11 VOLUME 6 |ISSUE 2 |2015
Recruits aim to increase cognitive consonance that results from
the meaning, structure, belonging, security, and potential for goal
realization the group offers. Critical thinking does the opposite:
It increases cognitive dissonance over those same issues. These
are believers. Urging them to critically reassess their involvement
implies the ironic presumption that they lacked good reason to
believe what they in fact found ample reason to believe. Before
they’ll consider the questions that critical thinking poses, they
need to recognize its validity and, more importantly, feel a need for
it. Rather than assume it’s needed and impose it on them (however
nicely), we need to find ways to raise the issue as a question of
mutual concern.
Mental functions involved in analytical activities are quite different
from those involved in synthetic activities. In fact, to a degree, they
preclude each other.1 For example, here’s a smattering of pairs of
analytical (on the left) vs. synthetic (on the right) activities and
attitudes:
• critique vs. creativity
• skepticism vs. trust
• testing vs. hope fulfillment
• detachment vs. connection
These are not strict opposites, and in practice they complement
and enhance each other but cognitively, experientially, in the
moment, engaging in one side involves a degree of suspension of
the other—i.e., significant activation of mental functions for one
and deactivation of the functions that correspond to the other.
This difference can be felt. Recruits focused on synthetic pursuits
can interpret the tension arising from our efforts to refocus them
on the analytical side as a step toward conflict, or even as an
adversarial move.
These conflicts of interest in priorities rest on deeper disparities
between respective basic values. Proponents of critical thinking
tend to emphasize thought process and overlook or minimize the
fact that fringe-group involvement often results from rejection
of primary conventional premises—even those on which critical
thinking’s value rests. In a very real sense, recruits reject critical
thinking because it represents values that they abandoned as they
sought alternatives to them, it is not a solution, but an avenue to
reintroducing the problem.
Conflict Over Responsibility
Conflict over responsibility is another important reason that
recruits balk at others’ attempts to encourage critical thinking. Our
implicit judgment that critical thinking is missing encroaches on
an interpersonal boundary: We are taking on responsibility that
properly belongs to the recruits. Again, they feel this imposition
even if they can’t articulate it. This results from our failing to raise
questions jointly instead of unilaterally assuming the pertinence
of questions that are important from our perspective, based on
presumptions that
• we understand their beliefs
• we are competent to critique their beliefs
• they are unaware or misinformed and
• the group’s beliefs and agenda are suspect.
By unilaterally assuming this role—i.e., usurping it, we diminish the
recruits’ status, doing what adds up to adversarial from their point
of view:
• disregarding and subordinating their perspective and
agency
• casting ourselves in superior, more knowledgeable roles
and
• externalizing and embodying in ourselves the cognitive
dissonance evoked by critique.
Doing these things polarizes the engagement and transforms us
from allies into enemies.
Ironically, we criticize fringe groups for similarly violating the
personal boundaries of their members, and this irony is not lost on
recruits. Critiquing involvement in a fringe group is simply not our
responsibility, especially if the action is unsolicited. Even if recruits
“ought” to think more critically, that fact doesn’t mitigate our
usurping their responsibility for choosing whether or not to do so.
Instead, we need to unobtrusively encourage them toward self-
initiated, self-directed critical thinking rather than urging or
imposing it on them from without. So the trick is to prompt and get
invited to participate with them in that process. This point brings
us to the conflict that is both most important to recruits and most
misunderstood by would-be helpers.
Conflict of Engagement Intent
Recruits have one primary intention for their interaction with us,
while we have another. They want to affirm, promote, and gain
recognition of the virtues of their group and its beliefs but we
want to bring those factors into question. They hope we’ll see the
credibility and merits of their claims and agenda, but we hope to
open these areas up to analysis and evaluation. Each side wants
to change the other’s mind. Obviously, full-frontal, transparent
confrontation won’t work.
I refer to this as engagement rather than relationship because
relationships with recruits are nascent and vulnerable by nature,
even if we’ve known the recruits all our lives. We’re now dealing
with supposedly new persons. They report themselves as such, and
we experience them that way, too. So the nature of our relationship
is under redefinition.
Steven Pinker mentions three relationship types, the cross-
connection of which can have unpredictable and often undesirable
(or even comical) results:
• dominance
• communality
• reciprocity2
Approaching a recruit in a relationship of dominance (such as
parents might try with children attracted to a fringe group) rarely
succeeds, partly because the dominance question has already been
answered: The group is dominant. So dominance presumed by
parents or authorities outside the group represents a challenge or
threat to group authority and the recruit’s hopes. This reality often
Discussions about
critical thinking suffer
from vagueness of the term.
