ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognition
The Association Between Personal Interest and Critical Thinking. A Comparison Between a Universal (Death Penalty) and a Local (Strait of Messina Bridge) Debate
Provisionally accepted
Rosa Angela Fabio1,2*
Caterina Chiara Ascone2- 1Universita degli Studi di Messina, Messina, Italy
- 2Universita degli Studi di Messina Dipartimento di Scienze biomediche odontoiatriche e delle immagini morfologiche e funzionali, Messina, Italy
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This research examines how different forms of personal interest are associated with critical thinking (CT) across two studies. In Study 1, 77 participants completed standardized CT measures and provided open-ended reasoning on two controversial issues: the death penalty (a universal topic) and the Strait of Messina Bridge (a local topic). Participants also rated their personal interest in each issue. For the local topic, results revealed a nonlinear (inverted U-shaped) relationship between interest and CT: both low and high levels of interest were associated with weaker performance, suggesting that interest intensity alone is insufficient to ensure critical engagement. No parallel effect emerged for the universal topic. Participants with higher CT scores were also more likely to revise their stance when exposed to contradictory evidence. Study 2 extended these findings with 80 participants by distinguishing types of interest. Epistemic interest—rooted in curiosity—was positively associated with CT, whereas ego-defensive and identity-based interests showed negative associations with CT. These results indicate that the quality, rather than the magnitude, of personal interest is more closely linked to whether it facilitates or impairs reasoning.
Keywords: controversial issues, Critical Thinking, ego-defensive interest, epistemic interest, Motivation, personal interest, reasoning
Received: 14 Nov 2025; Accepted: 28 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Fabio and Ascone. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Rosa Angela Fabio
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