Critical Thinking in Everyday Life

Critical thinking is a metacognitive process that, through purposeful, self-regulatory reflective judgment; the skills of analysis, evaluation, and inference; and a disposition towards thinking, increases the chances of producing a logical conclusion to an argument or a solution to a problem. As a result of the dramatically increasing availability of information (including both misinformation and disinformation), the need for critical thinking is arguably more important now than ever. Given the role of higher-order cognitive processes for the foundation of critical thinking, the relationship between intelligence and critical thinking is important to consider, not only for readers of the Journal of Intelligence, but for anyone with an interest in researching cognitive science and education, or simply those wishing to enhance the quality of thinking in their everyday lives. Given that a large body of CT research has focused on its conceptualisation and enhancement through educational strategies, this Special Issue is unique in its scope due to exploring the application of critical thinking to real-world settings and everyday life through a collection of original research, a review of the literature, and position pieces regarding topics of utmost relevance to such applications.