Clive Thompson is the author of the book Smarter Than You Think, which contains the excerpt “Public Thinking” as one of its chapters. The purpose of his project is to answer the underlying question of “how has the evolution of public writing affected and influenced people’s thinking?” Thompson’s main argument is that public forms of writing and speaking change humans’ cognitive behavior. Through various sub claims, such clarified thinking, audience effect, multiple effect, and memory, Thompson backs up his main argument to make people understand and believe the points he is trying to make. In my analysis of Thompson’s text, I will examine and break down those sub claims to further understand his main argument.
Thompson claims that public writing clarifies thinking. Some forms of public writing are written in a way that helps further understand specific topics or helps clarify what the writer is actually thinking. Thompson states that, “Professional writers have long described the way that the act of writing forces them to distill their vague notions into clear ideas…This is why writers often find that it’s only when they start writing that they figure out what they want to say,” (51). In other words Thompson believes writing out what people are thinking onto paper helps them actually form out what they are trying to get across to others. He refers to the poet Cecil Day-Lewis as a form of evidence when she says, “I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have not incentive or need to write about it…We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand,” (51). This quotation by Day-Lewis supports Thompson’s claim about how writing out one’s thoughts helps to formulate what needs to be said because it shows that even well-known writers have a hard time trying to get their point across without writing it down first. This claim is relatively effective because others can easily relate; many people struggle with trying to develop what they are thinking, and writing things down makes things easier to formulate a point.
Thompson also introduces the idea of “audience effect”. He argues that, “the cognitive shift in going from an audience of zero (talking to yourself) to an audience of ten people (a few friends or random strangers checking our your online posts) is so big that its actually huger than going from ten people to a million people,”(56). Audiences help to clarify thinking even more. Thompson uses statistics to support his claim because studies have been carried out that reveal what affect an audience has on analytic or critical thought. As stated in “Public Thinking”, “…the effort of communication to someone else forces you to think more precisely, make deeper connections, and learn more,” (55). Thompson validates his statement using observational testing research. The research emphasizes the affect of an audience on people’s thinking. He acknowledges the experiments done in 2008 by a group of Vanderbilt University professors on small children. The testing groups included dozens of four and five year olds, and the tests challenged their cognitive behavior using various tactics of how people may think. They called for the children to look at a sequence of patterns and to predict what the next sequence would be. The tests would become more and more difficult each time the child too the test. Three versions of the same test took place. The first test involved having the children solve the puzzles quietly on their own, while the second test required the children to explain their thinking into a take recorder. The final test had the children explain to their mothers what their thinking was on how they were going to solve the puzzles. The tests concluded that the children who explained their thinking to the audience of mothers did the best, while the children who solved the puzzles on their own quietly did the worst. This experiment helped prove that the act of articulating their thinking process aloud helps people think more critically and identify things more clearly. Because of the many examples that appeal to various audiences from teenagers to writers and publishers, Thompson is more effective in getting his point across.
Memory is another sub claim that Thompson analyzes. He states how, “writing about things has other salutary cognitive effects,” (57). Writing about things so that it is more easily remembered is also known as the “generation effect.” Thompson describes a piece of evidence from 1978 when two psychologists tested people to see how well they remembered words after they had written them down versus people who just read the words and tried to remember them. The people who had written down the words did better in the experiment. The strategy of writing down text to memorize the information is more beneficial than just reading because generating text yourself “requires more cognitive effort than does reading, and effort increases memorability,” (57) according to researchers. This strategy proved to be highly advantageous to people who were attending school. This claim by Thompson was effective because it is relatable to a wide range of people both in school and in the work field.
Thompson also brings up the idea of the multiples effect. The sub claim of the multiples effect means that several accounts of the same discovery occurred to different people. Thompson has various forms of evidence to backup his claim, such as the discovery of oxygen and sunspots. He believes that the products of our environment result in the multiple occurrences of the same discoveries. He defends his thoughts by stating, “The things we think about are deeply influenced by the state of the art around us: the conversations taking place among educated folk, the shared information, tools, and technologies at hand,” (59). This quotation supports the idea that discoveries of the same topics had reoccurrence because as time goes on, technologies and our environments start to evolve and become more advanced than years past; therefore, newly acquired technologies help researchers come up with details about some of the same topics that have already been introduced to the world but now there is more updated information that can be shared. Thompson confirms his claim of these newly advanced technologies being the reason why multiple discoveries occurred by stating that “If four astronomers discovered sunspots at the same time, it’s partly because the quality of the lenses in telescopes in 1611 has matured to the point where it was finally possible to pick out small details on the sun,” (59). Due to Thompson’s diverse examples to help justify his claim, his strategy proved to be very effective in gaining support.
Thompson’s main claim is that public forms of writing and speaking have affected humans’ cognitive behavior. He provides many examples that support his beliefs through his various sub claims: clarified thinking, “audience effect”, memory, and multiples effect. By writing thoughts and ideas down, many writers have been able to formulate the idea that they want to present to their audience. Writing things down helps to clarify what the writer is thinking. Thompson believes that the “audience effect” helps people to improve their articulation process, as shown in the test that took place by the group of children in the Vanderbilt experiment. The improvement of the children’s articulation also help to clarify ones thinking. The act of writing things out helps to improve one’s ability to memorize things. Thompson provides information about tests that have shown that the act of writing things down helps to improve memorization; this is also known as “the generation effect.” The idea of multiples effect relates to how multiple occurrences of the same discoveries were taking place. Thompson expresses how he believes that these occurrences happened due to the environment and improvements in technology. Researchers were able to uncover new details about already known topics through the use of the advanced technology of their time. Through the many sub claims that Thompson provides, he effectively supports his main claim of how public writing has affected human cognitive behavior.
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