"Critical thinking" is widely regarded as important, but difficult to define. This article provides an historical perspective by describing how "critical thinking" emerged as an object of psychological study, how the forms it took were shaped by practical and social concerns, and how these related to "critical thinking" as something that results in certain conclusions, rather than as a process of coming to conclusions. "Critical thinking" became a scientific object when psychologists attempted to measure it. The original measurement treated "critical thinking" as both an ability and an attitude. It measured logical abilities, and consistency and extremity of views, but it avoided making assumptions about the correctness of specific real-world beliefs. The correctness of such beliefs was, as problems with other related tests showed, open to dispute. Subsequent tests increasingly focused on logical abilities, and attempted to minimize further the relevance of what people believed about the real world, though they continued to depend on there being correct answers to test items, which privileged the outcome over the process. While "critical thinking" was primarily the domain of philosophers, there was renewed psychological interest in the topic in the 1980s, which increasingly presented "critical thinking" as incompatible with certain real-world ("unscientific") beliefs. Such a view more explicitly privileged the outcome over the process. It is argued that a more reflective approach, though it may be more difficult to measure, is essential if we wish to understand not only what critical thinking has been, but also what it is now. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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“批判性思维”的建构：介于我们如何思考与我们相信之间。

“批判性思维”被广泛认为是重要的，但难以定义。本文通过描述“批判性思维”如何作为心理学研究的对象出现，其采取的形式是如何受到实践和社会关注形成的，以及这些与“批判性思维”的相关性如何得出某些结论的方式，来提供历史视角。 ，而不是作为得出结论的过程。当心理学家试图衡量“批判性思维”时，它已成为科学对象。最初的测量将“批判性思维”既视为能力又是态度。它测量了逻辑能力，观点的一致性和极端性，但避免了对特定现实世界信念的正确性做出假设。这种信念的正确性是 如其他相关测试所显示的问题，则存在争议。随后的测试越来越侧重于逻辑能力，并试图进一步使人们对现实世界的看法的相关性最小化，尽管他们继续依赖于对测试项目的正确答案，从而使结果在过程中享有特权。尽管“批判性思维”主要是哲学家的领域，但在1980年代，人们对​​该主题又有了新的心理兴趣，该主题越来越多地提出“批判性思维”与某些现实世界（“非科学”）的信念不相容。这种观点更明确地赋予了过程以特权。有人认为，虽然可能更难以衡量，但采用了更具反思性的方法，如果我们不仅希望了解批判性思维，而且还要了解现在的思维，那么至关重要。（PsycINFO数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。