The ladder of abstraction was created by American linguist S.I. Hayakawa in his book Language in Thought and Action. The ladder of abstraction is a mental model that describes varying levels of abstraction and concreteness as one moves up or down a hypothetical ladder.
Understanding the ladder of abstraction
In the book, Hayakawa describes the way that people think or communicate in varying degrees of abstraction.
Intangible abstract concepts occupy the top rung of a hypothetical ladder, while tangible concrete particulars occupy the bottom rung. In the middle rungs exist forms of communication with characteristics of each.
The Linnaean system of classification is one example. The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) occupies the bottom rung of the ladder as a concrete, tangible species of animal.
The top rung is occupied by the abstract, intangible Kingdom Animalia. Middle rungs are occupied by the remaining hierarchical taxa, including genus, family, order, class, and phylum.
As one moves up the ladder, there is a decreasing level of concreteness and an increasing level of abstractness.
Implications for effective communication
Attaining the right level of abstraction is essential to establishing context and becoming an effective communicator.
Audiences need both concrete details and abstract concepts, so communicators should spend time on the middle rungs for balance and rhythm.
In general, however, the communicator should never linger in one place for too long.
Lingering at either extreme of the ladder is called dead-level abstracting and commonly occurs in one of two scenarios:
Stuck at the bottom of the ladder (concrete-centric)
Where a project manager presents detailed and specific budget data without explaining its broader implications.
Stuck at the top of the ladder (abstract-centric)
Where a politician proposes generic legislative reform without clarifying how the reform will affect ordinary citizens.
Moving along the ladder of abstraction
In the previous section, we established that effective communication relied on freedom of movement along the ladder.
Here is how that might be accomplished.
To move down the ladder:
Support theories or abstractions with tangible, real-world case studies, photographs, or data.
Use sensory language that the other party can taste, smell, hear, touch, or see.
Tell stories or anecdotes with emotion or some other form of human connection.
Conversely, to move up the ladder:
Explain patterns or relationships. How do certain ideas connect in a broader context? For less certain relationships, it is appropriate to make inferences through logical reasoning.
Show trends through appropriate chart usage instead of focusing on small subsets of data.
Sympathize with shared ideals or values such as justice, freedom, environmentalism, and transparency. Here, it is helpful to know the audience and what resonates with them most.
Key takeaways
The ladder of abstraction describes the varying levels of abstraction and concreteness present in communication.
In a conversation, free movement on the ladder of abstraction is important in establishing appropriate context. A lack of context results when the communicator lingers on subjects or concepts at either end. That is, the communication is either too abstract or too concrete.
Moving down the ladder of abstraction is as simple as supporting abstract concepts with relatable case studies or data. Communicating broader trends or relationships and understanding the audience’s values help an individual move up the ladder.
Convergent thinking occurs when the solution to a problem can be found by applying established rules and logical reasoning. Whereas divergent thinking is an unstructured problem-solving method where participants are encouraged to develop many innovative ideas or solutions to a given problem. Where convergent thinking might work for larger, mature organizations where divergent thinking is more suited for startups and innovative companies.
Systems thinking is a holistic means of investigating the factors and interactions that could contribute to a potential outcome. It is about thinking non-linearly, and understanding the second-order consequences of actions and input into the system.
Vertical thinking, on the other hand, is a problem-solving approach that favors a selective, analytical, structured, and sequential mindset. The focus of vertical thinking is to arrive at a reasoned, defined solution.
First-principles thinking – sometimes called reasoning from first principles – is used to reverse-engineer complex problems and encourage creativity. It involves breaking down problems into basic elements and reassembling them from the ground up. Elon Musk is among the strongest proponents of this way of thinking.
The ladder of inference is a conscious or subconscious thinking process where an individual moves from a fact to a decision or action. The ladder of inference was created by academic Chris Argyris to illustrate how people form and then use mental models to make decisions.
The Six Thinking Hats model was created by psychologist Edward de Bono in 1986, who noted that personality type was a key driver of how people approached problem-solving. For example, optimists view situations differently from pessimists. Analytical individuals may generate ideas that a more emotional person would not, and vice versa.
Second-order thinking is a means of assessing the implications of our decisions by considering future consequences. Second-order thinking is a mental model that considers all future possibilities. It encourages individuals to think outside of the box so that they can prepare for every and eventuality. It also discourages the tendency for individuals to default to the most obvious choice.
Lateral thinking is a business strategy that involves approaching a problem from a different direction. The strategy attempts to remove traditionally formulaic and routine approaches to problem-solving by advocating creative thinking, therefore finding unconventional ways to solve a known problem. This sort of non-linear approach to problem-solving, can at times, create a big impact.
Moonshot thinking is an approach to innovation, and it can be applied to business or any other discipline where you target at least 10X goals. That shifts the mindset, and it empowers a team of people to look for unconventional solutions, thus starting from first principles, by leveraging on fast-paced experimentation.
The concept of cognitive biases was introduced and popularized by the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972. Biases are seen as systematic errors and flaws that make humans deviate from the standards of rationality, thus making us inept at making good decisions under uncertainty.
Bounded rationality is a concept attributed to Herbert Simon, an economist and political scientist interested in decision-making and how we make decisions in the real world. In fact, he believed that rather than optimizing (which was the mainstream view in the past decades) humans follow what he called satisficing.
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias where people with low ability in a task overestimate their ability to perform that task well. Consumers or businesses that do not possess the requisite knowledge make bad decisions. What’s more, knowledge gaps prevent the person or business from seeing their mistakes.
Occam’s Razor states that one should not increase (beyond reason) the number of entities required to explain anything. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English theologian William of Ockham.
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remembers an event differently from how it occurred. The Mandela effect was first described in relation to Fiona Broome, who believed that former South African President Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s. While Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and died 23 years later, Broome remembered news coverage of his death in prison and even a speech from his widow. Of course, neither event occurred in reality. But Broome was later to discover that she was not the only one with the same recollection of events.
The bandwagon effect tells us that the more a belief or idea has been adopted by more people within a group, the more the individual adoption of that idea might increase within the same group. This is the psychological effect that leads to herd mentality. What in marketing can be associated with social proof.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
