Among musicologists, the composition has been recognised as adventurous in the degree of tonal ambiguity it employs across parallel major and minor keys and through its suggestion of multiple musical modes.

[7] The song reflects the influence of Bob Dylan,[8][9] with whom the Beatles had spent time socialising in May 1965, in London,[10] and then in mid August, following the band's concert at Shea Stadium in New York.

[16][nb 1] Author George Case groups "Think for Yourself" with two Lennon–McCartney compositions from the Beatles' Rubber Soul album – "I'm Looking Through You" and "The Word" – as examples of how the band's focus had progressed "from excited songs of juvenile love to adult meditations on independence, estrangement and brotherhood".

"[30][nb 2] Pollack also views the composition as musically adventurous; he identifies it as a "curious stylistic hybrid" in the pop/rock genre, comprising blues-inflected motifs within a folk-based framework.

[22] The song's message recalls that of Dylan's September 1965 single "Positively 4th Street", as Harrison appears to be ending a relationship, possibly with a lover.

"[33] Author Ian Inglis describes the song as "a withering attack" in which "Harrison's blunt 'I left you far behind' and Dylan's curt 'It's not my problem' [from 'Positively 4th Street'] could be spoken by the same voice.

[34] According to Beatles biographer Jonathan Gould, despite Harrison having envisaged "Think for Yourself" as a form of social commentary, contemporary listeners most likely interpreted it as a love song, given the limited perception afforded the work of pop artists.

[38] While adhering to this particular interpretation of "Think for Yourself", Decker says that "Harrison and the Beatles have thus raised the stakes from the naïve idealism of hand-holding" that typified love songs of the period.

[49][nb 3] Gould and Everett consider that the Beatles' adoption of this effect was inspired by the Rolling Stones' 1965 hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction",[51] on which the distorted, fuzz-tone sound of the lead guitar riff had been a key element.

[52][53] However, Harrison credited Phil Spector's production of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", by Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans[54] – a 1962 recording that, after the distorted lead guitar sound had been created accidentally in the studio, led to Gibson's invention of the first fuzzbox.

[62][63] Inglis comments that, in its dialogue with Harrison's vocal lines, the "growling" fuzz bass contributes to the song's "persistent mood of menace",[9] while Gould describes the effect as "the snarls of an enraged schnauzer, snapping and striking at its lead".

[65] Since the band also had to have their annual fan club Christmas disc completed at this time, their producer, George Martin, instructed the studio engineers to set up a second, ambient microphone and tape the Beatles as they rehearsed and recorded their vocal parts for the track.

[68][69] As a rare record of the group at work in the studio, the "Think for Yourself" rehearsal tape has invited comparison with the Beatles' Let It Be documentary film, made in January 1969.

[42] In 1968, six seconds' worth of Harrison, Lennon and McCartney's a capella singing – repeating the line "And you've got time to rectify"[73] – was used in the soundtrack of the Yellow Submarine animated film.

[88] Among the albums influenced by Rubber Soul was the Rolling Stones' Aftermath,[89][90] which included fuzz-toned bass parts on the songs "Under My Thumb" and "Mother's Little Helper".

[32][nb 8] In his album review for the NME, Allen Evans interpreted the song's message as "advice to someone who's going off the rails to think for himself and rectify things", and he admired the track's "good tempo and vocal sound".

[96] Michael Lydon, who interviewed Lennon and McCartney for Newsweek's laudatory feature[97][98] on the Beatles in early 1966,[99] quoted the song's chorus in the conclusion to his 1972 article for The Boston Globe, in which he reflected on the passing of the 1960s cultural revolution.

[106] Among Beatles biographers, Tim Riley considers the track to be "a step beyond" Harrison's two contributions on Help!, with the fuzz bass providing "just the right guttural cynicism", yet he says the song lacks the "melodic sonorities and layered texture" that distinguishes the guitarist's other Rubber Soul composition, "If I Needed Someone".

[74] The magazine's editors wrote that while the Beatles created the track in obvious haste and under the influence of marijuana, these conditions worked to the song's advantage, lending it "an unchained, garage-band feel".

He grouped it with "Norwegian Wood" and "Girl" as songs that conveyed the Beatles' new, sophisticated outlook at the time and, decades later, evoked progressive women such as Edie Sedgwick, Maureen Cleave and Pauline Boty.

[115] In his 2015 book 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, Andrew Grant Jackson identifies it as the Beatles' contribution to a "subgenre" of protest songs that emerged in 1965, in which artists railed against "oppressive conformity itself" rather than political issues.

[116] He views it as one of the musical statements that, informed by mass media, hallucinogenic drugs and the introduction of the contraceptive pill, "chronicled and propelled a social reformation as the old world forged its uneasy synthesis with the new".