Wade and Will were watching the local news when viewers were asked to tweet about the city's proposal to raise sales taxes for a new airport terminal. The results were posted later in the broadcast. Both Wade and Will were skeptical when only 15 percent of the viewers supported the tax increase. They began examining the assumptions behind the proposal, tried to uncover hidden values of the voters, evaluated the evidence on both sides of the controversy, and assessed all conclusions. They were engaging in _____ thinking.

Critical thinking: The term critical thinking is defined as the propensity of a person to make a reasoned or logical judgement which is considered as rational and well thought out.

Critical thinking is a process through which an individual thinks and do not generally accept all the conclusions and arguments that he or she has been exposed to yet carry an attitude that involves conclusions and arguments.

It is often referred to as important in psychology as it provides an individual to evaluate, analyze, restructure thinking, explain and hence decreased risk for thinking and adopting false or wrong premise.

In the question above, Wade and Will were engaged in critical thinking.