Creative Thinking vs. Critical Thinking — What's the Difference?
Difference Between Creative Thinking and Critical Thinking
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The pursuit of performance excellence, critical thinking vs. creative thinking.
Creative thinking is a way of looking at problems or situations from a fresh perspective to conceive of something new or original.
Critical thinking is the logical, sequential disciplined process of rationalizing, analyzing, evaluating, and interpreting information to make informed judgments and/or decisions.
Critical Thinking vs. Creative Thinking – Key Differences
- Creative thinking tries to create something new, while critical thinking seeks to assess worth or validity of something that already exists.
- Creative thinking is generative, while critical thinking is analytical.
- Creative thinking is divergent, while critical thinking is convergent.
- Creative thinking is focused on possibilities, while critical thinking is focused on probability.
- Creative thinking is accomplished by disregarding accepted principles, while critical thinking is accomplished by applying accepted principles.
About Creative Thinking
Creative thinking is a process utilized to generate lists of new, varied and unique ideas or possibilities. Creative thinking brings a fresh perspective and sometimes unconventional solution to solve a problem or address a challenge. When you are thinking creatively, you are focused on exploring ideas, generating possibilities, and/or developing various theories.
Creative thinking can be performed both by an unstructured process such as brainstorming, or by a structured process such as lateral thinking.
Brainstorming is the process for generating unique ideas and solutions through spontaneous and freewheeling group discussion. Participants are encouraged to think aloud and suggest as many ideas as they can, no matter how outlandish it may seem.
Lateral thinking uses a systematic process that leads to logical conclusions. However, it involves changing a standard thinking sequence and arriving at a solution from completely different angles.
No matter what process you chose, the ultimate goal is to generate ideas that are unique, useful and worthy of further elaboration. Often times, critical thinking is performed after creative thinking has generated various possibilities. Critical thinking is used to vet those ideas to determine if they are practical.
Creative Thinking Skills
- Open-mindedness
- Flexibility
- Imagination
- Adaptability
- Risk-taking
- Originality
- Elaboration
- Brainstorming
About Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the process of actively analyzing, interpreting, synthesizing, evaluating information gathered from observation, experience, or communication. It is thinking in a clear, logical, reasoned, and reflective manner to make informed judgments and/or decisions.
Critical thinking involves the ability to:
- remain objective
In general, critical thinking is used to make logical well-formed decisions after analyzing and evaluating information and/or an array of ideas.
On a daily basis, it can be used for a variety of reasons including:
- to form an argument
- to articulate and justify a position or point of view
- to reduce possibilities to convergent toward a single answer
- to vet creative ideas to determine if they are practical
- to judge an assumption
- to solve a problem
- to reach a conclusion
Critical Thinking Skills
- Interpreting
- Integrating
- Contrasting
- Classifying
- Forecasting
- Hypothesizing
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Critical thinking vs Creative thinking
Both critical thinking and creative thinking are used for solving problems , only in different ways. For critical thinking, the process is structured and methodical. For creative thinking, the process is fluid and somewhat experimental. Both thinking strategies are useful, with neither being innately superior to the other and in some unexpected ways even being linked. Now without further ado, let us explore the various components of critical thinking and creative thinking.
The Intersection of Critical Thinking & Creative Thinking
Critical thinking:.
Critical thinking as we understand it can be traced all the way back to Ancient Greece in the thoughts of Socrates as recorded by Plato. Critical thinking can be summarized as the careful analysis of facts in order to form judgments. With critical, being derived from the word critic, to think critically is to critique the process of thinking itself. In layman’s terms, this means to develop an efficient and ordered system of both written and oral discourse. There are different subsets of critical thinking , which broadly speaking are; unbiased, skeptical, and rational. Let’s break down these different sections individually.
The unbiased system attempts to remove all possible biases from thinking . Everybody has some form of bias or another. Perhaps a personal bias that one has towards someone or something. Or be it a more ethnocentric bias that prevents an individual from being able to see past the beliefs instilled in them by their culture. The unbiased analysis aims to view things from an objective instead of a subjective stand-point.
The skeptical system is one that encourages both doubt and constant questioning. That includes careful examination of both longstanding beliefs and dogmas. As far as skeptics are concerned nothing is beyond the realms of inquisition. If evidence is not available to support beliefs, then they should not be accepted.
The rationality system is based on obtaining rationality, which can be defined as one being agreeable to reason. What is reason? In philosophical terms, reason is the ability to make sense of the world around us through the application of logic. Logic is a key tenet of the three systems and the cornerstone of critical thinking.
Logic is the systematic study of premises and the arguments that they form and is judged based on their validity (whether the statements make sense and lead to the conclusion) and their truth value (whether or not statements are true or false). There are three primary types of logical reasoning; deductive, inductive, and abductive. Deductive reasoning leads to certain conclusions, inductive reasoning leads to probable conclusions, and abductive reasoning is a quick and practical approach to logic.
When examining deductive arguments, we begin by not looking at the truth value of the premises, but if they lead to the conclusion in a coherent manner. If they do not then the argument is deemed invalid and unsound. If the argument is deemed valid we then examine the truth value of the premises. If true, then the argument is sound, if they are not true then the argument is still valid but unsound.
For inductive arguments, a very similar approach is taken to deductive arguments. First, we begin by examining the validity of the premises. If they are invalid the argument is weak and by extension uncogent. If the premises are valid, the argument is strong and we then examine their truth value. If false then the argument while strong is uncogent, if true however the argument is both strong and cogent.
Abductive arguments are drawn from the heuristic technique. The heuristic technique entails non-optimal problem-solving solutions, but are none the less sufficient for immediate decisions and approximations. Abductive reasoning includes such tactics as making an educated guess, following the general rule of thumb, or simple trial and error.
Creative thinking:
Creativity itself is the process where something truly new, but also valuable is formed. Be it a new idea, invention, or piece of art. Unlike logical thinking, there is no stringent set of rules or guidelines for how to undergo creative thinking . The process itself isn’t even entirely understood and there is much speculation and theorizing as to how creative thinking works, with no theory currently set in stone. This makes it a little more challenging to explain how to become a creative thinker. In attempting to do so we will go over some general principles of creative thinking and theories that may explain it.
One of the most obvious traits of creative thinkers is that they are open-minded individuals. Basically, they are willing to at least consider new ideas that other people would either never have thought of or would outright refuse due to a close-minded nature. Being open-minded doesn’t mean automatically accepting every new idea that comes your way. It just means having the willingness to unbiasedly look at things from a new perspective.
In a sense being open-minded can be viewed as somewhat pragmatic as it allows people to examine, chose, and combine different aspects of various ideas to make something both new and useful. Creative thinking also enhances communications as through being open to new experiences a person is better able to talk and work with those with different beliefs than oneself.
Creative thinking has been hypothesized by some scientists as being a part of the evolutionary process. Some scientists think that by thinking of things in abstract terms we were better able to come up with new and innovative solutions in changing environments. Various scientists and academics have attempted to map out the process of creative thinking, one popular theory being largely developed by the psychologist J.P Guilford. Guilford helped develop the theory of divergent thinking.
Divergent thinking is the process some think is responsible for producing creativity and this is done by examining many possible solutions. Divergent thinking is more spontaneous and doesn’t occur in a linear manner. With divergent thinking a great many possible activities are explored over a short period of time, often with unexpected yet original connections being made. Common activities to help engage in divergent thinking are to create a list of questions, taking the time to think and meditate on ideas, artistic endeavors such as writing and drawing are also encouraged.
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