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Functional Fixedness as a Cognitive Bias

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Sean is a fact-checker and researcher with experience in sociology, field research, and data analytics.

Functional fixedness is a type of cognitive bias that involves a tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way. For example, you might view a thumbtack as something that can only be used to hold paper to a corkboard. But what other uses might the item have?

In many cases, functional fixedness can prevent people from seeing the full range of uses for an object. It can also impair our ability to think of novel solutions to problems .

How Functional Fixedness Influences Problem-Solving

Imagine that you need to drive a nail into a wall so you can hang a framed photo. Unable to find a hammer, you spend a significant amount of time searching your house to find the missing tool. A friend comes over and suggests using a metal wrench instead to pound the nail into the wall.

Why didn't you think of using the metal wrench? Psychologists suggest that something known as functional fixedness often prevents us from thinking of alternative solutions to problems and different uses for objects.

A Classic Example

Here's one well-known example of functional fixedness at work:

You have two candles, numerous thumbtacks, and a box of matches. Using only these items, try to figure out how to mount the candles to a wall.

How would you accomplish this? Many people might immediately start trying to use the thumbtacks to affix the candles to the wall. Due to functional fixedness, you might think of only one way to directly use the thumbtacks. There is another solution, however. Using the matches, melt the bottom part of each candle and then use the hot wax to stick the candle to the matchbox. Once the candles are attached to the box, use the thumbtacks to stick the box to the wall.

Functional fixedness is just one type of mental obstacle that can make problem-solving more difficult.

Functional fixedness isn't always a bad thing. In many cases, it can act as a mental shortcut allowing you to quickly and efficiently determine a practical use for an object.

For example, imagine that someone has asked you to open a toolbox and find a tool that can be used to loosen a screw. It would take a tremendous amount of time if you had to analyze every item in the box to determine how effective it might be at performing the task. Instead, you are able to quickly grab a screwdriver, the most obvious item for loosening a screw.

American Psychological Association. APA Dictionary of Psychology: functional fixedness . 2020.

Munoz-Rubke F, Olson D, Will R, James KH. Functional fixedness in tool use: Learning modality, limitations and individual differences . Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018;190:11-26. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.06.006

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Functional Fixedness (Definition + Examples)

If you're here, you are probably researching functional fixedness to help you solve a problem or write a paper. Have no fear since this page aims to give you everything you need to know, including a few functional fixedness examples!

What is Functional Fixedness?

Functional fixedness is a mental obstacle that makes us see objects exclusively functioning traditionally. We cannot get past these fixed functions of objects or tools. This stunts our creativity and may hold us back from seeing an object's full potential.

Why Do We Experience Functional Fixedness?

Functional fixedness, like other biases and heuristics, streamlines our cognitive processes, aiding us in rapidly understanding the world around us. By learning from previous knowledge and experiences, we can navigate situations more efficiently. For instance, consider the teacup you encounter every morning. Instead of pondering its potential uses each day, you intuitively recognize it as a vessel for your tea. This immediate association, a sort of "mental shortcut," ensures you don't waste precious morning minutes deliberating its function.

These mental shortcuts, termed heuristics in psychology, are invaluable. They save time and effort by enabling us to know how to interact with familiar objects instantly. However, herein lies a double-edged sword. While it's undoubtedly helpful to identify a teacup primarily for tea drinking, being trapped within this singular perspective can be limiting. Recognizing an object's primary purpose is vital, but an inability to think beyond that predefined context can pose distinct disadvantages.

Heuristics and Functional Fixedness: Cognitive Pathways in Decision-Making

In cognitive psychology, understanding how humans make decisions and solve problems is central to comprehending the complex nature of the human mind. Heuristics and functional fixedness are two concepts that illustrate the shortcuts and potential pitfalls our minds take in this process. Let's delve into these concepts and explore their relationship.

Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts to Quicker Decisions

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that our brain uses to simplify complex decision-making processes. Instead of analyzing all available data when deciding, the brain uses heuristics to quickly arrive at a solution based on patterns and previous experiences. While these shortcuts can be incredibly efficient, they can sometimes lead to errors or biases.

For instance, the availability heuristic suggests that people base the likelihood of an event on how easily they can recall similar events from memory. This might lead someone to overestimate the risk of shark attacks after seeing a news story on one, even if such events are rare statistically.

Functional Fixedness: Stuck in Established Patterns

On the other hand, functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits our ability to see alternative uses for objects or methods beyond their traditional or known functions. It is the tendency to be "fixed" in our understanding of how something should function, based largely on prior experiences and knowledge.

For example, viewing a newspaper strictly as a medium for reading news might prevent someone from considering its use as a tool for cleaning windows, packing material, or even craftwork.

Comparing the Two

While both heuristics and functional fixedness relate to cognitive shortcuts and biases, they manifest differently:

• Nature of the Process : Heuristics are general decision-making shortcuts that can apply to various situations and help us navigate the world more efficiently. In contrast, functional fixedness is about seeing objects or methods in a limited scope based on their familiar functions.
• Outcome : Heuristics can often lead to reasonably accurate outcomes due to their basis in frequent experiences. However, they can also result in cognitive biases and errors. Functional fixedness, meanwhile, typically leads to limited problem-solving abilities and curtails creativity.
• Advantages & Pitfalls : Heuristics help speed up decision-making in a world brimming with information. They're essential for daily function. However, their reliance on past patterns can sometimes misguide us. On the other hand, functional fixedness primarily presents as an obstacle to innovative thinking and creative problem-solving.

Interrelation in Cognitive Processes

Despite their differences, heuristics and functional fixedness can sometimes intersect. For instance, one might use a heuristic to quickly decide how to use an object based on its most familiar function, leading to functional fixedness. Conversely, functional fixedness might cause someone to default to a heuristic way of problem-solving, relying on established patterns rather than seeking innovative solutions.

While both heuristics and functional fixedness highlight the brain's propensity for simplification and efficiency, they also underscore the importance of awareness in our cognitive processes. We can foster more thoughtful, creative, and informed decision-making by recognizing when we might be relying too heavily on mental shortcuts or getting stuck in established patterns.

Examples of Functional Fixedness Holding Us Back

Say you have a blunt kitchen knife that you need to sharpen. However, you don’t own a knife sharpener. Would you think of using the unglazed ring around the bottom of your teacup? After all, it has the same surface as a sharpening stone. Coming up with this alternative use for a teacup would quickly solve your problem. Otherwise, you would have to look for a “real” knife sharpener while using your cup only for drinking tea.

The moment we see an object, the motor cortex in our brains activates in anticipation of using it in a standard way. That means we don’t need to hesitate about reaching for a teacup when we feel like having tea. But that also means when you're looking for a knife sharpener, you're likely to glaze over that teacup because you don't take a mental shortcut from teacups to knife sharpeners. (Well, now you might!)

Being aware of functional fixedness is important because overcoming it could be the key to solving a problem.

Schemas, Prior Knowledge, and Functional Fixedness in Psychology

In the vast landscape of cognitive psychology, understanding how humans process information and navigate their world is paramount. Schemas and prior knowledge play pivotal roles in shaping our perceptions and responses to various situations, and their influence on cognitive biases like functional fixedness cannot be understated.

Schemas: Blueprint of Our Understanding

A schema is a mental framework or structure that organizes and interprets information in our brains. It's like a blueprint for categorizing and understanding the world around us. Schemas are created from accumulated experiences, cultural background, and learned knowledge. For instance, we have schemas about what constitutes a typical "bird" or how a usual "restaurant" operates. When we encounter information or experiences that fit into our existing schemas, it reinforces them. Conversely, when we encounter anomalies, we adjust our schema (accommodation) or try to fit this new information into our existing schemas (assimilation), as posited by Jean Piaget, a renowned developmental psychologist.

The Role of Prior Knowledge

Our past experiences significantly shape our present and future actions. Prior knowledge serves as a foundation upon which we build new knowledge. When faced with a situation, our brain quickly taps into the repository of prior experiences to find a suitable response or solution. This prior knowledge is a guidepost, helping us navigate familiar situations swiftly and efficiently.

Linking to Functional Fixedness

However, the reliance on schemas and prior knowledge can sometimes limit our cognitive flexibility, leading to functional fixedness. When too deeply entrenched in our pre-existing understanding of an object's function, we can become "fixed" in our approach, hindering our ability to see alternative uses or solutions. Our brain defaults to follow the well-trodden path of past experiences and established schemas. This is where functional fixedness comes into play. For example, if our schema of a "book" is strictly an object for reading, we might overlook its potential use as a doorstop or a makeshift monitor stand.

Functional fixedness, in many ways, is a byproduct of reliance on schemas and prior knowledge. While these cognitive structures help us process information efficiently, they can sometimes act as blinders, narrowing our field of vision and restricting creative problem-solving.

In the Broader Context of Cognitive Psychology

In psychology, schemas, prior knowledge, and functional fixedness are intertwined. They are all part of the broader cognitive structures and processes that dictate how we perceive, think, and act. Recognizing their interconnectedness can help us understand why we sometimes get stuck in particular patterns of thought and how we can potentially break free to foster innovation and creativity. By challenging our established schemas and being open to new experiences, we can mitigate the effects of functional fixedness and open the doors to a more flexible and adaptive way of thinking.

Examples of Overcoming Functional Fixedness in Everyday Life

You might identify these examples as "life hacks," but they are all forms of pushing past functional fixedness and seeing uses for everyday objects in new lights.

• Want to keep your door open? Tie a rubber band around it!
• Need to prop up your phone? Use upside-down sunglasses.
• Place a pool noodle under your child's fitted sheet to prevent them from rolling out of bed.
• Worried about your gear stick getting too hot in your car? Put a koozie over it!
• Need a last-minute speaker? Cups (plastic and glass) and toilet paper rolls are great alternatives.
• Preparing to serve condiments at a party but don't want to waste dishes? Place your condiments or sauces in a cupcake tin!
• Use a shoe rack to hang cleaning supplies.
• Clothespins are a great way to hold onto nails before you start hammering!
• Did your flip-flop fall apart because the hole is too big? Use a bread clip to keep the strap in place. (Bread clips are also a great way to organize and separate cords.)
• Looking for tiny things within your carpet? Roll some pantyhose or spandex over your vacuum to attract them without sucking them into your vacuum!
• Use your seat warmer to keep food warm after you pick it up from a restaurant!
• Hair straighteners make great collar irons in a pinch.
•  Don't have a juicer? Use tongs to get everything out of lemons or limes!

