To engage in critical thinking, you must be aware of your own biases. Everyone comes to an intellectual inquiry armed with a set of preconceived beliefs based on his experiences, cultural learning and personal opinions. Becoming aware of your own biases isn't easy. You must consider your own assumptions carefully. Dr. Nate Kornell, professor of psychology at Williams College, notes that teaching critical thinking as an explicit process helps student learn to cast off their biases (see Resources).
Critical thinkers seek the truth. Their inquiry is not restricted by other motives, such as confirming what they already believe to be true. Thus, critical thinkers can work through the information they gather objectively. Critical thinkers often form a community of like-minded individuals from the same academic discipline. Sharing findings with colleagues allows for broad-based discussion and limits the chances of mistakes in data gathering or data analysis.
Critical thinkers give due consideration to all possibilities. They defer judgment until they have gathered sufficient evidence. Critical thinkers do not hurry their analysis but instead try to gain a depth of understanding. The effects of this caution increase when individuals work in community. Each individual tries to consider with equal weight the concerns and ideas of other participating members. For this reason, it sometimes takes several decades for academic and scientific communities to reach consensus concerning important theories or ideas.
Critical thinkers do not develop emotional attachments to the results of their experimentation or to their conclusions. They are willing to change their ideas based on new information. In this sense, nothing is ever irrefutably correct. Leaving the door open for new insight requires a degree of emotional non-attachment that is difficult for most people to master. Critical thinkers learn to incorporate these psychological factors into mental habits.