Being happy with yourself, with who you are is an important factor contributing lots to well-being. This is really helped when we have a way of knowing how we are similar and how we are different from others, and we are happy with that. 

Lets say your personality means you love being out there with people. We identify that as extroversion. Its an inborn preference. Knowing and accepting what your natural preference is, is empowering. On the other hand, some of us find we need a lot of quiet space. We identify that as introversion. 

The area of psychology that studies such in-born individual differences is known as dispositional psychology. 

One of the ways we differ is in the way we naturally prefer to think. These differences reflect the different way our brains are wired. The model underlying the WOT has been established using the methods successfully used in other  areas of dispositional psychology: intelligence and personality. 

Now, let us consider some implications from understanding our specific  way of thinking. 

Our particular way of thinking is associated with who and what  interests us. 

Sometimes we are attracted by people who think very differently, but when we really get to know them they can start to irritate us. This has been identified as "Opposites Attract, then  Attack."

Getting a handle on the particular way we think can offer an explanation as to why we find certain work stressful and other work attractive. It can also help us understand our to-be-preferred role(s) in teamwork. 

Are we a blank slate when we are born, or fully determined by genetics?  Once propositioned  as mutually exclusive, with modern neuroscience/genetics and behaviourism,  we have formed sound research based models of genes interacting with environmental factors. 

So, how fixed are things by our genes? 

We have come to recognise that there is a degree of plasticity of our brains.  Recent research is showing that genes are after all not as fixed as we had come to assume.  None the less there are constrains on us from our genes. We are born with certain individual differences in our dispositions: psychologically these are prinicipally in two main areas known as the domains of our abilities and personality. 

Abilities develop from learning but are constrained in terms of maximum capacity. Just like in physical attributes, there are a lot of environmental influences. To see what level of abilities a person has attained, we apply various  tests of performance. 

Personality also develops much the same way, except we determine personality through asking questions about a person's preferences.  This makes the results more subjective and more easily influenced by social desirability for example. 

Cognition is about thinking, and as such is a significant area of modern psychology.   

Long before modern psychology, there has been interest in differences in how we prefer to think.  Early philosophers showed considerable interest in thinking, raising questions not just about thinking, but also about how we think and why we think. 

Over the last century or so, interest in different ways of thinking by psychologists and teachers has spawned the field known as cognitive style, with an array of differing research traditions and approaches resulting in dozens of different models and conceptualisations. 

Although there is consensus that cognitive style results from some sort of interaction betwen abilities, personality, and experience, there is little consensus of what model/s and constructs best describe meaningfully useful differences. 

The Ways of Thinking (WOT) instrument was created specifically in response to address this lack of consensus. The modelling and test construction applied the advanced psychometric processes  and methodology that successfully had created the Five Factor Model of Personality and underpins the CHC model of intelligence.  Model building involved quantitative and mixed method approaches resulting in a set of variables that are demonstrably of high validity and reliability., as reported in the technical manual. 

As such, the  resulting WOT instrument can be considered a psychometrically reliable and useful measure of an individual's tendency to think in certain ways (for example, thinking creatively).  Like personality a tendency to think in a certain way does not imply a capacity to think in a certain way, only a tendency or disposition. For example, those who tend to "think outside of the square" likely do so most of time but are certainly capable of staying with conventional thinking when required.

Specific technical information is available on request of the technical manual, available from the authors by using the "Contact Us" form