See how much you might have been missing out on? If all these hacks are within our grasp, what other uses could you consider for everyday items?

Who Discovered Functional Fixedness?

The term “functional fixedness” was coined in 1935 by German Gestalt therapist Karl Duncker who contributed to psychology with his extensive work on understanding cognition and problem-solving.

Duncker’s Candle Experiment

Duncker conducted a famous cognitive bias experiment that measured the influence of functional fixedness on our problem-solving abilities.

He handed the participants a box of thumbtacks, a candle, and matches. He then asked them to find a way to attach the lit candle to a wall so the wax wouldn’t drip on the floor. The solution consisted of removing the tacks from the box, tacking the box to the wall, and placing the candle upright in the box.

Pretty simple, right?

But most participants couldn’t solve this problem. They saw the box only as something that was used for holding tacks. Duncker observed a "mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem" in these participants. To find a solution, they would first need to overcome the tendency towards the psychological obstacle holding them back—functional fixedness.

Functional Fixedness and Problem Solving

Functional fixedness is practical in everyday life and crucial in building expertise and specialization in fields where it’s important to come up with quick solutions. But as we saw in Duncker’s experiment, this cognitive constraint is the enemy of creativity. Functional fixedness stops us from seeing alternative solutions and makes problem-solving more difficult. 

Functional fixedness can become a genuine problem among professionals. Research shows that functional fixedness is one of large organizations' most significant barriers to innovation. If your job is to produce innovative solutions, being able to think “outside the box” is a must.

So why do we become limited when it comes to using objects?

Children, especially those under 5, are not as biased as adults. As we know only too well, toddlers won’t hesitate to turn a wall into a blank canvas for their works of art. But because they are constantly being corrected, children become more functionally fixed over time. Eventually, they realize that paper is the only acceptable support to draw on.

As we gain more experience and knowledge, we become increasingly fixated on the predetermined use of objects and tools. And the more we practice using them in certain ways, the harder it is to see other alternatives.

Knowledge and experience replace imagination and our ability to see an object for anything other than its original purpose.

How to Overcome Functional Fixedness?

The good news is that functional fixedness is not a psychological disorder that needs therapeutic intervention. We can train our minds to overcome the mental set, a problem-solving approach based on past experiences.

There are a few methods that can help break down functional fixedness and develop creative thinking:

Practicing creative thinking

The more often you try to see novel uses for everyday objects, the easier the process will eventually become. Let’s go back to the teacup. What other usages except for drinking tea (and sharpening knives) can you think of? With a bit of imagination, the same cup can become a paperweight, candle holder, cookie-cutter, bird feeder, and even a phone sound amplifier.

Practicing helps develop our ability to think creatively. It encourages something called divergent thinking, a term defined in 1967 by the American psychologist J. P. Guilford.

Contrary to convergent thinking , which focuses on finding a single solution, divergent thinking is a creative process where a problem is solved using strategies that deviate from commonly used ones.

Changing the context

Getting a fresh perspective is often useful when considering alternate approaches to a task. In a professional setting, this can mean brainstorming in a group or involving individuals from other disciplines to share their points of view.

Considering a problem from a different angle prompts us to think creatively.

Focusing on features instead of function

Another way of breaking away from habitual ways of looking at objects is to consider what they are made of instead of concentrating on their function. List an item's different characteristics, and you might come up with its alternative uses. A teacup is made of ceramic, which can be broken down into pieces to create a mosaic.

This approach helps combat functional fixedness by focusing on the object itself while distancing ourselves from the mechanics of its intended use.

Other Biases and Heuristics That Hold Us Back

Functional fixedness is not the only "mental shortcut" holding us back. If we allow ourselves to think beyond what appears to be the "obvious answer," we may do more than we could have ever imagined!

Bandwagon Effect

It's easy to agree with what other people think. Meetings go much faster when everyone agrees right away. Plus, if one person likes the idea, it's probably not so bad, right? Well, this isn't always the case. Sometimes, the bandwagon effect encourages us to go along with what everyone else is doing. (It's easy for us to "hop on the bandwagon," as they say." Will you and your colleagues find a better solution if you debate a few more options? Are you just agreeing to something because everyone else is?

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Think you know a lot about a subject? Think again. The Dunning-Kruger Effect suggests that the less we know about a subject, the more confident we are in our abilities. Let's say you go to a rock climbing gym for the first time. You look at the wall and think, "I can get the hang of this quickly!" After a few sessions, you learn that there are different grips and ways of moving your body that you would have never thought of before! The initial false sense of confidence is a result of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Confirmation Bias

Once we decide, we will likely search for "evidence" confirming that we are right. If you have decided to vote for a certain political candidate, for example, you may only seek out news articles and information that confirms that they are the best candidate for the job. If you decide to leave your job, you may start focusing on the worst parts of the job. Don't let the confirmation bias prevent you from seeing all sides of an argument!

Not all biases are inherently bad, but they can hold us back. When approaching a big decision or trying to solve a problem, evaluate how biases could influence your thinking. Can you push past them? Can you try something new and unexpected?

Related posts:

• Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
• The Psychology of Long Distance Relationships
• Operant Conditioning (Examples + Research)
• Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI Test)
• Variable Interval Reinforcement Schedule (Examples)

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What Is Functional Fixedness in Psychology?

Categories Cognition

Functional fixedness is when people can only think of traditional ways of using objects. It is a type of cognitive bias that prevents people from thinking outside of the box and developing creative solutions. 

When you have a particular tool, you might look at it in terms of how it is traditionally used. 

A screwdriver, for example, is for loosening or tightening a screw. But you might also use a screwdriver as a chisel, pry bar, hole punch, or scraper. 

Functional fixedness might prevent you from thinking of other ways to use such tools and objects to achieve your goals and reach novel solutions. 

Table of Contents

How Functional Fixedness Works

Functional fixedness limits a person’s ability to come up with novel solutions for ways to use familiar objects. Instead of thinking about all of the ways that an object could be used, this bias leads people to focus on the ways that it is traditionally utilized. 

Because of this focus on typical uses, a person might miss other solutions. This can create obstacles to effective problem-solving. Instead of being able to look beyond the way things are usually done, people get stuck in old patterns and ways of thinking that hold them back and prevent innovation.

Examples of Functional Fixedness

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. In psychology, some examples of functional fixedness include:

Candle Problem

In this classic example of functional fixedness, people are given a candle, matches, and thumbtacks. They are then tasked with attaching the candle to a wall to be lit without dripping wax onto the floor. 

The solution is to empty the box of matches and use the matches to melt the bottom of the candle and stick it to the bottom of the box. Then, tack the box to the wall with the thumbtacks and use it as a candle holder. However, because of functional fixedness, people often only see the box as a container for the matches.

Two String Problem

Another example of functional fixedness is known as the two string problem. People are given two strings hanging from the ceiling and are tasked with tying them together. The strings are far enough apart that a person cannot reach both at the same time. However, people are also given other objects, such as pliers and a hook.

People with greater functional fixedness might struggle to see that they can tie one string to the pliers and swing the string, allowing them to grab the other string and then catch the other string in their opposite hand when it swings back toward them.

What Causes Functional Fixedness?

There are a variety of cognitive factors that can contribute to functional fixedness.

Perceptual Set

Perceptual set refers to the tendency to perceive certain aspects of a stimulus while ignoring others. Our perceptions of objects are heavily influenced by our expectations that past experiences have shaped. Because of this, we often see objects in terms of their familiar uses.

Inflexible Thinking

People who lack cognitive flexibility may struggle with rigid thinking patterns. This can make it difficult to approach problems creatively.

Stimulus Modality

Researchers have found that how information is presented can impact functional fixedness. When people encounter a picture of an object, they are more likely to try to reproduce those images when engaging in creative tasks, even if they don’t lead to the best results.

On the other hand, people who just see the names of the objects are more likely to come up with more creative solutions that are less influenced by functional fixedness.

What Are the Effects of Functional Fixedness?

Functional fixedness can have a negative impact on problem-solving and decision-making. Some potential challenges it might create include:

Poor Problem-Solving

Because functional fixedness limits your options, you’re less likely to come up with alternative solutions to problems. For example, if you are trying to pry something open but don’t have a pry bar, you might not recognize that a hammer could also be used for such a purpose because you are thinking of it only in terms of its traditional use.

Lack of Innovation and Creativity

When your thinking is fixed in a certain pattern, it’s much harder to think creatively. This can hinder your progress and lead to a lack of innovation.

Poor Use of Resources

Only using things based on their expected or traditional use can lead to inefficiency and waste. Because you’re overlooking alternative uses, you might spend more on materials or objects that you don’t actually need.

Missed Opportunities

Because functional fixedness limits improvement, people may miss out on opportunities to optimize their situation. Instead of succeeding in a task and moving forward, they stay stuck on the same problem for too long.

It’s important to recognize that functional fixedness isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes, it helps people solve problems more efficiently in ways that often work as expected. Recognizing when this cognitive bias might be holding you back (and taking steps to minimize it) can help ensure that it doesn’t hinder your creativity or problem-solving abilities.

How Can You Avoid Functional Fixedness?

Some research suggests that inaccurate knowledge about how tools work can contribute to functional fixedness. The same study suggested that while functional fixedness can make problem-solving more difficult, developing better problem-solving skills can help people get around it.

In order to avoid functional fixedness, it is important to become more aware of it and take steps to consciously think more outside the box.

Brainstorm Alternatives

Break the problem down into its most basic elements and then brainstorm possible solutions. Let your imagination run, and think up as many creative ideas as you can. Once you’ve come up with some ideas, look at them with a critical eye to consider which ones might be the most viable.

Seek Differing Viewpoints

Talk to people with different backgrounds and experiences to learn more about how they might approach the problem. Consider collaborating with groups of people who can bring differing types of expertise to the table. This can help promote new ideas and fresh insights you might not have considered otherwise.

Practice Mindfulness

Becoming more aware of your own preconceptions and assumptions can also be helpful. Work on becoming more mindful and aware of your own thinking patterns and how your emotional states might influence your choices and decision-making.

