3 Modes Of Thinking: Lateral, Divergent & Convergent Thought

How do you solve problems? This is a question that might come up at a job interview and leave you wondering what they’re asking. You solve them well, right? But that’s not what they want to know. The interviewer is interested in your approach to solving a problem and how your brain works.

What Are the Modes of Thinking?

Interestingly, the concepts of different modes of thinking and solving problems were created by Joy Paul Guilford, a leader in American Psychology. Initially, he developed a theory of creativity in the 1950s, expanded that to include his concept of divergent thinking, and then rolled that into his idea of creativity in the 1970s.

So, the idea of the three modes of thinking is still fairly new, it’s been evolving, and it’s still evolving today. The modes are currently:

• Convergent Thinking

• Divergent Thinking

• Lateral Thinking

Each mode is considered a different approach and deserves a deeper review.

Convergent Thinking

The easiest way to explain convergent thinking is to look at a basic math problem such as 2 + 2 = 4. The idea is that there’s just one right answer, and you use logic to get there. If you were posed the question of 2 + 2, you’d imagine two items sitting on one side, and then two more items joining them. The answer, of course, is four.

This has become very rote, and it’s something we don’t even think about anymore, but when we first started learning, this was a prime example of convergent thinking. We had to use logic to know what happened when two items joined another two items and how many there would be.

In the business world, most of the situations you encounter won’t be quite that simple. You might also find that more than one person is involved in finding solutions, and as such, it can get a little more complicated. But if everyone is using convergent thinking, then the answer should always be the same because there is just one answer.

Accountants and other professionals in the finance world will often have convergent thinking situations. They might have different ways to approach an accounting situation, but if you set several professionals up and defined the way you wanted them to find an answer, they’d all come up with the same answer. This is convergent thinking.

Convergent thinking can also be called critical thinking, vertical thinking, analytical thinking, and linear thinking.

Divergent Thinking

If you’re familiar with the Veronica Roth young adult dystopian series of books and movies, then you’ve heard the term divergent and may believe that it has something to do with special powers. That’s not actually the case.

When you understand convergent and divergent thought processes, the book makes a little more sense because it’s roughly based on this psychological concept.

According to Guilford, divergent thinking is a way of thinking that generates creative ideas by exploring many solutions. In the Roth series, a divergent individual shows characteristics from more than one faction.

The Roth characters who were divergent didn’t see just one answer to questions. They were able to look at them from different ways, see different sides of a problem, and come up with many different outcomes.

Let’s try a little divergent thinking exercise. Take our simple convergent math problem, 2 + 2. How could we turn this into something that doesn’t equal four? Open the mind a bit and try to develop a way that putting two things with two other things would not create four things.

What if there were two male rabbits and you added two female rabbits? In a very short period, you could have a lot more than four rabbits. Or what if you put two drops of water with two other drops of water? If they pooled together, you’d have one big drop of water and not four separate ones.

With a divergent thinking process, there are many different answers or possible solutions to a question.

Sometimes, in the business world, this ability to look beyond the obvious and “only” answer and come up with the “what ifs” is extremely important. It can lead to problem-solving before there’s even a problem. It also leads to creative ideas for problem-solving.

Divergent thinking is sometimes called creative thinking or horizontal thinking.

Lateral Thinking Process

Finally, we come to lateral thinking, which uses both convergent and divergent thinking processes. Many people like to link lateral thought with the phrase “out of the box thinking,” which might be a good way to envision it.

Inside-the-box solutions are the logical, one-right-answer ways of solving problems. The outside-the-box problem-solving process opens the answer field to many more concepts and possibilities.

Lateral thinking is not a concept introduced by Guilford. Edward de Bono created it in 1967, and it’s an example of how the ideas of what thought process is and how it works are still evolving.

This has been rolled into an overview of problem-solving and brainstorming that makes it its own category, but it’s still largely reliant on convergent and divergent thought. It’s likened to the ability to use both convergent and divergent processes, but it does lean more into divergent thought.

When using lateral thinking, the individual needs to be able to see the right answer that convergent thought would create. A lateral thinker can also see the divergent answers. They can not only look at the right solution or the what-if solution, but they can pull them all together.

This is very useful in many business situations because they believe that these individuals are more rounded and advanced in their thought formation process and can see ideas in a more evolved way.

The Changing Thought Process Frontier

In the past, and still today, the tendency was to categorize people. They’re one way or another. They’re convergent thinkers, or they’re divergent thinkers. Then, people tended to set one category above the other and give them a ranking of sorts.

So, back when convergent and divergent thinking concepts came out, people thought that convergent thinkers were “worse” than divergent ones. They weren’t well-rounded, they couldn’t see other solutions, they weren’t creative. But that’s not necessarily true, and isn’t being able to find the one right solution a good skill, too?

On the opposite side, some divergent thinkers were seen as lofty and scattered and unable to develop the right answers, but incredibly good at creative ones. Again, there are good and bad sides to this way of thought.

This might be why the idea of pulling convergent and divergent thought together and creating the lateral model came from. Is this the end of the thought process debate? Absolutely not.

There will always be people diving into the brain and trying to determine how it works. What seems to have come out of the study so far is the understanding that there are no absolutes, and most people use a combination of thought processes.

How to Answer the Interview Question

This takes us back to that interview question where you’ve been asked how you solve problems. Well, how do you solve problems? Are you someone who looks for the right answer using all of the knowledge you’ve accumulated? Or are you someone who looks for many different answers to see which one could be right?

Maybe you don’t even look for the answer. Maybe you like to take a question and break it down into many different possible solutions and then further examine all of the solutions and their potential outcomes.

To answer that question, you need to know a lot about yourself and how your own brain works. But the interviewer might not want you to go that deep in your job interview.

If you can focus and let them know which way you lean; convergent, divergent, or lateral, it’s probably a good enough answer. If they want to know more and understand your thought process further, they’ll ask some probing questions.

What’s even more interesting, the way you answer the question might give them an even better view of your thought process than your actual answer. Someone who immediately says “divergent” is actually giving a convergent answer.

It’s stated as though it is the right answer, and there is no other alternative answer. Funny how that works and can betray the words that you’re actually saying.

If you’re worried about this question coming up in a job interview, it’s a good idea to learn enough about the field to understand what sort of thinker they’d prefer.

Are they looking for creative people who come up with fresh ideas? Does their field rely on specific answers that don’t have a lot of wiggle room for errors, or is it a field that embraces many different ways of thinking?

Author

Kristin Kizer

Kristin Kizer is an award-winning writer, television and documentary producer, and content specialist who has worked on a wide variety of written, broadcast, and electronic publications. A former writer/producer for The Discovery Channel, she is now a freelance writer and delighted to be sharing her talents and time with the wonderful Zippia audience.