Critical thinking is widely considered an important skill for psychology majors. However, few measures exist of the types of critical thinking that are specific to psychology majors. Lawson (1999) designed the Psychological Critical Thinking Exam (PCTE) to measure students' ability to ''think critically, or evaluate claims, in a way that explicitly incorporates basic principles of psychological science'' (p. 207). However, Lawson's goal was not to present the PCTE as a standardized measure that was ready for use by other departments. We developed an updated version of the PCTE for broader use and investigated its reliability and validity. Results showed very good split-half and test-retest reliability. As expected, senior psychology majors scored significantly higher on the PCTE than junior psychology majors, senior biology majors, senior art majors, and introductory psychology students.

We tested a procedure designed to enhance psychology students' learning from educational videos. Introductory psychology students ( N = 127) watched a video about social psychology during a regular class session. Students in some sections of the course watched the video with no special instructions; students in other sections answered 8 guiding questions in writing while watching the video. After viewing the video, students took a test containing video-related and textbook-related questions. As predicted, students who received guiding questions scored significantly higher on the video-related questions than did those in the control group; there was no effect of experimental condition on students' performance on the textbook-related questions.

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We examined whether a role-playing exercise, similar to that developed by Plous (2000), increases students' ability to generate effective responses to prejudiced comments. We assessed social psychology students' (n = 23) ability to respond to prejudiced comments before and after the exercise, and compared their performance to that of 2 other groups of students (total n = 38) who did not participate in the exercise. Results showed that the exercise increased students' ability to generate effective responses to prejudiced comments. If students apply this skill in their daily lives, it could lead to a reduction in the overt expression of prejudice among others.