Black Hat – is the ‘natural’ hat to point out what is wrong, what does not fit and what will not work, what is likely to happen in the future, does this fit past experience. It is always logical with reasons always standing on their own and they must make sense. It helps to seek out possible danger, problems and obstacles. The black hat legitimizes the value and importance of caution.
Blue Hat – is the ‘overview’ hat for thinking about thinking; management of thinking, for the organization of thinking. It sets the thinking ‘strategy’. It sees what should be done is done at the right time. The blue hat asks for the outcome like a summary or solution. It lays down a sequence of steps. It makes observation and comments accurately and objectively.
Green Hat – is the energy hat and the creative hat that puts forward new ideas and ‘possibilities’. It helps to lay out options and alternatives for seeking to modify and improve suggested ideas. The green hat uses an idea as a stepping stone. When thinking, the green hat replaces judgment with movement, which is a key idiom of lateral thinking. Without this, we cannot use provocation.
Red Hat – is the emotion hat that thinks of fire, warmth and feelings. It gives opportunities to express feelings, emotions and intuition. It frees us from being logic. The red hat thinking allows us to be bold and open about our feelings so that we can seek to fine-tune them to match the situation.
White Hat – is a ‘fact/neutral’ hat about information ranging from hard facts and figures to soft information like opinions and feelings. There are two tiers of information: checked fact and unchecked fact (belief). Besides, the white hat does not express feelings. It reports on someone else expressing a feeling.
Yellow Hat – is a ‘sunshine’ hat that thinks of optimism to set out to find benefits deliberately in a suggestion. To wear the yellow hat, we need to develop ‘value sensitivity’ to sense values and danger. With reasons and logical support, the most unattractive ideas can be found to have some value too.