How Experience Can Hinder Critical Thinking
Critically thinking about the "fallacy" of experience.
Posted Jan 26, 2021
As I imagine might be the case for many families out there, an older member of my extended family likes to pride themselves on how much they know and their lack of both schooling and reading — citing life as their primary educator. I heard a lot of this over the Christmas break; but, as this individual is in their 70s, I decided to hold my tongue for the sake of harmony during the festive season. Nevertheless, it got me thinking about this standpoint in light of critical thinking and how it is conducted.
Specifically, the standpoint in question is that life experience is the best teacher; and that, essentially, a more mature individual — with rich life experiences — is more knowledgeable than someone in their 20s or 30s, regardless of education level. Of course, just because someone went to college and got a bunch of paperwork, doesn’t mean they’re a critical thinker — indeed, the lack of critical thinking among individuals leaving third-level education has been a concern in the field for a number of years. Likewise, experience can be a great teacher and, in reality, everything we learn is through experience — but over-reliance on experience is a big mistake (particularly if it's lacking corroboration from established evidence), mainly because we often confuse experience for expertise.
Though experience is the critical component of expertise, the latter is reserved for domain-specific tasks; and just because an individual is an expert in one domain does not guarantee expertise in another, no matter how experienced they feel themselves to be in it. Consideration of the Dunning-Kruger effect is useful here for elaborating on the mechanics behind this concept. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a bias wherein, relevant to this discussion, one with low ability on a task or little knowledge in an area overestimates their abilities or knowledge in that area; see Kruger & Dunning, 1999). Furthermore, experience is often found to be unrelated to the accuracy of expert judgments and is sometimes negatively correlated with accuracy (Goldberg, 1990; Hammond, 1996; Kahneman, 2011; Stewart et al., 1992). This may be a result of overconfidence (Kahneman, 2011) or simply a result of large amounts of experience in doing something(s) wrong (Hammond, 1996).
The latter postulation was also used to explain another relevant example from one of my first posts on this blog, where I wrote about a study that a colleague and I conducted with a group of mature students taking a critical thinking module (mean age of 42). Though they achieved significantly higher gains in critical thinking in comparison to more "traditional" students (i.e. 18-22 year-olds), their critical thinking ability scores were significantly lower than those of traditional students at baseline (Dwyer & Walsh, 2019); thus debunking, to some extent, the concept of "life" experience being a driving force, in this respect.
Another problem with relying on experience is its personalised nature. For example, it can be argued that all it really amounts to is anecdotal evidence. Simply, an anecdote is a story; and though anecdotes can be a very powerful tool of persuasion, anecdotal evidence is a weak source for an argument as it is not necessarily reliable. Using personal experience or anecdotal evidence to draw a conclusion or solve a problem is further problematic because, essentially, it’s based on a sample size of one; and so, we cannot generalise one person’s experience to the population at large (Dwyer, 2017).
For example, in exploring a given topic, event or situation, other people may have had very different experiences; so, then, the question becomes "which anecdote or experience is correct?" (if any). In a way, drawing conclusions in this manner is akin to making hasty generalisations (i.e. prematurely drawing a conclusion without sufficient evidence).
Moreover, another big problem with personal experience is that it is, at its foundation, biased. Remember, this is the perspective of one person — one person, with their own beliefs, attitudes, values, passions and desires. The manner in which an individual draws on their personal experience, in light of these other factors, is inherently biased. Similarly, it can be argued that the use of personal experience in our decision-making is a result of experience bias, which is essentially a cognitive error in which we take what we perceive, believe or have encountered as fact or as how such events play out a significant amount of the time.
On a larger scale, it can be argued that every bias is an experience bias in the sense that biases are developed through experience; however, the distinction here is that the nature of experience, in general, is the erroneous source of belief as fact.
In conclusion, people have a tendency to put great value into the notion of experience. Indeed, experience is what allows us to learn, given that learning is an experience; and so, to look back on an experience, we can retrieve the information we learned — a very useful process, indeed! However, we must also acknowledge that experience is not the same as expertise; we cannot generalise our personal experiences to the larger population; and our experiences may not always provide us accurate information.
The point is, though experience can indeed be useful, we must not rely on it for every issue we engage because it may not be good enough — be it with respect to sufficient knowledge or objectivity. If we want to develop our experience in a manner that facilitates expertise, we must do so in light of evidence, humility and openness to differing perspectives.
References
Dwyer, C.P. (2017). CT: Conceptual perspectives and practical guidelines. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Dwyer, C. P., & Walsh, A. (2019). An exploratory quantitative case study of critical thinking development through adult distance learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 68(1), 17-35.
Goldberg, M. (1990). A quasi-experiment assessing the effectiveness of TV advertising directed to children. Journal of Marketing Research, 27, 445–454.
Hammond, K. R. (1996). Upon reflection. Thinking & Reasoning, 2, 2–3, 239–248.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking fast and slow. Penguin: Great Britain.
Kruger, J. & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, (6): 1121–1134.
