking skills and maintaining great
distance from the data collection process
enables one to draw warranted conclusions

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& GITTENS

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