A longstanding assumption within higher education is that there is a clear link between argumentative writing and critical thinking. In this paper, I challenge this assumption. I argue that argumentative writing genres of persuasion, inquiry, and consensus fail to target students’ open-mindedness, which is an important aspect of critical thinking. In particular, argumentative writing genres do not challenge students to confront key cognitive biases, namely confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, when engaging in moral, political, and/or social questions. The motivation to conduct a balanced selection of evidence as well as an unbiased interpretation of evidence is overshadowed by the motivation to preserve one’s prior beliefs. The structure of argumentative writing genres thereby stifles open-mindedness and can even nurture dogmatism. As a result, in our goal to develop students’ critical thinking skills through argumentative writing, we may be doing more harm than good.

高等教育中的一个长期假设是，论证写作与批判性思维之间存在明确的联系。在本文中，我对这一假设提出了挑战。我认为，说服力，探究性和共识性的论据写作体裁不能针对学生的开放思想，这是批判性思维的重要方面。特别是，在涉及道德，政治和/或社会问题时，论据性写作体裁不会挑战学生面对主要的认知偏差，即确认偏差和动机推理。维护一个人先前的信念，掩盖了对证据进行均衡选择的动机以及对证据的公正解释。因此，论证性写作体裁的结构扼杀了思想开放的态度，甚至可以培养教条主义。