Critical thinking by its nature involves decision-making. People look at information and decide which pieces have value, authenticity, credibility and other desirable characteristics. Some people make the mistake of accepting or rejecting all information outright. However, as they develop critical thinking skills, they learn to assess which ideas are best to filter out and which ideas will aid in decisions.
People need information to effectively make decisions. Critical thinking involves performing observations, collecting data and determining which data is valid. Critical thinking also involves making inferences, which are opinions that people make about information. People must form opinions before they can make decisions.
People make decisions because they want specific outcomes. They use critical thinking to predict what will happen. With better predictions, people can decide which actions are best for producing a specific outcome.
Critical thinking involves taking knowledge and applying it to real situations. This is directly related to the decision-making process, where people decide to take specific actions based on information. Critical thinking can help people make ideas or information relevant when making a decision. For example, a person choosing a college might apply their knowledge of human psychology to infer whether the school has the same perspective as the decision maker, based on interviews with those working for the college.
People can use critical thinking to analyze a problem the person must resolve by making a decision. Effective critical thinkers can look beyond the obvious aspects of the problem and think about the problem from different perspectives, brainstorm possible implications for specific decisions and determine what information the decision maker lacks.
Critical thinkers can come up with many solutions and assess each solution to choose one that is the most effective. Critical thinkers also use their ability to compare separate ideas. The thinker can recall prior decisions made on problems similar to the current problem and can assess whether the prior decisions lead to desirable outcomes. The critical thinker can also weigh advantages and disadvantages to specific approaches, factoring in the thinker's priorities and the practicality and risk of a solution.