Exploratory thought is an academic term used in the field of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

to describe reasoning that neutrally considers multiple points of view and tries to anticipate all possible objections to, or flaws in, a particular position, with the goal of seeking truth. The opposite of exploratory thought is confirmatory thought, which is reasoning designed to construct justification supporting a specific point of view. Both terms were coined by social psychologist

Jennifer Lerner Jennifer S. Lerner is an American experimental social psychologist known for her research in emotion and decision theory. She is the first psychologist at the Harvard Kennedy School to receive tenure. At Harvard, her titles include Professor of P ...

and psychology professor

Philip Tetlock Philip E. Tetlock (born 1954) is a Canadian-American political science writer, and is currently the Annenberg University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is cross-appointed at the Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sc ...

in the 2002 book Emerging Perspectives in Judgment and Decision Making. The authors argue that most people, most of the time, make decisions based on gut feelings and poor logic, and reason through issues primarily to provide justification, to themselves and to others, of what they already believe. Lerner and Tetlock say that when people expect to need to justify their position to external parties, and they already know those parties' views, they will tend to adopt a similar position to theirs, and then engage in confirmatory thought with the goal of bolstering their own credibility rather than reaching a good conclusion. However, if the external parties are overly aggressive or critical, people will disengage from thought altogether, and simply assert their personal opinions without justification. Lerner and Tetlock say that people only push themselves to think critically and logically when they know in advance they will need to explain themselves to external parties who are well-informed, genuinely interested in the truth, and whose views they don't already know. Because those conditions rarely exist, they argue, most people are engaging in confirmatory thought most of the time.

In statistics

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

statistician John Tukey wrote about selection between confirmation or rejection of existing hypotheses and exploration of new ones, focusing on how practicing statisticians might decide between the two modes of thought at various junctures. Subsequent statisticians,

philosophers of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

, and

organizational psychologists An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from ...

have expanded on the topic.Thompson, B. (2004
''Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis: Understanding concepts and applications''
(Washington, DC: American Psychological Association)

In statistics

See also

References

Further reading