Foster Curiosity

Try to keep an open mind about new ideas. Ask questions and think about how some of these new ideas might contribute to your own problem-solving and decision-making strategies. This can help build greater cognitive flexibility, which will ultimately help reduce functional fixedness.

Look at Mistakes as Learning Opportunities

Remember that mistakes can be informative. Don’t hold back from trying new things. Instead, give yourself the freedom to experiment with creative solutions, and remember that you can always try again if things don’t go as expected.

Key Points to Remember

• Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias where a person’s previous knowledge of how an object typically functions limits how they might use it in different situations.
• It can negatively affect problem-solving by restricting how people use tools or objects in novel situations.
• Past experiences, cognitive inflexibility, and stimulus modality can all contribute to functional fixedness.
• To overcome functional fixedness and improve problem-solving, people can brainstorm alternative solutions, seek diverse perspectives , build self-awareness, foster creativity, and learn from mistakes.

Chrysikou, E. G., Motyka, K., Nigro, C., Yang, S. I., & Thompson-Schill, S. L. (2016). Functional Fixedness in Creative Thinking Tasks Depends on Stimulus Modality. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts , 10 (4), 425–435. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000050

Ibáñez de Aldecoa, P., de Wit, S., & Tebbich, S. (2021). Can habits impede creativity by inducing fixation? Frontiers in Psychology , 12 , 683024. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.683024

Kroneisen, M., Kriechbaumer, M., Kamp, S. M., & Erdfelder, E. (2021). How can I use it? The role of functional fixedness in the survival-processing paradigm. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review , 28 (1), 324–332. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01802-y

Munoz-Rubke, F., Olson, D., Will, R., & James, K. H. (2018). Functional fixedness in tool use: Learning modality, limitations and individual differences. Acta Psychologica , 190 , 11–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.06.006

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Why do we have trouble thinking outside the box?

Functional fixedness, what is functional fixedness.

Functional fixedness describes why we're unable to use an object in ways beyond its traditional use. Functional fixedness is a phenomenon found in problem-solving psychology and affects an individual’s ability to innovate and be creative when solving challenges. 1

Where this bias occurs

Debias your organization.

Most of us work & live in environments that aren’t optimized for solid decision-making. We work with organizations of all kinds to identify sources of cognitive bias & develop tailored solutions.

Consider the term “thinking outside the box.” Functional fixedness describes the difficulty we experience when we attempt to be creative in our problem-solving and our outside of the box thinking. Commonly, functional fixedness is used to highlight this problem-solving barrier in instances such as when we strive to use an object for a purpose other than its traditional use.

As children, many people may remember the ease of being creative and using their imagination to transform objects and their intended uses into something more. What was once a chair or a cardboard box, children quickly turn into fortresses with pillows and blankets. As we age, though, this ease in innovation becomes more difficult for the average person. Imagine someone needs a paperweight but is unable to find one. Instead of using a heavy object they can easily find in the room, they are fixated on their need for a paperweight. They might not think of using an object like a hammer or a stapler, which is unconventional to its typical use.

Individual effects

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that negatively affects a person’s ability to problem-solve and innovate. The bias causes a person to look at a problem in only one specific way and it can prevent them from developing effective solutions to their challenge. Functional fixedness can impact all areas of one’s life, including their academic life, careers, and personal lives. A person’s inability to recognize alternative approaches constrains their creativity and limits their potential ideas when looking to solve a problem.

Systemic effects

Functional fixedness can prevent companies and societies from innovating and solving pressing challenges. Passiveness and familiarity stem from an individual’s need to maintain the status quo and do things as they have always been done. There is comfort in familiarity, and it’s a natural human tendency to do what is comfortable. 2

From a corporate level, functional fixedness has led to issues in developing breakthrough products and solutions for internal challenges. For nations, functional fixedness has resulted in a lack of innovative solutions to tackle more significant societal problems. Systemic issues arising from functional fixedness have real-world impacts and are a real pain point for societies, as leaders cannot look past traditional solutions to solve complex problems.

Why it happens

Functional fixedness occurs due to strong pre-conceived notions that people develop regarding objects and how they must solve challenges using those objects.

Researchers have found that functional fixedness is a bias that develops and strengthens as we age. When studying functional fixedness in children, a study done at the University of Essex found that 5-year-old children showed no initial signs of the bias in early development when problem-solving. Meanwhile, as early as the age of 7, children tended to treat objects as they were meant to be used, already developing the bias. 2 Younger participants present initial immunity to the bias due to their initial lack of problem-solving experience, allowing them to be more creative in their solutions. 1

Functional fixedness has also proven to develop more as individuals gain more experience with problem-solving. Ironically, the more practice we have with identifying solutions to a problem, the more difficult it is to identify alternative or more creative solutions. 3 Though individuals may be aware that their traditional method of solving a problem may be over-used and ineffective, they are typically still tempted to use the same problem-solving approach, due to their familiarity with it.

Why it is important

Problem-solving is a regular part of any individual’s life. Functional fixedness impairs an individual’s ability to innovate and creatively tackle problems by limiting their problem-solving capabilities.

Individuals who are aware of functional fixedness can work towards avoiding bias and improving their problem-solving abilities. By consciously working to think innovatively, and better tackle problems in their professional and personal lives, they can strive towards unique and innovative solutions.

How to avoid it

As with many cognitive biases, functional fixedness can appear when tackling challenges in many different areas of life. Avoiding functional fixedness requires a conscious effort on the individual’s part towards promoting innovative ways of thinking and problem-solving.

Abstract the Problem

The first step to overcoming functional fixedness is done by first developing an awareness of the problem and simplifying it. A practice referred to as “uncommitting,” describes simplifying a challenge and distilling it down to the problem’s essential elements. By eliminating the details of the problem, we allow ourselves to think more creatively about the solution. By focusing on identifying the problem, and not judging ideas too early in the problem-solving process, alternative perspectives and possible solutions can be identified. 3

Draw Inspiration from Unexpected Places

Researchers have found that when people look for inspiration from distant domains, they tend to generate more creative solutions to their problems, especially in comparison to those who draw inspiration from more closely related fields. 3 Solutions from the abstract and distantly-related industries provide novel fixes, which tend to deliver creative and successful solutions.

Opinions from Different Disciplines

Like drawing inspiration from different disciplines, reaching out to experts in various fields also serves as a solution to avoiding functional fixedness and better-solving problems within one’s domain. Crowdsourcing initiatives by large technology companies provide an excellent example of this fix in play. Samsung, Unilever, and Lego have used crowdsourcing campaigns to share internal company challenges and call for innovative solutions from those external to their company in different industries. Crowdsourcing initiatives have continued to gain traction due to the success companies have seen in their ability to garner innovative solutions at a low cost, aiding these companies to avoid functional fixedness. 4 Crowdsourcing has proven to be an innovative way to avoid functional fixedness, as participants from outside of corporations do not hold the same preconceived notions of internal employees within these companies. Without these preconceived notions and set standards and processes, crowdsourcing participants are able to avoid the restrictive innovative barriers typically developed in these traditional settings.

How it all started

Functional fixedness was first defined by the German psychologist Karl Duncker in 1945. Karl Duncker described functional fixedness as a mental block when using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem. 5 The block Karl emphasizes in his famous experiment demonstrates how an individual’s ability to complete a task with specific components were limited, as they were unable to rationalize their use outside of their original purpose.

The famous experiment conducted by Karl Duncker is well-known in psychology for demonstrating functional fixedness. In this experiment, Duncker gave participants a book of matches, a candle and a box of thumbtacks, and asked them to attach the candle to the wall so that when it was lit, it would not drip onto the table below it. Initially, most of the participants attempted to attach the candle to the wall by directly using the tacks or by trying to glue the candle to the wall by melting it. Because the Duncker gave participants a box with thumbtacks in them, few of the participants thought of using the box as a candle-holder and attaching the box to the wall with the tacks. Since the experiment participants fixated on the functionality of the box being used to hold the thumbtacks, they were unable to conceptualize the box as a potential solution for holding the candle, thus solving the challenge.

Additionally, in 1952 the experiment was later conducted by giving one set of participants an empty box without the thumbtacks while giving the other set of participants the box with thumbtacks inside. Participants who were given the box without the thumbtacks inside of the box were two times as likely to solve the problem. 6 The box no longer was used to hold the thumbtacks; therefore, its functionality was not tied to one single use.

Example 1 - PepsiCo leverages orthopedic experts

PepsiCo provides a notable example of functional fixedness and how companies attempt to curtail their own biases when developing products. In this example, PepsiCo’s challenge was to reduce the amount of sodium in its potato chips, without altering the salty flavors that customers traditionally loved. PepsiCo first tried to identify a solution to their problem by looking at the food and snack industry for similar challenges faced by their competitors but found nothing notable to their challenge. PepsiCo then worked with a third-party consulting firm and shared their problem to a broad and diverse range of technical experts to find an innovative and feasible solution.

Experts called on included those from engineering services, energy companies, and those in medical fields. The most creative and applicable response came from the orthopedics department of a global research lab. Researchers had developed a method of creating nano-particles of salt, which was initially used to conduct advanced research on osteoporosis. The process provided a new perspective and partner for PepsiCo, which ultimately led to Pepsi being able to solve their challenge by overcoming functional fixedness. 2

Example 2 - Creatively designing power strips

Another example of functional fixedness showcases how individuals overcame the cognitive bias by simplifying their initial problem. The experiment conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University required participants to design a power strip in which larger plugs would not block adjacent outlets. To promote creative design solutions, researchers gave one set of participants the initial design challenge, and the second set of participants an abstracted version of the problem. The second set of participants were asked to instead fit objects of different sizes into a container without blocking one another, and taking advantage of the container’s full capacity. The challenge was reframed to avoid functional fixedness by stripping away the objects’ details being power strips, plugs, and outlets. By doing this, researchers looked to see which set of participants would develop the most innovative results.

The researchers found that when participants given the abstracted challenge identified relevant but distant domains to aid in their problem-solving. The areas of comparison included landscaping, carpentry, Japanese aesthetics, and contortionism. Participants who were able to gain inspiration from these distant domains found the most novel and practical solutions to the design problem. The study proves that when preventing functional fixedness, and promoting creativity, the best solutions are developed. 4

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person’s ability to use an object in more ways than it is traditionally used and affects an individual’s ability to innovate and be creative when solving challenges.