Recruits aim to increase cognitive consonance that results from
the meaning, structure, belonging, security, and potential for goal
realization the group offers. Critical thinking does the opposite:
It increases cognitive dissonance over those same issues. These
are believers. Urging them to critically reassess their involvement
implies the ironic presumption that they lacked good reason to
believe what they in fact found ample reason to believe. Before
they’ll consider the questions that critical thinking poses, they
need to recognize its validity and, more importantly, feel a need for
it. Rather than assume it’s needed and impose it on them (however
nicely), we need to find ways to raise the issue as a question of
mutual concern.
Mental functions involved in analytical activities are quite different
from those involved in synthetic activities. In fact, to a degree, they
preclude each other.1 For example, here’s a smattering of pairs of
analytical (on the left) vs. synthetic (on the right) activities and
attitudes:
• critique vs. creativity
• skepticism vs. trust
• testing vs. hope fulfillment
• detachment vs. connection
These are not strict opposites, and in practice they complement
and enhance each other but cognitively, experientially, in the
moment, engaging in one side involves a degree of suspension of
the other—i.e., significant activation of mental functions for one
and deactivation of the functions that correspond to the other.
This difference can be felt. Recruits focused on synthetic pursuits
can interpret the tension arising from our efforts to refocus them
on the analytical side as a step toward conflict, or even as an
adversarial move.
These conflicts of interest in priorities rest on deeper disparities
between respective basic values. Proponents of critical thinking
tend to emphasize thought process and overlook or minimize the
fact that fringe-group involvement often results from rejection
of primary conventional premises—even those on which critical
thinking’s value rests. In a very real sense, recruits reject critical
thinking because it represents values that they abandoned as they
sought alternatives to them, it is not a solution, but an avenue to
reintroducing the problem.
Conflict Over Responsibility
Conflict over responsibility is another important reason that
recruits balk at others’ attempts to encourage critical thinking. Our
implicit judgment that critical thinking is missing encroaches on
an interpersonal boundary: We are taking on responsibility that
properly belongs to the recruits. Again, they feel this imposition
even if they can’t articulate it. This results from our failing to raise
questions jointly instead of unilaterally assuming the pertinence
of questions that are important from our perspective, based on
presumptions that
• we understand their beliefs
• we are competent to critique their beliefs
• they are unaware or misinformed and
• the group’s beliefs and agenda are suspect.
By unilaterally assuming this role—i.e., usurping it, we diminish the
recruits’ status, doing what adds up to adversarial from their point
of view:
• disregarding and subordinating their perspective and
agency
• casting ourselves in superior, more knowledgeable roles
and
• externalizing and embodying in ourselves the cognitive
dissonance evoked by critique.
Doing these things polarizes the engagement and transforms us
from allies into enemies.
Ironically, we criticize fringe groups for similarly violating the
personal boundaries of their members, and this irony is not lost on
recruits. Critiquing involvement in a fringe group is simply not our
responsibility, especially if the action is unsolicited. Even if recruits
“ought” to think more critically, that fact doesn’t mitigate our
usurping their responsibility for choosing whether or not to do so.
Instead, we need to unobtrusively encourage them toward self-
initiated, self-directed critical thinking rather than urging or
imposing it on them from without. So the trick is to prompt and get
invited to participate with them in that process. This point brings
us to the conflict that is both most important to recruits and most
misunderstood by would-be helpers.
Conflict of Engagement Intent
Recruits have one primary intention for their interaction with us,
while we have another. They want to affirm, promote, and gain
recognition of the virtues of their group and its beliefs but we
want to bring those factors into question. They hope we’ll see the
credibility and merits of their claims and agenda, but we hope to
open these areas up to analysis and evaluation. Each side wants
to change the other’s mind. Obviously, full-frontal, transparent
confrontation won’t work.
I refer to this as engagement rather than relationship because
relationships with recruits are nascent and vulnerable by nature,
even if we’ve known the recruits all our lives. We’re now dealing
with supposedly new persons. They report themselves as such, and
we experience them that way, too. So the nature of our relationship
is under redefinition.
Steven Pinker mentions three relationship types, the cross-
connection of which can have unpredictable and often undesirable
(or even comical) results:
• dominance
• communality
• reciprocity2
Approaching a recruit in a relationship of dominance (such as
parents might try with children attracted to a fringe group) rarely
succeeds, partly because the dominance question has already been
answered: The group is dominant. So dominance presumed by
parents or authorities outside the group represents a challenge or
threat to group authority and the recruit’s hopes. This reality often
Discussions about
critical thinking suffer
from vagueness of the term.
