Associative Thinking

Associative thinking is used to describe memory-based judgment processes that require the decision maker to infer a diagnosis or other category on the basis of the presence or absence of related features through the activation of associations—memories in which features and categories co-occur. Broadly speaking, the mind automatically associates in memory those experiences or concepts that co-occur. The decision maker later retrieves these associations (again, automatically, and typically unconsciously) in the performance of judgment and decision tasks. For example, when a pediatrician repeatedly sees children who present with persistent sore throat and fever and observes that they are often positive for strep throat, she or he may come to associate the symptoms and the diagnosis, and on the next presentation of a child with sore throat and fever, strep throat is likely to be high on her differential diagnosis. In essence, judgments are evoked by considering the similarity or representativeness of new stimuli to associations previously learned. More frequent and salient co-occurrences result in more memorable associations.

The study of association in thinking has a long history, dating back at least as far as the work of English empiricists in the 17th century. In modern dual-process theories of cognition, associative thinking is often considered to be characteristic of System 1 (intuitive) thinking. It is contrasted with the more effortful and rule-oriented System 2 (deliberative) thinking.