– What is lateral thinking?
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Psychologists measure this by asking questions like:
How many uses for a fork can you think of in 60 seconds?
Most people will be able to think of stabbing food, weapon, digging. But it will take a lot of lateral thinking to think of haircomb, painting, sculpting clay, back scratcher, etc.
The more things you can think of in a limited time is a proxy for how creative you are. This is associated with how much dopamine is in your brain. More dopamine means that you’re more creative. This is why people who are schizophrenic (exceedingly high dopamine) have audio and visual hallucinations. They are taking sensory information and creating connections that are so lateral that they are separate from reality.
Creativity and lateral thinking though are different in so much as you can have very different ideas that no one has ever thought of before, but an idea must be original *and* useful in order to be considered creative. While audio and visual hallucinations are an example of lateral thinking, they are not considered creative because they are not useful.
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