Functional fixedness occurs due to strong pre-conceived notions that people develop in regards to objects and how they must solve challenges using those objects. These preconceived notions typically develop as we age, and as we gain experience in problem-solving.

PepsiCo encountered functional fixedness issues when looking for ways to reduce the amount of sodium in its potato chip products without altering the salty flavors that customers love. When the PepsiCo team was unable to innovate and solve the challenge due to their functional fixedness, they attempted to crowdsource solutions from across domains and were able to find a solution from the orthopedics department of a global research lab. A practice used in researching osteoporosis helped solve PepsiCo’s challenge and provided a creative solution for the company.

A study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University tested the quality of design solutions in participants without functional fixedness bias. The first set of participants had to design a power strip which ensured that larger plugs would not block adjacent outlets. The second set of students were asked to develop a similar simplified task. This entailed fitting objects of different sizes into a container so that they wouldn’t block one another to take advantage of the container’s full capacity. The researchers found that when participants were given the abstracted problem, they identified relevant domains to aid in their problem-solving. Participants were able to gain inspiration from these distant domains and found the most novel and practical solutions to the design problem.

Functional fixedness can be avoided by firstly being aware of the bias. Abstracting the initial problem, drawing inspiration from other domains, and even getting opinions from different types of experts in other industries can help avoid Functional fixedness in one’s quotidian life.

• Clavin, D. A. (2015, April 19). Psych 256: Cognitive Psychology SP15. Retrieved July 13, 2020, from https://sites.psu.edu/psych256sp15/2015/04/19/functional-fixedness-in-children/
• Zynga, A. (2014, August 07). The Cognitive Bias Keeping Us from Innovating. Retrieved July 13, 2020, from https://hbr.org/2013/06/the-cognitive-bias-keeping-us-from
• Harley, A. (2017, July 30). Functional Fixedness Stops You From Having Innovative Ideas. Retrieved July 13, 2020, from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/functional-fixedness/
• Norton, K. (2019, June 10). 12 Brands Using Crowdsourcing for Product Design Ideas. Retrieved July 13, 2020, from https://www.cadcrowd.com/blog/12-brands-using-crowdsourcing-for-product-design-ideas/
• Duncker, K. (1945). On problem-solving. Psychological Monographs, 58 (5), I-113. doi:10.1037/h0093599
• Adamson, R. E. (1952). Functional Fixedness As Related To Problem Solving: A Repetition Of Three Experiments. doi:10.21236/ad0006119

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Psychology Of Fixation

Functional fixedness is a psychological and cognitive bias that may limit a person to seeing any object or issue only in the way it has traditionally been used or seen.

For example, you might think of a pair of scissors and paper. Scissors are often fixed in their function as paper cutters, which is their traditional use. Paper might be seen as a drawing, creating, or writing tool. Similarly, a car can be thought of as functionally fixed in its purpose as a means of transport.

A brief background of functional fixedness

Functional fixedness, or functional fixity, as it was previously known, was coined around 1935 by German-born Gestalt therapist Karl Duncker. Duncker's contribution to cognitive psychology was his extensive work in understanding cognition and problem-solving. Functional fixedness originated in Duncker's seminal study of how adults solved various mathematical and practical problems. 

The study was published in his book Psychologie des produktiven Denkens in 1935. Duncker argued that while functional fixedness is a necessary perceptive and cognitive skill, it can hamper problem-solving and creativity. Later, in 1945, he became famous for the Candle Problem, devised to test a person's functional fixedness and ability to "think outside the box."

Duncker's "Candle Problem" and "thinking outside the box"

The Candle Problem experiment serves as an example of functional fixedness in action. The experiment’s materials included a candle, a box with thumbtacks, and matches, which were placed on a table close to a wall. Subjects were instructed to attach the candle to the wall so that wax would not drip onto the table when the candle was lit and to complete this task as fast as possible.

Many subjects tried unsuccessful creative methods, such as trying to pin the candle to the wall with a tack. Others melted the end of the candle and tried to stick it to the wall. Only some figured out the solution to this problem: empty the thumbtacks from the box, attach the empty box to the wall with a thumbtack, and make the candle stand upright in the box before lighting it.

From this experiment, Duncker derived that people have difficulty solving a problem when one object has a fixed function that must be changed for a solution to be found. In this instance, the successful subjects were able to overcome functional fixedness and realize that the box was not only a container for the tacks but also a candle holder.

When Duncker repeated the experiment, placing the tacks outside the box, nearly all participants were able to solve the problem faster. Changing one detail enhanced their ability to overcome functional fixedness and solve the problem far more efficiently.

Functional fixedness in problem-solving and creativity

It can be illuminating to look at how Duncker viewed problem-solving. According to his process, there are seven stages of overcoming the type of cognitive bias that leads to functional fixedness.  

If a goal cannot be reached immediately through one's obvious or usual actions, it may be a problem. In Duncker's words, "A problem arises when a living creature has a goal but does not know how this goal is to be reached. There must be recourse to thinking whenever one cannot go from the given situation to the desired situation simply by action."  

Problem-solving comprises phases, with each phase being a reformulation of the problem. Duncker describes this step by stating, "The solution of a new problem typically takes place in successive phases which (except the first phase) have, in retrospect, the character of a solution and (except the last phase), in prospect, that of a problem."

In summation, looking at multiple angles may help you overcome your mental block, understand a problem on a deeper level, and formulate a strategy for tackling it. Creative solutions may arise in this stage.

Stage three 

The point or function of a solution is also considered its definition as a solution. Duncker wrote, "The functional value of a solution is indispensable for the understanding of its being a solution. It is exactly what is called the sense, the principle, or the point of the solution."

Stage four 

Defining the principle of the solution is, in general, the first step in the process of solving it. According to Duncker, "the final form of an individual solution is, in general, not reached by a single step from the original setting of the problem; on the contrary, the principle, the functional value of the solution, typically arises first, and the final form of the solution in question develops only as this principle becomes more and more concrete successively."

Stage five 

While progressing through phases to solve a problem, the human mind may return to earlier phases. Duncker stated, "It will be realized that, in the transition to phases in another line, the thought process may range widely. Every such transition involves a return to an earlier phase of the problem; an earlier task is set anew; a new branching off from an old point in the family tree occurs. Sometimes a [subject] returns to the original setting of the problem, sometimes just to the immediately preceding phase."

General heuristic methods may control each phase of problem-solving. Heuristics are processes or methods that allow a person to discover answers for themselves. Duncker claimed, "We can, therefore, say that 'insistent' analyses of the situation, especially the endeavor to vary appropriate elements meaningfully subspecies of the goal, must belong to the essential nature of a solution through thinking. We may call such relatively general procedures, 'heuristic methods of thinking.'"

Stage seven 

The solution may depend on details specific to the problem. Using an object only for its stated function, or seeing problems only as they present themselves, can become a barrier to both problem-solving and creativity.

Problem-solving

Duncker distinguished between mechanical and organic problem-solving abilities. In his book, Psychologie des produktiven Denkens, he explained that mechanical thinking is not conducive to problem-solving. He wrote, "he who merely searches his memory for a 'solution of such-and-such problem' may remain just as blind to the inner nature of the problem-situation before him as a person who, instead of thinking himself, refers the problem to an intelligent acquaintance or an encyclopedia. Truly, these methods are not to be despised; for they have a certain heuristic value, and one can arrive at solutions in that fashion. But such problem-solving has little to do with thinking."

On the other hand, organic or productive thinking (or problem-solving) requires a reorganization of a problem and a structural understanding of the problem situation. To avoid functional fixedness bias, a person may be required to look at an object or a problem in a way that assigns new functions and breaks away from functions that may appear inherent. 

One excellent example of this bias can be seen by simply looking at a thin cloth. If you see cloth only for its usual cleaning function, you might not consider other uses. On the other hand, if you are cold at a campsite and can't find your kindling, you might consider using a cleaning cloth doused in gas to start your fire. You solved the problem by considering other possibilities than what you are used to. Many engineers use this process in their work. The concept of “function fixedness” may also only apply to objects being viewed by individuals of certain ages. One clinical trial showed that children below the age of six seemed “immune” to the effect of functional fixedness bias, even after the box’s containment ability was demonstrated. In this social psychology experiment, the immunity during early development was attributed to the children’s forming notions of function, as well as their past experience related to problem-solving. 

To explain how changing fixed-function thinking can lead to creative problem-solving, we may consider Elon Musk sending a Tesla car to space. 

All people may assign a fixed function to a Tesla car. It often serves as a means of transport from point A to B. Musk, an inventor and entrepreneur, invested his time and money to discover more economical and powerful ways to travel in space. To test the first rocket, Tesla's company developed the Falcon Heavy. The Falcon Heavy needed a payload.

Instead of choosing a conventional payload, such as a dummy cargo or passengers, he chose a car he designed and drove himself, a red Tesla Roadster. Musk changed the function of the car (transport), so it served as a payload (solved a problem) and became a symbol bigger than its function (creativity). It may have also boosted sales for his brand. 

Creative people may be non-conforming and independent; in some cases, they can think in a manner that flies in the face of many cognitive biases. Fixedness is not often a characteristic of creativity, so those who practice it may not showcase as much functional fixedness. Testing someone's sensitivity to functional fixedness bias is often done in psychological settings to measure creativity and cognitive flexibility.

Creativity and money

In the 1960s, Canadian Professor of Psychology, Sam Glucksberg, repeated Duncker's Candle Problem experiment. This time, however, he incentivized it with money. His findings were that monetizing the outcome hampered a person’s ability to creatively solve the problem, and he thus concluded that money does not help avoid functional fixedness but actually stifles creativity. 

This notion was tested again in 2013 by Ramm and Torsvik , both in individuals and groups, but the researchers could not replicate Glucksberg's findings. Instead, they found that "…providing monetary rewards leaves performance unaltered. This is also somewhat surprising, at least for those who think monetary incentives always induce individuals to work harder and smarter."

Whether money hampers or does not affect creativity, both studies indicate that it does not improve or motivate creativity, which can be motivated by other factors. Money simply cannot provide a mental shortcut to increased creativity.

