55 pages • 1 hour read
Six Thinking Hats
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Key Figures
Edward de Bono (The Author)
Edward de Bono was born in Malta in 1933. A precocious student, he earned a medical degree at the University of Malta and went on to study at Oxford, where he earned a Master’s in psychology and physiology in 1957 and a D. Phil. in Medicine in 1961. He later attended Cambridge, where he earned a PhD in medicine. He taught at both universities, among others.
As a practicing physician, he worked with self-organizing systems such as the glands, respiration, and circulation, and wondered if the same principles could be applied to the brain. He concluded that the mind does function as a self-organizing pattern, developing familiar routines that help individuals deal with complexity. He wasn’t alone in this conclusion. Behavioral scientist Daniel Kahneman (1934-2024), author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, studied decision-making and theorized that the mind both makes fast, automatic choices and slower, more deliberate ones, with the fast decisions often overriding the ones requiring more focus.
De Bono believed that this aspect of the mind makes it difficult to change one’s perception. He advocated countering the mind’s natural tendency to form patterns by disrupting the thought process, a process he called “lateral thinking” in his 1967 book The Use of Lateral Thinking. The opposite of vertical thinking, where only one answer to a question is sought, the phrase describes using unorthodox methods to solve problems by generating as many alternative answers as possible.
Where lateral thinking is used to create ideas, the Six Thinking Hats method, which de Bono calls “parallel thinking,” is used to explore, develop, and implement them. All members of a decision-making team use a single way of looking at an issue at the same time. Then they all change directions and look at the issue differently. There are six different ways to view the issue, one for each hat: Fact-gathering (white), emotion and instincts (red), logic and caution (black), benefits, value, and optimism (yellow), creativity (green), and evaluating the process (blue). A team member who goes off-track can be reminded to take off a particular hat and put on another one.
De Bono says he uses hats as his central metaphor because of the association between thinking and “thinking caps” along with the idea that one “changes hats” to take on different roles. He aligns his approach with what he considers Confucian thinking; it ignores a Freudian-type or Western reliance on analysis to explain actions and instead encourages certain behaviors.
De Bono wrote over 60 books and served as a consultant to numerous corporations, including IBM, Exxon, DuPont, General Foods, and Ford. He died in 2021; the de Bono Group carries on his work through training programs and lectures.
Confucius
Confucius was a Chinese philosopher who lived around 551-479 BCE. His teachings emphasized treating others correctly, with a strong emphasis on the nature and duties of each particular social relationship. Of the various ancient philosophers to whom de Bono refers, he claims that Confucius is the one who aligns most closely with his own beliefs about the thinking process. De Bono believes Confucian thought does not rely on argument, as Western philosophies do.
Socrates
Socrates (c. 470-399 BCE) is one of three ancient Greek philosophers, along with Plato and Aristotle, who represent Western-style thinking to de Bono. He created the Socratic dialogue, a form of argument or debate structured in questions and answers. While de Bono groups Socrates with Plato and Aristotle, it is important to note that Socrates did not write his own ideas down, and that much of what tends to be regarded as “Socratic” relies heavily on the writings of Plato.
Plato
Plato (ca. 429 BCE-347 BCE) was a student of Socrates. Plato wrote numerous philosophical dialogues that featured Socrates as a character. While de Bono claims that Greek philosophers like Plato were heavily focused on what is, Plato is often regarded as being more of an idealist than Aristotle. His most famous treatise, The Republic, explored the possibility of an ideal society based on philosophical and ethical speculation. Other dialogues, such as the Symposium, feature multiple speakers putting forth competing ideas about a topic, such as the nature of love. De Bono’s habit of treating Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as interchangeable in the Western tradition is frequently reductive, as he ignores the important differences between them.
Aristotle
A student of Plato’s, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was himself a teacher whose philosophy, called formal logic, judged logic by a method of inclusion and exclusion. To de Bono, the legacy of Aristotle’s beliefs is that Western thought became concerned with “what is” rather than what can be. The author’s system focuses on the latter.
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