Using inspiration from your previous brainstorms, you can truly make your event the greatest it can be, or solve any problem efficiently. Therefore, we could also conclude that this type of thinking is also born out of a certain attitude towards life: free, cheerful, nonconformist, open to new experiences… It might interest you. Divergent thinking is the capacity to find relationships between ideas, concepts, and processes that, at first glance, lack any similarity. Nearly two hundred art and psychology students participated, first by measuring their moods with an adjective checklist before performing the required tasks.

Give your team members the opportunity to choose which type of thinking they would like to engage in (if they have to pick. It was actually a bestseller and garnered the American Psychiatric Association an extensive amount of money.But when you do come up with an “out of the box” solution that does fit into your constraints, you’ve got a great solution on your hands. A series of related studies suggested a link between positive mood and the promotion of cognitive flexibility. In the meeting mentioned at the beginning of this article, your team was constantly switching back and forth between convergent and divergent thinking.

Autism is a broad set of conditions that may include challenges with socializing and social skills, repetitive behaviors, and speech difficulties that can lead people to communicate via Alternative Augmentative Communication, writing, typing, or sign language instead of verbally. In a study documented by Lieberman, [2] the relationship between these two traits was examined, with playfulness being "conceptualized and operationally defined in terms of five traits: physical, social and cognitive spontaneity; manifest joy; and sense of humour". However, our schools and universities still prioritize a very convergent type of thinking in their methodology. In a study at the University of Bergen, Norway, the effects of positive and negative mood on divergent-thinking were examined.

comRAT-C: A computational compound Remote Associates Test solver based on language data and its comparison to human performance". Showalter notes that since the eighteenth century, there were often literary references to a kind of “English malady”: “The English have long regarded their country, with a mixture of complacency and sorrow, as the global headquarters of insanity.

Between a flawed system that focuses on younger, male populations, and the fact that girls are conditioned from a young age to blend in, women often don’t learn about their neurological differences until they are adults, if at all. You will find that some team members have a hard time with convergent thinking, or others fail to speak up once the convergent thinking is over!

The book de-pathologizes those of us who most profoundly and intensely think and feel the world around us. As you notice these patterns, you will get a better sense of which "group" prefers one style over the other. Give two teams a set amount of time (maybe 30-60 minutes) to brainstorm all ideas without any sort of dissent or questioning.