– 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.
Imagine you’re on a plain and see one person coming for you. You might think that that’s ok and continue walking.
Now imagine that instead of continue walking, you’d make some lateral steps and you might see that behind that person there are either 2 persons hiding behind, or the person is carrying someone wounded. Now you’d make a completely different decision, either to hide or to run for help.
Lateral thinking would mean to look at a problem from a different angle so that you have a different set of constraints to steer towards a decision.
I remember as a kid walking along, chatting to my year 5 teacher, and I said something, god knows what, and she straight up stops walking, tilts her head to one side, pauses for (what felt like) a long time, then says “…sleepiestcatmum, you really are a lateral thinker, aren’t you?”
As far as I can tell from that exchange, lateral thinking means there’s some cog in your brain that just don’t work the way other people’s do. Distinctly remember my head working overtime to figure out whether I’d been complimented or insulted.
There’s no specific definition. Linear thinking is the more traditional way of analysing things. A leads to B, therefore B leads to C. It’s trying to build up on what you know to deduce what you’re trying to get at. It basically follows a line of steps to a result.
Lateral thinking is when you do not follow this approach and instead approach the matter in an unconventional way. It’s generally harder to do since with this approach it’s more likely to get nowhere than have a breakthrough, but it is what some circumstances need. There’s no specific way to go about thinking laterally, though the classic example is the story of the Gordian Knot. In other words, it’s thinking outside the box.
When you see the defensive end crashing the QB.
Once he turns his shoulders 90°, he’s not going to be able to redirect out to the back, so you plant your outside foot, make the option pitch, and then lean backwards to absorb the contact so you don’t get crunched.
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