Definition of Crisis Thinking

What is Crisis Thinking?

A mindset that prioritizes urgency over a considered response: “Things are so bad that if we do not act now it will be a total disaster!” or “We need to act now, doing something is better than nothing!” This leads to a deepening of the problem rather than any solution. It is common in environmental issues such as Global Warming.

Crisis thinking leads to dangerous feedback loops that escalate the problem: “See, we did not act soon enough or fully, and now the problem is so much bigger -- now we really need to act as big and quickly as possible!”

See: Solution Thinking and Thing Thinking for related conceptual framework errors.