Towards Mobile Blended Interaction Fostering Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a fundamental skill that all citizens should have. Unfortunately, while beliefs in unfounded claims are pervasive, teaching critical skill is a strenuous task. Digital mobile interaction could potentially support face-to-face teaching to foster critical thinking skills. In this paper, we present a preliminary version of the BaloneyMeter, a mobile app that provides support for teaching critical thinking skills. We report on a case study in a class of 150 students and present an open research question that we plan to address in subsequent work

Motivated numeracy and active reasoning in a Western European sample

Recent work by Kahan et al. (2017) on the psychology of motivated numeracy in the context of intracultural disagreement suggests that people are less likely to employ their capabilities when the evidence runs contrary to their political ideology. This research has so far been carried out primarily in the USA regarding the liberal–conservative divide over gun control regulation. In this paper, we present the results of a modified replication that included an active reasoning intervention with Western European participants regarding both the hierarchy–egalitarianism and individualism–collectivism divides over immigration policy (n = 746; considerably less than the preregistration sample size). We reproduce the motivated numeracy effect, though we do not find evidence of increased polarization of high-numeracy participants