{"id":2536,"date":"2019-11-07T11:51:01","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T15:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=2536"},"modified":"2022-03-09T10:38:47","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T14:38:47","slug":"associative-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/associative-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Associative Thinking: How to Be Creative + Why You&#8217;re Biased"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/what-is-associative-thinking\/\">associative thinking<\/a>? What is its function, and how might it lead to bias?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Associative thinking is fast, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/subconscious-thoughts\/\">subconscious thinking<\/a> that associates one concept with another. The ideas can involve memories, emotions, and physical sensations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ll cover how associative thinking works and how you use it in everyday life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Associative<\/strong> Thinking<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Think of your brain as a vast <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/network-of-ideas\/\">network of ideas<\/a> connected to each other. These ideas can be concrete or abstract. The ideas can involve memories, emotions, and physical sensations.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When one node in the network is activated, say by seeing a word or image, <strong>it automatically activates its surrounding nodes<\/strong>, rippling outward like a pebble thrown in water. This is associative thinking, or the idea of association in psychology.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Associative Thinking Example<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>As an example, consider the following two words:<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBananas Vomit\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Suddenly, within a second, reading those two words may have triggered a host of different ideas. You might have pictured yellow fruits; felt a physiological aversion in the pit of your stomach; remembered the last time you vomited; thought about other diseases &#8211; <strong>all done automatically without your conscious control<\/strong>.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The evocations can be self-reinforcing &#8211; a word evokes memories, which evoke emotions, which evoke facial expressions, which evoke other reactions, and which reinforce other ideas.&nbsp;This is the process of associative thinking.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Links between ideas consist of several forms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Cause \u2192 Effect<\/li><li>Belonging to the Same Category (lemon \u2192 fruit)<\/li><li>Things to their properties (lemon \u2192 yellow, sour)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Associative Thinking is Fast and Subconscious<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In the next associative thinking exercise, you\u2019ll be shown three words. Think of a new word that fits with each of the three words in a phrase.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are the three words:<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>cottage Swiss cake<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ready?<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A common answer is \u201ccheese.\u201d Cottage cheese, Swiss cheese, and cheesecake. You might have thought of this quickly, without really needing to engage your brain deeply.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The next associative thinking exercise is a little different. You\u2019ll be given two sets of three words. Within seconds, decide which one <em>feels<\/em> better, without defining the new word:<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>sleep mail switch<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>salt deep foam<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ready?<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You might have found that the second one felt better. Isn\u2019t that odd? There is a very faint signal from the associative machine of associative thinking that says \u201cthese three words seem to connect better than the other three.\u201d This occurred long before you consciously found the word (which is sea).&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Associative Thinking with Context<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For another associative thinking example, consider the sentence \u201cAna approached the bank.\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You automatically pictured a lot of things. The bank as a financial institution, Ana walking toward it.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now let\u2019s add a sentence to the front: \u201cThe group canoed down the river. Ana approached the bank.\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This context changes your interpretation automatically. Now you can see how automatic your first reading of the sentence was, and how little you questioned the meaning of the word \u201cbank.\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Associative Thinking Evaluate Surprise<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The purpose of associations is to prepare you for events that have become more likely, and to evaluate how surprising the event is.<\/strong>&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The more external inputs associate with each other, and the more they associate with your internal mind, the less surprising an event is, the more associative thinking acts by intuition, and the harder it is to detect errors.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Consider this sentence: \u201chow many animals of each kind did Moses take into the ark?\u201d&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The correct answer is none &#8211; it was <em>Noah<\/em> who took animals into the ark. But the idea of animals, Moses, and the ark all set up a biblical context that associated together. Moses was not a surprising name in this context.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, say \u201chow many animals of each kind did Kanye West take into the ark?\u201d and the illusion falls apart. Kanye West is not congruent with the mention of animals and ark, and so the name evokes surprise, thus calling in System 2 to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Normative Thinking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Associative thinking maintains a model of your world by determining what is normal and not.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Violations of normality can be detected extremely quickly, within fractions of a second.<\/strong> If you hear someone with an upper-class English accent say, \u201cI have a large tattoo on my rear end,\u201d your brain spikes in activity within 0.2 seconds. This is surprisingly fast, given the large amount of world knowledge that needs to be invoked to recognize the discrepancy (that rich people don\u2019t typically get tattoos).<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also communicate by norms and shared knowledge. When I mention a table, you know it\u2019s a solid object with a level surface and fewer than 25 legs. It\u2019s your System-1 brain that makes this immediate, unconscious association.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: this also explains why many moral arguments are based around semantics. In different communities, people will have different conceptions of what the same word means, like \u201clife\u201d in the abortion debate. The norms are entirely different, but often people don\u2019t realize this.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is associative thinking? What is its function, and how might it lead to bias? Associative thinking is fast, subconscious thinking that associates one concept with another. The ideas can involve memories, emotions, and physical sensations. We&#8217;ll cover how associative thinking works and how you use it in everyday life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-2536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","tag-thinking-fast-and-slow","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Associative Thinking: How to Be Creative + Why You&#039;re Biased - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Associative thinking is fast, subconscious thinking that associates one concept with another. 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