¿What is lateral or divergent thinking?? This concept is about seeking original and creative solutions to specific problems, overcoming apparent limitations and learning to give a creative approach to problems and life.
Our mind looks for patterns constantly and adds information based on what we already know. Therefore, a new idea has to fight with old ideas in order to establish itself. Keep reading this Psychology-Online article and you will learn in more depth what lateral or divergent thinking is and how you can develop it. In addition, we offer you some exercises with answers to test your lateral thinking!
What is lateral or divergent thinking?
Lateral or divergent thinking is a concept created in the late 60s by the psychologist Edward de Bono in his book The Used of Lateral Thinking. This allows us to achieve a variety of possibilities when faced with problems, searching for alternative ways to resolve them. It covers more creative ideas, trying not to fall into the logical and obvious guidelines that we normally use.
Lateral thinking according to Edward de Bono
Edward de Bono, with the concept of lateral thinking, aims to restructure these pre-established patterns, open our mind and avoid always thinking in the same way, thus achieving more creative results. De Bono reasons that current thinking methods serve us for more scientific and technological fields, but when we go a little outside of this topic and try to solve other less scientific things, sometimes we do not progress due to the fact that we are thinking vertically.
Difference between lateral and vertical thinking
We understand, therefore, that vertical thinking helps us in most situations, but sometimes we find ourselves in a more complex situation and this more “logical” thinking may be preventing us from taking the leap we need to be able to face a problem. lateral thinking allows us to look to the sides and helps us stimulate our mind, enhancing our creativity to look for solutions. Lateral thinking is conceived as a creative complement to vertical thinking, one encourages our ingenuity and the other our logic.
Lateral thinking according to psychology
Lateral or divergent thinking is based on three factors:
- Originality: the ability to produce curious and different ideas.
- Fluency: produce several solutions based on a single stimulus
- Flexibility: rethink preconceived ideas, reinterpret, value different perspectives.
It must be taken into account that this is not something magical but rather It’s a mental habit that is learned and developed. Thinking creatively is a learning process, not only having the ability to reinvent oneself, but it also involves knowing and seeing it from different perspectives to arrive at resolve it assertively.
This means knowing how to choose, among several solutions, the one that most benefits both parties involved, without always being the one we would have chosen in the first place, by logic or ethics. Our logic is not the same for everyone and can fail us when faced with a conflict: as parents, as classmates, as siblings, as a couple, etc.
Learning to think: How can I develop lateral thinking?
According to the practice of psychology, there are several techniques to develop lateral thinking:
- Think about the topic in question as if you were hearing it for the first time and analyze the information you are taking for granted and then look for creative solutions to face the situation.
- Generate more alternatives than usual to have more solutions to evaluate.
- Make a brainstorm creative, with everything that comes to mind.
- Identify the dominant idea of the problem in order to propose real alternatives.
- Divide the problem or situation into parts in order to order them differently and generate more meanings.
- Do exercises to stimulate your creativity. Below, we propose several exercises that will help you develop your lateral thinking.
Train your lateral thinking! Riddles, exercises and examples
Lateral thinking can be stimulated and trained. Below you will find some riddles to stimulate lateral thinking.
Eye! some may be a challenge since we are not used to seeing things from another perspective. Shall we start?:
Lateral thinking puzzles and exercises
- Some months have 31 days, others only 30. How many have 28 days?
- A man lives on the tenth floor of a building. Every day he takes the elevator from his house to the ground floor so he can go out to the street. When he returns, he gets on the elevator and hits the seventh floor. He then climbs the stairs to the tenth floor. Why does he decide to take that path?
- Name three consecutive days without using the words “Tuesday”, “Thursday” or “Saturday”.
- Two people were playing checkers. Of five games each one won three. How can that be possible?
- How is it possible to puncture a balloon without allowing air to escape and without the balloon making noise?
Answers to the exercises
Do you want to know if you have done the lateral thinking exercises that we have proposed correctly? Here are some answers to lateral thinking exercises:
- All
- The man is short. His height allows him to press the ground floor button, but when he goes up, the seventh floor button is the maximum he can reach.
- Yesterday Today and Tomorrow.
- They were playing separately.
- The balloon is deflated.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- De Bono, Edward. Creative thinking: The power of lateral thinking for the creation of new ideas. Paidós Editorial.