Addressing functional fixedness in therapy

Functional fixedness and other cognitive biases are not psychological conditions that require therapeutic intervention. Overcoming functional fixedness and cognitive bias isn’t typically a goal you might set for your treatment. However, therapists may have creative solutions to common mental health symptoms and daily stressors. If you're unsure where to turn in your life or how to solve problems effectively, consider enlisting assistance from a board-certified therapist. 

Although therapy has been traditionally carried out in an office environment, the functional fixedness of counseling is now changing. More individuals are trying online counseling as a creative form of therapy. A Berkeley study demonstrated that online therapy is a viable alternative to face-to-face counseling and is often as effective as traditional methods. In this study, participants reported a significant reduction in symptoms of depression. People who feel stuck in a depressive state may find value in working with a therapist, who may be able to help them come up with a creative solution to their mental health challenges.

In addition to its effectiveness, online therapy provides benefits that in-person therapy may not. Online therapy is often more affordable than in-person therapy, and online therapy grants a level of convenience, as you can meet from a location that suits you. This may help you overcome any reservations you hold about attending therapy.

Thanks to researchers like Duncker, we may better understand why some individuals struggle to envision innovative solutions to enduring problems. At times, a new perspective can help enlighten us to a helpful idea. If you're hoping to gain a new perspective from a professional, consider reaching out to a mental health provider for support.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is an example of overcoming functional fixedness? When can functional fixedness occur? What is functional and mental set fixedness? What is a real life example of functionalism in psychology? What is an example of structural fixedness? How does functional fixedness affect our thinking? What is functional fixedness in men? What is the difference between functional fixedness and fixation? Where did functional fixedness come from? What is an example of a functional disorder? How does functionalism explain human behavior? What is the opposite of functional fixedness? How do you test functional fixedness? Is functional fixedness a barrier to problem solving? What is fixation in thinking?

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What is functional fixedness in behavioral science, what is functional fixedness.

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person’s ability to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used. The term was coined by German-American psychologist Karl Duncker and is a type of mental set and fixation, where one is ‘fixed’ on seeing objects as functioning only in their usual or prescribed manner. It represents a barrier to problem-solving and creative thinking as it hampers the ability to view problems from a new, innovative perspective.

This bias affects a person’s problem-solving and decision-making abilities, as they fail to consider alternative uses for an object or a solution to a problem beyond its ‘fixed’ or standard function. The concept of functional fixedness is central to the study of creativity, innovation, cognitive psychology, and design thinking.

Examples of Functional Fixedness

Duncker’s candle problem.

The candle problem is a classic experiment used to measure functional fixedness. In this task, individuals are given a box of thumbtacks, a candle, and a book of matches, and asked to affix the lit candle to the wall so that it will not drip wax onto the table below. The solution involves using the thumbtack box as a candle holder, but due to functional fixedness, many people struggle to see the box as anything other than a container for the thumbtacks.

Two-Cord Problem

This is another classic experiment where a person is shown two cords hanging from the ceiling and is asked to tie them together. However, the cords are spaced far enough apart that the person cannot hold onto one and reach the other. The solution involves swinging one of the cords like a pendulum, then grabbing the other cord, and finally grabbing the swinging cord when it returns. But often, people overlook the possibility of using an object in the room (like a weight) to swing the cord due to functional fixedness.

Everyday Examples

Functional fixedness can be seen in everyday situations. For instance, when a screwdriver is not available, it might not occur to a person to use a coin or a knife to turn a screw, as they are fixated on the ‘normal’ function of these objects.

Significance of Functional Fixedness

Functional fixedness is an essential concept in fields like psychology, design, and innovation. Understanding this bias can help in fostering creative thinking and problem-solving. In psychology, it is used to understand cognitive barriers and how they can be overcome. In design and innovation, an understanding of functional fixedness can lead to more innovative solutions by challenging the conventional uses of objects or ideas. In education, overcoming functional fixedness can encourage students to think ‘outside the box’.

Controversies and Criticisms of Functional Fixedness

Some critics argue that functional fixedness is not so much a cognitive bias as it is a result of cultural or societal norms that dictate the use of objects or solutions. Additionally, while the term is widely accepted and used, the methodologies and applications in measuring and overcoming functional fixedness have been criticized and debated. Some researchers also question the universal applicability of functional fixedness, as certain cultures may promote more flexible thinking and less adherence to traditional object usage than others. Despite these debates, the term remains a significant contribution to our understanding of cognitive biases, creativity, and problem-solving.

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Belief perseverance, crystallized intelligence, extraneous variable, representative sample, factor analysis, egocentrism, stimulus generalization, reciprocal determinism, divergent thinking, convergent thinking, social environment, decision making, related articles.

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Functional Fixedness: Breaking Mental Models to Enhance Problem Solving

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person’s ability to use objects only in the way they are traditionally used. Discovered by psychologist Karl Duncker, it represents the mental shortcuts that often prevent individuals from seeing potential innovative uses for common items.

Functional fixedness hinders problem-solving because it restricts awareness to an item’s most familiar function. Understanding functional fixedness aids in creatively developing innovative solutions.

Methods to reduce functional fixedness involve:

• Challenging assumptions about the usage of objects
• Increasing awareness of one’s own cognitive biases
• Practicing divergent thinking to broaden potential functions

Examples of Functional Fixedness

This phenomenon, although it can often be a useful heuristic saving us time on simple tasks, can impede more complex problem-solving and creativity by hindering the ability to see alternative uses for familiar items.

Common Examples

Hammer:  Traditionally used for driving nails into wood or other materials, a hammer can also serve as an impromptu paperweight or a tool for breaking ice, illustrating how its common use can overshadow potential alternative uses.

Candle-holder:  While designed to hold candles, candle-holders can also be utilized as decorative plant pots or holders for art supplies, showing that items often have utility beyond their common use.

Book of Matches:  Generally used for lighting fires, a book of matches can double as a makeshift notepad or a tool for leveling tables by placing matchsticks under uneven legs.

The Two-cords Problem

In 1951, Birch and Rabinowitz adopted Norman Maier’s (1930, 1931) two-cord problem, in which respondents were given two cords hanging from the ceiling and two heavy objects in the room. They are instructed to join the cords, but they are so far apart that one cannot readily reach the other.

The idea was to attach one of the heavy things to a cord and use it as a weight, swing the cord like a pendulum, catch the rope as it swung while holding on to the other rope, and then knot them together. The participants are divided into three groups: Group R, which completes a pretask of completing an electrical circuit with a relay, Group S, which completes the circuit with a switch, and Group C, which receives no pretest experience.

Participants in Group R were more likely to use the switch as the weight, whereas those in Group S were more likely to utilize the relay. Both groups did so because their prior experience had taught them to use the objects in a specific way, and functional fixedness prevented them from seeing the objects as being used for a different purpose.

Barometer Question

The barometer question is an example of a poorly conceived examination question that demonstrates functional fixedness and puts the examiner in a moral bind. The classic form of the question, popularized by American test designer professor Alexander Calandra, requested the student to “show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer?”

The examiner was certain that there was just one correct response. Contrary to the examiner’s expectations, the student provided a succession of radically diverse responses. These responses were also correct, but none of them demonstrated the student’s proficiency in the academic field being tested.

Calandra presented the incident as a real-life, first-person experience that occurred during the Sputnik crisis. Calandra’s essay, “Angels on a Pin”, was published in 1959 in Pride, a magazine of the American College Public Relations Association.

Influence of Age and Experience

In young children, problem-solving skills are in the early stages of development. They tend to view objects in a variety of ways, which can lead to less functional fixedness.

Studies demonstrate that 5-year-old children are more likely to find innovative ways to use an object, as their knowledge base is less rigidly defined compared to adults. An interesting research pointed out that age is a determinant in avoiding functional fixedness, noting that as children grow, there is an increased likelihood of applying objects in traditional manners due to the accumulation of knowledge.

Changes Over Lifespan

As individuals age, their wealth of experience often translates into a double-edged sword when it comes to functional fixedness. On one side, prior knowledge can streamline problem-solving processes, allowing for efficient utilization of common objects in their typical roles.

Conversely, this same knowledge can inhibit creative thinking, making it more challenging to perceive alternative uses for familiar items. The balance between experience-induced proficiency and creativity can shift at various stages throughout the lifespan, suggesting a complex interaction between age-related cognitive development and functional fixedness.

Cultural Experience

Scholars have also conducted investigations to determine whether culture has an impact on this bias. One recent study found preliminary evidence supporting the universality of functional fixedness.

The study’s goal was to see if people from non-industrialized countries, notably those who had little exposure to “high-tech” objects, exhibited functional fixedness. The Shuar, hunter-horticulturalists from Ecuador’s Amazon region, were evaluated and compared to a control group from an industrial civilization.

The Shuar community had only been exposed to a small number of “low-tech” industrialized artifacts, such as machetes, axes, cooking pots, nails, shotguns, and fishhooks. Two tasks were devised for the experiments.

• The box task, in which participants had to build a tower to help a character from a fictional storyline reach another character with a limited set of varied materials
• The spoon task, in which participants were also given a problem to solve based on a fictional story of a rabbit who had to cross a river (materials were used to represent settings) and they were given a spoon.

In the box-task, participants were slower to select the materials than participants in control conditions, but no difference in time to solve the problem was seen. In the spoon task, participants were slower in selection and completion of task.

Individuals from non-industrial (“technologically sparse cultures”) were found to be vulnerable to functional fixedness. They used items without priming faster than when the design function was communicated to them.

This occurred despite the fact that participants had less exposure to industrialized made artifacts and that the few artifacts they currently use were used in a variety of ways regardless of their design.

Methods to Overcome Functional Fixedness

Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to adjust one’s thinking and adapt to new, unexpected situations. To enhance cognitive flexibility , one can engage in activities that challenge the brain’s existing patterns. This can include puzzles that require considering objects in unconventional ways, or brainstorming sessions that focus on the generation of alternative solutions. Research suggests that pushing beyond traditional uses of an object can reduce functional fixedness, as mentioned in a study on meaning training.

To promote cognitive flexibility:

• Uncommitting from previous ideas: Encourage the consideration of new, unfamiliar methods instead of relying on tried and tested solutions.
• Divergent Thinking: Implement unconventional uses for everyday objects to break away from their typical functions.

