Six Thinking Hats
De Bono's parallel-thinking method using six distinct perspective 'hats.'
Six Thinking Hats is a parallel-thinking technique developed by Edward de Bono and presented in his 1985 book of the same name, in which group members deliberately and simultaneously adopt one of six perspectives represented by colored 'hats': White (facts and information), Red (feelings and intuition), Black (caution and risks), Yellow (benefits and optimism), Green (creativity and alternatives), and Blue (process management and meta-thinking). The technique's distinctive contribution is forcing parallel rather than adversarial thinking — instead of one person advocating optimism while another advocates caution, all participants think in the same mode at the same time, switching modes together. De Bono's argument was that traditional Western argumentation (modeled on Socratic dialectic and adversarial legal debate) wastes group cognitive resources on point-scoring, while parallel thinking generates more comprehensive analysis in less time.
Core components
- Six colored hats: White (facts), Red (feelings), Black (caution), Yellow (benefits), Green (creativity), Blue (process)
- Parallel rather than adversarial thinking
- Synchronized hat-switching across the group
- Sequenced application (typical orderings depend on context)
- Critique of traditional adversarial argumentation
Primary use case
Group decision-making and brainstorming meetings; facilitation tool for diverse-perspective discussions; teaching tool for distinguishing thinking modes; structured creative-problem-solving sessions in corporate and educational settings.
Common criticisms
- Empirical validation of effectiveness is limited and depends heavily on facilitation quality
- trademarked and certification-driven, with substantial commercialization through de Bono's organization
- categorization of thinking modes is psychologically simplified and not based on cognitive science
- can become performative role-play rather than genuine perspective-taking
- cultural fit varies — works better in cultures comfortable with explicit role assignment
- doesn't address skill differences in each thinking mode
- can be applied superficially to satisfy the format without changing actual reasoning.
Lineage
- Siblings
- Lateral Thinking, SCAMPER
- Derived from
- Lateral Thinking