What Abstract Thinking Is About

You’ve probably heard of abstract thinking before. But do you really know what it is? It is basically a type of thinking where you reflect on things that  do not occur in the space where you are at that time. In addition, it is a way of thinking where you reflect on general concepts and principles that can apply to both your daily life and a professional environment.

Are there any benefits to abstract thinking? Well, according to a study conducted at the University of Amsterdam, people feel more empowered when given the opportunity to think abstractly. This shows that abstract thinking is sometimes preferable to concrete thinking, which is more limited.

Want to learn more about abstract thinking? Below we tell you how it differs from concrete thinking, why you use it and what benefits it provides. Read on!

Abstract thinking: what is it and what benefits does it provide?

According to psychology, abstract thinking is the ability to understand important and common principles. This helps you to remember certain aspects of a particular situation, to anticipate as well as to plan for the future. It also helps you to think symbolically and to draw conclusions. It is the  opposite of concrete thinking  which, in this case, is about literal thinking based on the moment and place right now.

What are the benefits of thinking in this way? As you can see, it helps you to see the connection between different ideas, beliefs and elements in both the external and internal environment. In addition, it helps you to invent, create, imagine, develop new ideas, learn from the past and reflect on the future.

This type of thinking also constitutes a cognitive ability. More specifically, this is one of the last cognitive abilities that humans acquire on an evolutionary level.

We will now move on and learn a little more details about this type of thinking.

We begin with some of the properties of abstract thinking.

Characteristics

These characteristics are about the form, content and functions behind this type of thinking. In short, abstract thinking is as follows:

• Focuses on elements that are not present (it extends beyond the environment in which you are now).
• Allows you to imagine, create and invent.

• Stimulates reflective thinking and deep thinking.
• Helps you find different meanings and purposes of a particular situation.
• Allows the creation of interesting and abstract ideas.
• Is a hypothetical-deductive thinking. In other words, it helps you to build hypotheses without the need to test them empirically.
• Is flexible, which means it stimulates discussion.

Example

To better understand this type of thinking, let’s take a concrete example: a person who thinks of something other than what is in front of their nose. As a contrast: Imagine a person thinking of a specific book. This is not abstract thinking. Abstract thinking, on the other hand, is when the person imagines other books that they do not see in front of them in the room.

Abstract thinking is also when you think of books that you think represent you, or books that you have read, or books that have meant a lot to you. As you can see, the imagination has a large part in abstract thinking. When an artist thinks about what would be the best colors in a painting she is going to create, when a musician thinks about which note best concludes her symphony, it is also abstract thinking.

Let’s look at some other examples. A composer who uses his ideas to create the lyrics to a song, a mathematician who analyzes numbers to draw a conclusion (in the same way that a physicist deduces meaningful connections from his data) – all this is abstract thinking. You may not have thought about it, but you use yourself daily in this thinking  when analyzing different situations that mean you have to think beyond what is right here and now.

When do you think abstractly? Piaget’s hypothesis

The Swiss epistemologist and biologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is one who spoke of abstract thinking. He even developed a hypothesis that said that abstract thinking, like the concept of reasoning, is something that comes in our last stage of development  (the stage of formal operations). In fact, Piaget called abstract thinking “formal thinking” precisely because he considered it to belong to this stage of development.

The stage for formal operations begins at the age of 11-15 and lasts until adulthood. The following elements are important at this stage:

• Hypothetical reasoning
• Abstract reasoning
• Systematic problem solving
• Abstract thinking

According to Piaget, this type of thinking is closely linked to logic and the  ability to solve problems. This is one of the distinct characteristics of man, which distinguishes man from other animals.

How to use it

Can one use this thinking in daily life? In which areas? Well, it can be very useful when it comes to your personal development, when it comes to abstract areas such as spirituality.

On the other hand, it can also be useful in areas such as mathematics and science, as analytical reasoning requires the use of abstract thinking. Remember that in order to be able to understand a certain subject or a certain theory, you need to be able to connect it to real life so that it becomes more practical.

Differences between abstract thinking and concrete thinking

We said at the beginning of this article that concrete thinking is the opposite of abstract thinking. But in what way do these areas differ from each other? Abstract thinking helps you process, describe and reshape mental information. Concrete thinking does the same thing but then concerning objects in the physical world.

On the other hand, as we also mentioned, abstract thinking is hypothetical-deductive. This means that you can create hypotheses without the need to test them empirically. However, knowledge through concrete thinking can only be formulated through direct experiences with the phenomena in question (this can then be said to be a form of inductive thinking).

Abstract thinking goes from the general to the specific, which means that you can formulate laws and theories, for example. Concrete thinking, on the other hand, goes from the specific to the general. And finally, abstract thinking allows one to reflect and debate, because it is a flexible thinking; with concrete thinking these variations are not possible because it is a thinking based on the tangible and obvious.

As you can see, we use abstract thinking in all possible areas and it has clear advantages when it comes to stimulating other types of thinking such as reflection and reasoning. There are also several other types of thinking: convergent, divergent, practical, theoretical and literal. But which is the best? All and nothing. The best is always  the one that best suits the task  you want to perform. This explains why flexibility is an important benefit of human cognitive ability.