Promoting Divergent Thinking

This is a thought process used to break through mental blocks and generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. To foster atypical thinking, individuals can undertake exercises that promote ideation without immediate judgment or restraint.

Techniques such as free writing, mind mapping, or the brainstorming method called “worst possible idea” can help deter the fixation brought on by functional fixedness. Encouraging the pursuit of novelty and diversity in thought opens up the potential for multiple viable solutions to emerge, addressing the functional fixedness issue highlighted in relation to the survival-processing paradigm.

Strategies include:

• Open brainstorming sessions: Allocate time specifically for free-form idea generation, where all suggestions are considered without criticism.
• Encouraging ‘what if’ scenarios: Regularly practicing to think about different scenarios where objects can have alternative functions or uses.

Uncommiting

In a 1996 study, computer scientists Larry Latour and Liesbeth Dusink suggested that functional fixedness can be combated by design decisions from functionally fixed designs that preserve the essence of the design. As an alternative to relying on the fixed solution for a particular design problem, this enables the students who have developed functionally fixed designs to comprehend how to approach resolving general problems of this nature.

Latour performed an experiment researching this by having software engineers analyze a fairly standard bit of code — the quicksort algorithm — and use it to create a partitioning function. Part of the quicksort algorithm involves partitioning a list into subsets so that it can be sorted; the experimenters wanted to use the code from within the algorithm to just do the partitioning.

To accomplish this, they abstracted each block of code in the function, determining its purpose and determining if it is required for the partitioning process. They were able to borrow the code from the quicksort method to develop a workable partition algorithm without having to reinvent the wheel.

Overcoming Prototypes

A thorough investigation of various traditional functional fixedness tests revealed an overarching theme of overcoming prototypes. Those who completed the tasks successfully demonstrated the ability to see beyond the prototype, or the initial intention for the object in use.

Those who were unable to produce a successful finished product were unable to progress beyond the item’s initial use. This appeared to be the case in investigations of functional fixedness categorization as well.

Reorganization into categories of seemingly unrelated items was easier for those that could look beyond intended function. Therefore, there is a need to overcome the prototype in order to avoid functional fixedness.

Peter Carnevale,, in his 1998 paper, suggests analyzing the object and mentally breaking it down into its components. After that is completed, it is essential to explore the possible functions of those parts.

As a result, an individual may become acquainted with new methods to use the objects provided to them at the givens. Individuals are thus thinking imaginatively and overcoming the prototypes that limit their capacity to accomplish the functional fixedness problem successfully.

References:

• Adamson, R.E. (1952). Functional Fixedness as related to problem solving: A repetition of three experiments. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 44, 288-291
• Birch, H.G., & Rabinowitz, H.S. (1951). The negative effect of previous experience on productive thinking . Journal of Experimental Psychology, 41, 121-125
• Calandra, Alexander (1959) Angels on a Pin. American College Public Relations Association.
• Carnevale, Peter J. (1998). Social Values and Social Conflict Creative Problem Solving and Categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1300
• Duncker, K. (1945). On problem solving. Psychological Monographs, 58:5
• Dusink, Liesbeth; Latour, Larry. (1996) Controlling functional fixedness: the essence of successful reuse . Know.-Based Syst. 9, 2, 137–143
• German, T.P., & Defeyter, M.A. (2000). Immunity to functional fixedness in young children. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7(4), 707-712
• Kroneisen, M., Kriechbaumer, M., Kamp, SM. et al. (2021) How can I use it? The role of functional fixedness in the survival-processing paradigm. Psychon Bull Rev 28, 324–332
• Mayer, R. E. (1992). Thinking, Problem Solving, Cognition. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company

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Sometimes, previous experience or familiarity can even make problem solving more difficult. This is the case whenever habitual directions get in the way of finding new directions – an effect called fixation.

Functional Fixedness

Functional fixedness concerns the solution of object-use problems. The basic idea is that when the usual way of using an object is emphasised, it will be far more difficult for a person to use that object in a novel manner. An example for this effect is the candle problem : Imagine you are given a box of matches, some candles and tacks. On the wall of the room there is a cork- board. Your task is to fix the candle to the cork-board in such a way that no wax will drop on the floor when the candle is lit. – Got an idea?

Explanation: The clue is just the following: when people are confronted with a problem

and given certain objects to solve it, it is difficult for them to figure out that they could use them in a different (not so familiar or obvious) way. In this example the box has to be recognized as a support rather than as a container.

A further example is the two-string problem: Knut is left in a room with a chair and a pair of pliers given the task to bind two strings together that are hanging from the ceiling. The problem he faces is that he can never reach both strings at a time because they are just too far away from each other. What can Knut do?

Solution: Knut has to recognize he can use the pliers in a novel function – as weight for a pendulum. He can bind them to one of the strings, push it away, hold the other string and just wait for the first one moving towards him. If necessary, Knut can even climb on the chair, but he is not that small, we suppose…

Mental Fixedness

Functional fixedness as involved in the examples above illustrates a mental set - a person’s tendency to respond to a given task in a manner based on past experience. Because Knut maps an object to a particular function he has difficulties to vary the way of use (pliers as pendulum's weight). One approach to studying fixation was to study wrong-answer verbal insight problems. It was shown that people tend to give rather an incorrect answer when failing to solve a problem than to give no answer at all.

A typical example: People are told that on a lake the area covered by water lilies doubles every 24 hours and that it takes 60 days to cover the whole lake. Then they are asked how many days it takes to cover half the lake. The typical response is '30 days' (whereas 59 days is correct).

These wrong solutions are due to an inaccurate interpretation, hence representation, of the problem. This can happen because of sloppiness (a quick shallow reading of the problemand/or weak monitoring of their efforts made to come to a solution). In this case error feedback should help people to reconsider the problem features, note the inadequacy of their first answer, and find the correct solution. If, however, people are truly fixated on their incorrect representation, being told the answer is wrong does not help. In a study made by P.I. Dallop and R.L. Dominowski in 1992 these two possibilities were contrasted. In approximately one third of the cases error feedback led to right answers, so only approximately one third of the wrong answers were due to inadequate monitoring. [6] Another approach is the study of examples with and without a preceding analogous task. In cases such like the water-jug task analogous thinking indeed leads to a correct solution, but to take a different way might make the case much simpler:

Imagine Knut again, this time he is given three jugs with different capacities and is asked to measure the required amount of water. Of course he is not allowed to use anything despite the jugs and as much water as he likes. In the first case the sizes are 127 litres, 21 litres and 3 litres while 100 litres are desired. In the second case Knut is asked to measure 18 litres from jugs of 39, 15 and three litres size.

In fact participants faced with the 100 litre task first choose a complicate way in order tosolve the second one. Others on the contrary who did not know about that complex task solved the 18 litre case by just adding three litres to 15.

Pitfalls to Problem Solving

Not all problems are successfully solved, however. What challenges stop us from successfully solving a problem? Albert Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Imagine a person in a room that has four doorways. One doorway that has always been open in the past is now locked. The person, accustomed to exiting the room by that particular doorway, keeps trying to get out through the same doorway even though the other three doorways are open. The person is stuck—but she just needs to go to another doorway, instead of trying to get out through the locked doorway. A mental set is where you persist in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the past but is clearly not working now. Functional fixedness is a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for. During the Apollo 13 mission to the moon, NASA engineers at Mission Control had to overcome functional fixedness to save the lives of the astronauts aboard the spacecraft. An explosion in a module of the spacecraft damaged multiple systems. The astronauts were in danger of being poisoned by rising levels of carbon dioxide because of problems with the carbon dioxide filters. The engineers found a way for the astronauts to use spare plastic bags, tape, and air hoses to create a makeshift air filter, which saved the lives of the astronauts.

Link to Learning

Check out this Apollo 13 scene where the group of NASA engineers are given the task of overcoming functional fixedness.

Researchers have investigated whether functional fixedness is affected by culture. In one experiment, individuals from the Shuar group in Ecuador were asked to use an object for a purpose other than that for which the object was originally intended. For example, the participants were told a story about a bear and a rabbit that were separated by a river and asked to select among various objects, including a spoon, a cup, erasers, and so on, to help the animals. The spoon was the only object long enough to span the imaginary river, but if the spoon was presented in a way that reflected its normal usage, it took participants longer to choose the spoon to solve the problem. (German & Barrett, 2005). The researchers wanted to know if exposure to highly specialized tools, as occurs with individuals in industrialized nations, affects their ability to transcend functional fixedness. It was determined that functional fixedness is experienced in both industrialized and non-industrialized cultures (German & Barrett, 2005).

Common obstacles to solving problems

The example also illustrates two common problems that sometimes happen during problem solving. One of these is functional fixedness : a tendency to regard the functions of objects and ideas as fixed (German & Barrett, 2005). Over time, we get so used to one particular purpose for an object that we overlook other uses. We may think of a dictionary, for example, as necessarily something to verify spellings and definitions, but it also can function as a gift, a doorstop, or a footstool. For students working on the nine-dot matrix described in the last section, the notion of “drawing” a line was also initially fixed; they assumed it to be connecting dots but not extending lines beyond the dots. Functional fixedness sometimes is also called response set , the tendency for a person to frame or think about each problem in a series in the same way as the previous problem, even when doing so is not appropriate to later problems. In the example of the nine-dot matrix described above, students often tried one solution after another, but each solution was constrained by a set response not to extend any line beyond the matrix.

Functional fixedness and the response set are obstacles in problem representation , the way that a person understands and organizes information provided in a problem. If information is misunderstood or used inappropriately, then mistakes are likely—if indeed the problem can be solved at all. With the nine-dot matrix problem, for example, construing the instruction to draw four lines as meaning “draw four lines entirely within the matrix” means that the problem simply could not be solved. For another, consider this problem: “The number of water lilies on a lake doubles each day. Each water lily covers exactly one square foot. If it takes 100 days for the lilies to cover the lake exactly, how many days does it take for the lilies to cover exactly half of the lake?” If you think that the size of the lilies affects the solution to this problem, you have not represented the problem correctly. Information about lily size is not relevant to the solution, and only serves to distract from the truly crucial information, the fact that the lilies double their coverage each day. (The answer, incidentally, is that the lake is half covered in 99 days; can you think why?)