Stewart, T. R., Heideman, K. F., Moninger, W. R., & Reagan-Cirincione, P. (1992). Effects of improved information on the components of skill in weather forecasting. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 53, 2, 107–134.
re
i would agree that "experience is in general anecdotal, and anecdotal evidence is a weak source for an argument as it is not necessarily reliable"
however, it must have been reliable or fairly persistent for a person or a group who had it - otherwise, person (group) would not develop it if s/he didn't have consistent experience, so for that person (group) only it is valid
now, one could further argue that it is actually the other way round - that personal bias/cognitive error/already madeup - searching-for-confirmation mind affects person's (group) experience, not the other way round, but then one would get into territory which is even more parascience than just experience - where person's behaviors and thoughts and negative/positive intent affect the world around, "what you project you attract, "the law of nature (yes, yes, like positive magnets attract other positive magnets in another dimension)" and similar
to me, that is more spiritual (and less critical) than any personal experience
anyway, i never quite understood the obsession of modern society with critical thinking. it is actually quite useless
re
to add, for development of a broad worldview (that would matter though just if has some purpose, not in and of itself, eternally confined) the best thing is fairly inconsistent personal experiences
Response
Yes, I agree with you that using experience as a means of answering questions, solving problems and drawing conclusions is generally quite useful. Over time, the application of that experience often becomes a protocol for how something is done. Hell, the repeated observation of a phenomenon occurring time and time again is how theories are developed. I’m not saying that experience isn’t useful for learning at all. However, it’s not accurate all the time; and if you truly care about a particular decision ahead of you, I’d highly recommend not relying on experience alone.
With respect to your example, the experience – or perhaps, more accurately, the interpretation of the experience maybe what leads people astray. For example, millennia ago people’s explanation for the ‘sun rising’ everyday was that there was some guy, let’s call him Helios, bringing them the sun and then taking it away; and so then, these people sacrificed members of their group to keep Helios happy, just so they could keep enjoying the sun. See how experience and the misinterpretation can be inaccurate?
With that, I think you jump ahead of yourself there with the parascience discussion. There are many others ways to think about it other than dichotomy you suggest.
Now, you reckon that critical thinking ‘is actually quite useless’. I often find that when people make such assertions, they generally misinterpret what is meant by the term. So with that, how would you conceptualise critical thinking?
re
thank you for reply - much appreciated.
re Helios or flat earth example, as the argument for unreliability of personal experience compared to reliable expert science, there one can have other examples too
say, off the top of my head, the mainstream science asserted that drilling the head just few decades ago cures aliments and that smoking is good for lungs and that buildings should be made with asbestos and that cocaine should be used for common cold - this was the mainstream science, not individual yada yada experience -.and if i had then the individual discomfort with such, your argument would try to invalidate my experience based on then existing science (not that it would succeed in it)
the only reason why cocaine is not used for common cold or buildings are not made with asbestos today is because some scientist decided that experience is as valid as science, and that experience should lead to reexamining then existing science
there are actually many better arguments than flat earthers against using experience, if one would set to counter it
re
i would have conceptualized what i mean by critical thinking, and how truly useless it is, but reading this article asserts that people should not trust their own unreliable experiences and impressions when it comes to them, so i see no point in sharing it
Response
Agreed science is by no means perfect – and no one claims it to be – it’s constantly updating so that we can have available to us the best inferences possible for that given time. Obviously, things have changed since those times in your example (as they have since my example), in light of such advancement.
Indeed, when we look at research deeper, we know qualitative research directly examines the human experience – that’s the focus.
Now, I think we’ve hit a wall of miscommunication here when I see your further assertion that “I would have conceptualized what I mean by critical thinking, and how truly useless it is, but reading this article asserts that people should not trust their own unreliable experiences and impressions when it comes to them, so I see no point in sharing it”. I would ask again that you do share it, because the article DOES NOT assert that people should not trust their own experiences. Rather, I acknowledge that experience is the bedrock of learning – everything we know, everything we learn, is through experience. However, over-reliance on personal experience can lead to faulty decisions when made in the absence of established evidence.
Response to Kat
Hi Kat,
Great to hear from you again!
Agreed, experience is a great teacher and is often sufficient on its own. Remember, we don’t need critical thought for every decision – just the important ones that we truly care about. With that, experience can often be all that’s needed, depending on the context of what was learned in that lesson. However, the thinking to be critical thought (if necessary), we require consideration of additional information outside the remit of our experience. Now, with that Kat, I’ll play Devil’s Advocate with you. In this pandemic, I know many older people who are finding it much harder than younger people with respect to uncertainty and patience. So… what’s happening here is that your experience is different to mine, given that we’re concluding two different things – but which perspective is correct (if either)? That very question is quite foundational to the point I’m trying to make with this post.
Plural of Anecdote
Yes well said and important. The plural of anecdote is not "data". Maybe we all need some basic schooling in statistics and avoiding thinking biases. We are all vulnerable to such biases and distortions.
Response
Many thanks Serge. Well put!
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