A comparative study of Keralite professional and non-professional college student’s thinking styles

Pages: 23-27
Michael P. Vallavanthra (Department of Psychology, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu)

The empirical result of the study shows that there is no significant difference between the professional and non-professional college students with respect to the styles of thinking. A total number of 120 college students are taken for the study including 60 professional and 60 non-professional males and females in equal proportion. Thinking Style Inventory [TSI] of Sternberg (1997) is used for the study. The inventory measures 13 different styles of thinking. They are legislative, judicial, executive, monarchic, hierarchic, oligarchic, anarchic, internal, external, global, local, liberal, and conservative thinking styles. The comparative evaluation on the basis of statistical analysis reads that professional college students are not better in thinking styles compared to non-professional college students. Only in the case of legislative style of thinking there is interactive effect between course (education) and the style of thinking at .005 level.

Keywords: thinking styles, professional college students, non – professional college students