Thinking out of the box!

Puzzle 1: How do you put an elephant in a refrigerator?

Answer:
· Adult: You open the door, put the elephant in and close the door

· 3 year old kid: (with a shocked expression on her face) You can’t put an elephant in the refrigerator! The elephant is big and the fridge is so much smaller than the elephant!

(the adult then convinces her that the fridge will be as big as the elephant or the elephant will be as small as the fridge)

Puzzle 2: How do you put a giraffe in a refrigerator?

Answer:
· Adult: You open the door, pull out the elephant, put the giraffe in and close the door

· 3 year old kid: You open the door and put the giraffe in. The giraffe is thin and can fit in with the elephant because the fridge is big enough to hold the elephant. And since both animals are herbivores, they won’t eat each other.

….and we think we become more knowledgeable and ‘think smarter as we grow’. We pride ourselves in learning the new technique called ‘lateral thinking’ as adults and thinking laterally though it seems to me that the 3 year old really thought out of the box compared to any adult.

Don’t believe me? Ask any adult the 2 questions and I am sure you will get the same answers 90% of the times. Ask a bunch of pre-schoolers the 2 questions and I am sure they will bring in myriad perspectives to these puzzles that supposedly test memory and logical reasoning.

Are we all then born lateral thinkers and does our conditioning ruin our ability to think creatively?