Linda Elder

Dr. Linda Elder is an educational psychologist and a prominent authority on critical thinking. She is President of the Foundation for Critical Thinking and Executive Director of the Center for Critical Thinking. Dr. Elder has taught psychology and critical thinking at the college level and has given presentations to more than 50,000 educators at all levels. She is author of Critical Thinking Therapy: For Happiness and Self-Actualization (2025), Liberating the Mind: Overcoming Sociocentric Thought and Egocentric Tendencies (2019), and has coauthored four books (including 30 Days to Better Thinking and Better Living through Critical Thinking, Fact Over Fake: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Media Bias and Political Propaganda, and Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life) as well as 24 Thinker's Guides.

Dr. Elder has also developed an original stage theory of critical thinking development. Concerned with understanding and illuminating the relationship between thinking and affect, as well as the barriers to critical thinking, Dr. Elder has placed these issues at the center of her thinking and her work.