Thinking Styles

There are various types of thinking styles that exist within the world to help people make sense of why people make the decisions that they do in different situations. Three main types of thinking styles are logical thinking, scientific thinking, and persuasive thinking. All three of these thinking styles have differences, similarities, weaknesses, and strengths, that must be compared and contrasted to understand the affect that they have on critical thinking and in the decision making process. Every person has a primary style of thinking that is used most to help in his or her decisions.

Logical thinking is the process of reasoning one's thoughts whether correct or incorrect which leads to critical thinking. The two main steps that are used in logical thinking are deductive logic through syllogisms and inductive logic. Deductive logic or thinking consists of two premises or more that leads to a factual conclusion which is hidden within the premises. The conclusion must logically follow the premises in such a way that if the premises are true then the conclusion is true. Premises are declarations that supply the basis of a conclusion. The most basic form of deductive thinking is the syllogism. A syllogism is a form of reasoning which contains two premises and one conclusion; there are three types of syllogisms, categorical, the hypothetical, and the disjunctive. One example of a syllogism in the workplace is: people who receive more training or more qualified workers, some employees do not receive as much training; therefore, employees that do not receive as much training are not qualified works. Next, inductive logic means that no matter how true or accurate the premises may be the conclusion is uncertain. Evidence and observations accumulated for the premises may form a very probably or likely conclusion however, the conclusion is still uncertain. One example of inductive thinking is thousands of jobs are now currently being outsourced from the U.S. to other countries; continual outsourcing of job from the U.S. will cause the downfall of the U.S. economy (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007).

Scientific thinking is directly related with the scientific method which is a four step process of observation, hypothesis formulation, experimentation, and verification. Observation is the process of examining the world, events, nature and many other things which makes individuals question and wonder the many causes and effects of how things work. Hypothesis formulation is the process of forming uncertain conclusions about different variables. A hypothesis is generally formulated by if-then statements. However, for a hypothesis to be proven experimentation must take place. Experimentation is the process of testing a hypothesis in a controlled environment and is then documented. Verification is the analysis of data to see if the data supports or disputes the hypothesis. In the workplace the scientific thinking is largely used when testing out and trying new programs never used before. For example, at the University of Phoenix there are many educational programs being released and before they were released the program is scientifically tested (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007).

Persuasive thinking is the art of convincing another person to accept his or her message or thinking. To persuade others is not always an easy task, the persuader must understand his or her audience by knowing what their wants and needs are, must have knowledge on the topic of persuasion, and must control his or her emotions and words. There is a difference between manipulation and persuasion, manipulation is done when the persuader is only persuading the individual for his or her own gain and persuasion occurs when the persuasion is done for the good of the individual and society. For example, as an enrollment counselor at the University of Phoenix one must be very persuasive when speaking with potential students. Counselors can manipulate students by lying to them about our curriculum and various other things so that they can simply enroll the student and therefore, only benefit his or herself. But if a counselor is honest, knowledgeable, and helpful then the counselor uses persuasion and not manipulation (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2007).

All styles of thinking serve the purpose of convincing individuals on certain decisions. Logical thinking affects critical thinking by using a cause and effect process and thus search and think about the means for the end. Logical thinkers are less likely to take risks and more likely to make decisions that are supported by logical evidence. The advantage