Abstract
This study investigated factors affecting critical thinking. One hundred and thirty-eight undergraduate students read three articles that included a number of fallacious arguments. In this study, the credibility of the information source was examined by identifying the authors of these articles as experts to half of the participants and as anonymous university students to the other half of the participants. Participants were asked to describe their opinions about these articles in the free-form opinion phase; to offer criticisms of the articles, if any, in a voluntary critical phase; and to provide at least one criticism of the article in a compulsory critical phase. The descriptions offered by participants included references to fallacious arguments. Although highly credible sources tend to inhibit critical thinking, we found that the effect differed according to the type of fallacious argument and the extent to which external demands involved critical thinking. Results also indicated that critical thinking was promoted as the demand for it became explicit and that the type of fallacious argument could inhibit critical thinking.
