What’s With the Attitude? Implicit Attitudes and Critical Thinking in Traditional Undergraduate Student Leaders

Abstract

Current faculty and other stakeholders for higher education have cited a lack of critical thinking within traditional undergraduate students. Some have touted this “soft skill” as a necessary competency for postgraduate employment because others within the private sector have challenged higher education to reconsider how this skill is taught to students. Higher education leaders purport that critical thinking can also be taught through experiential learning across the cocurricular activities of leadership experiences. This non-experimental, descriptive study examined critical thinking development in a sample of traditional undergraduate student leaders at two land-grant universities in which students took the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (CCTT-Z) and the Wason Rule Discovery Task (WRDT). Results from the study suggested there was a relationship between the incidence of implicit attitudes and poorly demonstrated critical thinking skills, and when controlling for academic level, there were no significant differences between students. Implications for practice include a reasoned account for why such implicit attitudes hinder students’ critical thinking development and why efforts should be made to lessen such biases’ influence.