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Psychologenie

The Psychology Guide: What Does Functional Fixedness Mean?

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias, limiting the person to use an object only in the traditional manner. We will understand the nuances of the same and how to overcome it.

Duncker’s candle problem is a famous cognitive performance test that is used for measuring the influence of functional fixedness on a subject’s problem solving capabilities.

Functional fixedness is the inability to view an object as being able to fulfill any other function than what it is originally intended for. This approach is said to be a cognitive bias and can hamper the problem-solving abilities of a person.

The concept originated in a form of psychology known as Gestalt Psychology. Karl Duncker (a Gestalt psychologist) came up with the term and defined functional fixedness as “(the) mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem.” Duncker said that this block that a person develops, limits his ability to use the components that are provided to him to complete a task because he cannot look beyond the original purpose of those components.

To illustrate this concept better, here’s an example: While walking to class with a stack of books in hand, it suddenly starts drizzling. Since you have no umbrella for protection, you continue to get drenched. You fail to realize that the books that you’re carrying could be used to cover your head. This is functional fixedness―where you view the books only as material to be written on or read and not something else (here, as protection from rain).

The Characteristics

Being able to overcome functional fixedness is, in a way, related to creative and ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking. In today’s times, the ability to think beyond the expected is an encouraged trait, especially in the professional world. Thus, overcoming functional fixedness is considered a good thing.

However, there is a different way of looking at this. It is important to have fixed functions for things to a certain point, the failure of which can lead to a lot of confusion, and, at times, cause more harm than good. For example, if you wanted to cut a fruit and there was no fixed tool to do the same, imagine you would start sifting through the contents of your kitchen cabinet, testing spatula after ladle after spoon to determine which tool could be best used to cut a fruit. This is not only time-consuming but also weird.

It has been noticed that children till the age of 5 are not prone to functional fixedness. They do not fix a singular function to an object and stick with it. They are more open to experimenting with the roles of different objects and using them in different situations for different functions. This ability is seen to diminish by the time they are 7, usually because they are corrected by their parents.

Here’s another functional fixedness example, let’s say, that you’re answering an exam, and you’ve been handed a supplement sheet that has not been punched―the sheet needs to be tied to the main answer sheet. Since you have no punching machine, you look around for a pin or a geometry compass to punch the hole. And when you find that you have neither, it suddenly strikes you that the nib of the pen can be used for the same purpose. This is an example of functional fixedness, and overcoming the same.

Here, a pin, a geometry compass, or a pen have not been invented to punch holes in paper, but that does not mean that they cannot be used for the same. Their function is not fixed―they can be used for other things as well.

Overcoming Functional Fixedness

Functional fixedness can be prevented by opening up one’s mind to newer scenarios when faced with a challenging situation. This can be done by undertaking certain effective exercises which force one to think of things that are beyond the obvious and help develop excellent problem-solving abilities.

The simplest way of preventing the onset of functional fixedness is to view things not as a whole, a final product, but in its most basic form―as different components that make a whole. For example, if there is a plastic bottle that is placed before you, do not think of it as a bottle alone. Separate all its components―which would bring to you the cap and the body. This, then, opens up a whole world of options of how the parts can be used.

Place 4 – 5 objects before you, like a pen, book, cup, etc. Next, take a notepad and a pen and taking each individual object, jot down the different and unique ways in which it can be used other than its intended use. This will clear your mind of the fixed function you’ve set for the objects, and you will be surprised at how easily you are able to think of the different ways in which the object can be used. For example, a book can be used for fanning yourself, or to fix a rickety table.

Functional fixedness can be limiting in many ways, and that is why, there is a need to make an effort to overcome this one-track way of thinking. Make a deliberate effort to include the exercises provided above to open up your mind.

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7.3 Problem Solving

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe problem solving strategies
• Define algorithm and heuristic
• Explain some common roadblocks to effective problem solving and decision making

People face problems every day—usually, multiple problems throughout the day. Sometimes these problems are straightforward: To double a recipe for pizza dough, for example, all that is required is that each ingredient in the recipe be doubled. Sometimes, however, the problems we encounter are more complex. For example, say you have a work deadline, and you must mail a printed copy of a report to your supervisor by the end of the business day. The report is time-sensitive and must be sent overnight. You finished the report last night, but your printer will not work today. What should you do? First, you need to identify the problem and then apply a strategy for solving the problem.

Problem-Solving Strategies

When you are presented with a problem—whether it is a complex mathematical problem or a broken printer, how do you solve it? Before finding a solution to the problem, the problem must first be clearly identified. After that, one of many problem solving strategies can be applied, hopefully resulting in a solution.

A problem-solving strategy is a plan of action used to find a solution. Different strategies have different action plans associated with them ( Table 7.2 ). For example, a well-known strategy is trial and error . The old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” describes trial and error. In terms of your broken printer, you could try checking the ink levels, and if that doesn’t work, you could check to make sure the paper tray isn’t jammed. Or maybe the printer isn’t actually connected to your laptop. When using trial and error, you would continue to try different solutions until you solved your problem. Although trial and error is not typically one of the most time-efficient strategies, it is a commonly used one.

Another type of strategy is an algorithm. An algorithm is a problem-solving formula that provides you with step-by-step instructions used to achieve a desired outcome (Kahneman, 2011). You can think of an algorithm as a recipe with highly detailed instructions that produce the same result every time they are performed. Algorithms are used frequently in our everyday lives, especially in computer science. When you run a search on the Internet, search engines like Google use algorithms to decide which entries will appear first in your list of results. Facebook also uses algorithms to decide which posts to display on your newsfeed. Can you identify other situations in which algorithms are used?

A heuristic is another type of problem solving strategy. While an algorithm must be followed exactly to produce a correct result, a heuristic is a general problem-solving framework (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). You can think of these as mental shortcuts that are used to solve problems. A “rule of thumb” is an example of a heuristic. Such a rule saves the person time and energy when making a decision, but despite its time-saving characteristics, it is not always the best method for making a rational decision. Different types of heuristics are used in different types of situations, but the impulse to use a heuristic occurs when one of five conditions is met (Pratkanis, 1989):

• When one is faced with too much information
• When the time to make a decision is limited
• When the decision to be made is unimportant
• When there is access to very little information to use in making the decision
• When an appropriate heuristic happens to come to mind in the same moment

Working backwards is a useful heuristic in which you begin solving the problem by focusing on the end result. Consider this example: You live in Washington, D.C. and have been invited to a wedding at 4 PM on Saturday in Philadelphia. Knowing that Interstate 95 tends to back up any day of the week, you need to plan your route and time your departure accordingly. If you want to be at the wedding service by 3:30 PM, and it takes 2.5 hours to get to Philadelphia without traffic, what time should you leave your house? You use the working backwards heuristic to plan the events of your day on a regular basis, probably without even thinking about it.

Another useful heuristic is the practice of accomplishing a large goal or task by breaking it into a series of smaller steps. Students often use this common method to complete a large research project or long essay for school. For example, students typically brainstorm, develop a thesis or main topic, research the chosen topic, organize their information into an outline, write a rough draft, revise and edit the rough draft, develop a final draft, organize the references list, and proofread their work before turning in the project. The large task becomes less overwhelming when it is broken down into a series of small steps.

Everyday Connection

Solving puzzles.

Problem-solving abilities can improve with practice. Many people challenge themselves every day with puzzles and other mental exercises to sharpen their problem-solving skills. Sudoku puzzles appear daily in most newspapers. Typically, a sudoku puzzle is a 9×9 grid. The simple sudoku below ( Figure 7.7 ) is a 4×4 grid. To solve the puzzle, fill in the empty boxes with a single digit: 1, 2, 3, or 4. Here are the rules: The numbers must total 10 in each bolded box, each row, and each column; however, each digit can only appear once in a bolded box, row, and column. Time yourself as you solve this puzzle and compare your time with a classmate.

Here is another popular type of puzzle ( Figure 7.8 ) that challenges your spatial reasoning skills. Connect all nine dots with four connecting straight lines without lifting your pencil from the paper:

Take a look at the “Puzzling Scales” logic puzzle below ( Figure 7.9 ). Sam Loyd, a well-known puzzle master, created and refined countless puzzles throughout his lifetime (Cyclopedia of Puzzles, n.d.).

Pitfalls to Problem Solving

Not all problems are successfully solved, however. What challenges stop us from successfully solving a problem? Imagine a person in a room that has four doorways. One doorway that has always been open in the past is now locked. The person, accustomed to exiting the room by that particular doorway, keeps trying to get out through the same doorway even though the other three doorways are open. The person is stuck—but they just need to go to another doorway, instead of trying to get out through the locked doorway. A mental set is where you persist in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the past but is clearly not working now.

Functional fixedness is a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for. Duncker (1945) conducted foundational research on functional fixedness. He created an experiment in which participants were given a candle, a book of matches, and a box of thumbtacks. They were instructed to use those items to attach the candle to the wall so that it did not drip wax onto the table below. Participants had to use functional fixedness to overcome the problem ( Figure 7.10 ). During the Apollo 13 mission to the moon, NASA engineers at Mission Control had to overcome functional fixedness to save the lives of the astronauts aboard the spacecraft. An explosion in a module of the spacecraft damaged multiple systems. The astronauts were in danger of being poisoned by rising levels of carbon dioxide because of problems with the carbon dioxide filters. The engineers found a way for the astronauts to use spare plastic bags, tape, and air hoses to create a makeshift air filter, which saved the lives of the astronauts.

Link to Learning

Check out this Apollo 13 scene about NASA engineers overcoming functional fixedness to learn more.

Researchers have investigated whether functional fixedness is affected by culture. In one experiment, individuals from the Shuar group in Ecuador were asked to use an object for a purpose other than that for which the object was originally intended. For example, the participants were told a story about a bear and a rabbit that were separated by a river and asked to select among various objects, including a spoon, a cup, erasers, and so on, to help the animals. The spoon was the only object long enough to span the imaginary river, but if the spoon was presented in a way that reflected its normal usage, it took participants longer to choose the spoon to solve the problem. (German & Barrett, 2005). The researchers wanted to know if exposure to highly specialized tools, as occurs with individuals in industrialized nations, affects their ability to transcend functional fixedness. It was determined that functional fixedness is experienced in both industrialized and nonindustrialized cultures (German & Barrett, 2005).

