¿What is lateral or divergent thinking? This concept tries to find original and creative solutions to concrete problems, to overcome apparent limitations and learn to give a creative approach to problems and life.
Our mind searches for patterns constantly and adding information based on what we already know. Therefore, a new idea has to struggle with old ideas in order to establish itself. Keep reading this Psychology-Online article and you will learn more about what lateral or divergent thinking is and how you can develop it. In addition, we offer you some exercises with answers to put your lateral thinking to the test!
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. Is cognitive ability It allows us to reach a variety of possibilities when faced with problems, looking for alternative ways to solve them. It includes 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 leave a little of this topic and we try to solve other less scientific things sometimes we do not progress due to the fact of thinking in a way vertical.
Difference between lateral and vertical thinking
Thus, we understand that vertical thinking helps us in most situations, but sometimes we find ourselves in a situation more complex and perhaps this more "logical" thinking is preventing us from taking the leap we need to be able to face a trouble. Lateral thinking allows us to look sideways and it helps us to stimulate our mind by enhancing our creativity to find solutions. Lateral thinking is conceived as a creative complement to vertical thinking, one fosters our ingenuity and the other our logic.
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, assess different perspectives.
Keep in mind that it is not something magical but that it's a habit of mind that is learned and developed. Thinking creatively is learning, not only having the ability to reinvent yourself, but it also implies knowing how to resolve a conflict, and see it from different perspectives to get to solve it assertively.
This means knowing how to choose, from among several solutions, the one that most benefits both parties. involved, without always being the one that we would have chosen at first, by logic or by ethics. Our logic is not the same for everyone and it can fail us when faced with a conflict: as parents, as classmates, as siblings, as a couple, etc.
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 that you are taking for granted for later seek creative solutions to deal with the situation.
- Generate more alternatives than usual to have more solutions to assess.
- Make a brainstorming creative, with everything that comes to mind.
- Identify the dominant idea of the problem to be able 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.
Lateral thinking can be stimulated and trained. Here are 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 ?:
Riddles and lateral thinking 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 outside. When he returns, he gets on the elevator and hits the seventh floor. He then he climbs the ladder to the tenth floor. Why did he decide to go that way?
- Name three consecutive days without using the words "Tuesday," "Thursday," or "Saturday."
- Two people were playing checkers. Out of five games each I win 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?
Do you want to know if you have done well the lateral thinking exercises that we have proposed? Here are some answers to lateral thinking exercises:
- Everyone
- The man is short. His height allows him to press the button for the ground floor, but when he goes up, the button for the seventh floor is the maximum he reaches.
- Yesterday Today and Tomorrow.
- They were playing separately.
- The balloon is deflated.
This article is merely informative, in 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.
