Sharpening our critical thinking skills means becoming aware of what can make us vulnerable: our prejudices, our habits of thought, our emotions and sometimes… our unjustified mistrust! It is also about finding support to see things clearly. Sometimes it means admitting that we don’t know… In short, it’s learning to adjust your level of trust.
Cognitive biases can mislead us. This is particularly problematic when dealing with societal issues related to science and in the current context of abundant information and exchange. In order for thinking to be fruitful, we must try to get around these obstacles, and therefore develop a critical method towards the known and the unknown, but above all towards ourselves.
The exhibition proposes to approach this subject in a playful and comforting way and to raise public awareness through an offbeat narrative, interspersed with experiments inspired by research in behavioural and social psychology, cognitive science and sociology.
The public enters an urban and offbeat universe, in an atmosphere of advertisements, illusions, false information, images and diverted words. Visitors enter the exhibition experience, play at verifying information, explore tricky situations and unmask ready-made ideas.
Throughout the walk, alone or with others, each visitor will be able to test his or her reactions in different situations inspired by everyday life where it may be necessary to demonstrate analysis, scientific method and rationality. The result of each test will be accompanied by a decoding explaining the objectives of this test to become aware of the processes at work.
To test ones critical thinking skills
Acquire a certain number of tools/reflexes that can be used in everyday life,
To discover the main cognitive biases we are confronted with in our daily lives in order to better circumvent them,
Understand the contribution of the scientific approach to these phenomena,
To make visitors confident and alert.