Associations between critical thinking dispositions and big five personality traits in University students

Abstract

Despite critical thinking being deemed a 21st-century skill necessary for the future, there has been considerable concern about inadequate critical thinking among university students. This also seems to be the case in Malta. According to the two-factor theory by Clifford et al. (2004), critical thinking comprises both disposition toward critical thinking and cognitive critical thinking skills. Although disposition toward critical thinking is a prerequisite of critical thinking skills, this is often overlooked in research focusing on critical thinking skills. Moreover, research into critical thinking disposition has yielded mixed results, particularly regarding its relationship with personality and demographic factors. This exploratory study investigates the relationship between critical thinking disposition and the Big Five personality traits, including demographic variables such as age, work experience, and parental education. The frameworks used to assess critical thinking disposition are Soso’s framework, i.e., the CTDS scale, and for Big Five personality traits, the BFI scale. After employing convenience sampling to choose a sample of postgraduate students at the University of Malta, 160 responses were collected using an online questionnaire that incorporated the research tools CTDS and BFI. The data was analysed using IBM SPSS software, which included correlation and comparison analyses. Critical thinking disposition was shown to be positively associated with the personality traits openness to experience and conscientiousness, and negatively associated with the trait agreeableness. There was no association identified between critical thinking disposition and demographics. Despite the incongruent results, these findings reveal that critical thinking disposition and the Big Five personality traits are related, which has implications for future critical thinking education.