In order to make good decisions, we use our knowledge and our reasoning. Often, this knowledge and reasoning is sound and solid. Sometimes, however, we are swayed by biases or by others manipulating a situation. For example, let’s say you and three friends wanted to rent a house and had a combined target budget of $1,600. The realtor shows you only very run-down houses for $1,600 and then shows you a very nice house for $2,000. Might you ask each person to pay more in rent to get the $2,000 home? Why would the realtor show you the run-down houses and the nice house? The realtor may be challenging your anchoring bias. An anchoring bias occurs when you focus on one piece of information when making a decision or solving a problem. In this case, you’re so focused on the amount of money you are willing to spend that you may not recognize what kinds of houses are available at that price point.

The confirmation bias is the tendency to focus on information that confirms your existing beliefs. For example, if you think that your professor is not very nice, you notice all of the instances of rude behavior exhibited by the professor while ignoring the countless pleasant interactions he is involved in on a daily basis. Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Representative bias describes a faulty way of thinking, in which you unintentionally stereotype someone or something; for example, you may assume that your professors spend their free time reading books and engaging in intellectual conversation, because the idea of them spending their time playing volleyball or visiting an amusement park does not fit in with your stereotypes of professors.

Finally, the availability heuristic is a heuristic in which you make a decision based on an example, information, or recent experience that is that readily available to you, even though it may not be the best example to inform your decision . Biases tend to “preserve that which is already established—to maintain our preexisting knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and hypotheses” (Aronson, 1995; Kahneman, 2011). These biases are summarized in Table 7.3 .

Watch this teacher-made music video about cognitive biases to learn more.

Were you able to determine how many marbles are needed to balance the scales in Figure 7.9 ? You need nine. Were you able to solve the problems in Figure 7.7 and Figure 7.8 ? Here are the answers ( Figure 7.11 ).

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Functional Fixedness in Creative Thinking Tasks Depends on Stimulus Modality

Evangelia g. chrysikou.

1 University of Kansas

2 University of Pennsylvania

Katharine Motyka

Cristina nigro, song-i yang, sharon l. thompson-schill.

Pictorial examples during creative thinking tasks can lead participants to fixate on these examples and reproduce their elements even when yielding suboptimal creative products. Semantic memory research may illuminate the cognitive processes underlying this effect. Here, we examined whether pictures and words differentially influence access to semantic knowledge for object concepts depending on whether the task is close- or open-ended. Participants viewed either names or pictures of everyday objects, or a combination of the two, and generated common, secondary, or ad hoc uses for them. Stimulus modality effects were assessed quantitatively through reaction times and qualitatively through a novel coding system, which classifies creative output on a continuum from top-down-driven to bottom-up-driven responses. Both analyses revealed differences across tasks. Importantly, for ad hoc uses, participants exposed to pictures generated more top-down-driven responses than those exposed to object names. These findings have implications for accounts of functional fixedness in creative thinking, as well as theories of semantic memory for object concepts.

The use of examples as instructional tools or as springboards for creative idea generation is widespread among students and professionals in many fields across science, engineering, design, and the arts. Psychological studies on creative problem solving have explored factors that determine whether or not one’s knowledge about the world or experience with a particular kind of problem or situation can facilitate efforts to solve a new problem with similar features. This phenomenon of analogical transfer is well-established in the creativity literature (e.g., Gick & Holyoak, 1980 , 1983 ; Holyoak, 1984 , 2005 ). However, analogical transfer is not always positive. Under certain circumstances, prior knowledge or experience with a particular example or solution strategy may have negative effects for creative thought (e.g., Gentner, 1983 ; Osman, 2008 ). Functional fixedness or fixation is an instance of such negative transfer, wherein a solver’s experience with a particular function of an object impedes using the object in a novel way during creative problem solving ( Duncker, 1945 ; Scheerer, 1963 ).

A number of studies have demonstrated that the presence of pictorial examples may exacerbate functional fixedness during creative generation—or open-ended —tasks (i.e., tasks that do not appear to have one correct solution and for which the solution possibilities appear infinite). Such tasks are presumed to rely primarily on divergent thinking , a notion that was originally introduced by Guilford (1950 ; 1967 ) to describe a set of processes hypothesized to result in the generation of ideas that diverge from the ordinary. For example, Jansson and Smith (1991; see also Purcell & Gero, 1996 ) asked engineering design students and professionals to generate as many solutions as possible for a series of such open-ended design problems (e.g., design a bike-rack for a car). Participants who were shown example designs with the problems were significantly more likely to conform to those examples relative to participants who were asked to solve the problems without such examples. The phenomenon is not exclusive to design experts. Chrysikou and Weisberg (2005) have demonstrated that in similar open-ended design tasks, naïve-to-design participants who were shown a problematic pictorial example produced significantly more elements of the example in their solutions and included more flaws in their designs, relative to participants who were not shown such examples or who were explicitly instructed to avoid them. Similarly, Smith, Ward, and Schumacher (1993 ; see also Ward, Patterson, & Sifonis, 2004 ) asked participants to imagine and create designs for different categories (e.g., animals to inhabit a foreign planet, new toys). Participants who were shown pictorial examples tended to conform to these examples, even after completing a distractor task prior to generating their solutions or being instructed to avoid reproducing the example solutions.

Overall, research on design fixation suggests that naïve participants and experts alike are susceptible to the effects of negative transfer from pictures during divergent thinking tasks. That is, in open-ended creative problem-solving tasks, pictorial examples appear to influence how participants retrieve aspects of their knowledge about certain objects or situations to solve the problem at hand. As a result, they tend to fixate on pictorial examples and reproduce their elements, strikingly even in cases where the examples are explicitly described as problematic. Why would pictorial examples have such a constraining effect to creativity? In other words, why would pictures bias semantic memory retrieval in a particular way during creative generation (e.g., design, artistic) tasks? Although traditionally not discussed in this context, research on the organization and function of semantic memory may shed some light on the cognitive processes underlying functional fixedness from pictures during divergent thinking. Behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging evidence suggest that pictures and words may access different components of semantic memory, and, thus, may make certain aspects of our knowledge about the world more salient than others depending on context and circumstances.

Indeed, one of the key questions concerning research on the structure and organization of knowledge bears on the format of object knowledge representations (e.g., analog versus symbolic). Earlier theories (e.g., Paivio, 1986 ) examined the possibility of distinct systems through which this semantic knowledge would be represented, for example, a dual code for the processing of visual and verbal information. The influence of stimulus format (e.g., whether pictorial or verbal) on the retrieval of object knowledge has been explored in early investigations of semantic processing which revealed both similarities and differences in reaction times and accuracy for a variety of tasks (e.g., naming, lexical or object decision tasks, priming manipulations, interference effects; Glaser, 1992 ; Kroll & Potter, 1984 ; Potter & Faulconer, 1975 ; Potter, Valian, & Faulconer, 1977 ).

Later studies suggested that pictures might allow for privileged access to knowledge about functions and motor actions associated with the typical use of the object (relative to other semantic information), whereas words might permit direct access to phonological and lexical (prior to semantic) information (see Glaser & Glaser, 1989 ). For example, when asked to name and make action decisions (e.g., pour or twist?) and semantic/contextual decisions (e.g., found in kitchen?) about words or pictures of common objects, participants were faster at reading words than naming pictures, whereas they were faster in making action and semantic/contextual decisions for pictures than for words ( Chainay & Humphreys, 2002 ; see also Rumiati & Humphreys, 1998 ; Saffran, Coslett, & Keener, 2003 ). Furthermore, using a free association task, Saffran, Coslett, and Keener (2003) reported that pictures elicited more verbs than did verbal stimuli, particularly for non-living, manipulable objects. Finally, Rumiati and Humphreys (1998) have shown that when generating a use-relevant gesture in response to the name or line drawing of an object, participants made more visual (relative to semantic) errors with pictures but not with words (i.e., they generated a gesture appropriate for an item that was visually similar to the target, but not associated with either the target or from the same functional category, e.g., making a hammering gesture in response to a picture of a razor).

Dissociations in performance on semantic knowledge tasks that use pictorial and verbal stimuli have also been reported in studies of neuropsychological patients. For instance, patients with optic aphasia exhibit an inability to retrieve the names of objects presented visually, whereas their performance with lexical/verbal stimuli remains unimpaired (e.g., Hillis & Caramazza, 1995 ; Riddoch & Humphreys, 1987 ). In contrast, Saffran, Coslett, Martin, and Boronat (2003) describe the case of a patient with progressive fluent aphasia who exhibited significantly better performance on certain object recognition tasks when she was prompted with pictures relative to words. These and other findings from patients with neuropsychological deficits (e.g., Lambon Ralph & Howard, 2000; McCarthy & Warrington, 1988 ; Warrington & Crutch, 2007 ; see also Humphreys & Riddoch, 2007 ; Riddoch, Humphreys, Hickman, Cliff, Daly, & Colin, 2006 ) further suggest that pictures and words may access different types of semantic information.

A number of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies using a variety of tasks (e.g., classification, similarity matching, working memory) with pictorial and verbal stimuli, have offered evidence for a common semantic system for pictures and words in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex. However, modality-specific activations were also reported in posterior brain regions when action-related conceptual properties were accessed by pictures and in anterior temporal brain regions when more complex conceptual properties were accessed by words ( Bright, Moss, & Tyler, 2004 ; Gates & Yoon, 2005 ; Postler, De Bleser, Cholewa, Glauche, Hamzei, & Weiller, 2003 ; Sevostianov, Horwitz, Nechaev, Williams, From, & Braun, 2002 ; Vandenberghe, Price, Wise, Josephs, & Frackowiak, 1996 ; Wright et al., 2008 ; see also Chao, Haxby, & Martin, 1999 ; Tyler, Stamatakis, Bright, Acres, Abdallah, Rodd, & Moss, 2004 ).

Overall, behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging findings support a common semantic knowledge system in which object concepts are distributed patterns of activation over multiple properties, including perceptual properties (e.g., shape, size, color), motoric properties (e.g., use-appropriate gesturing, mode of manipulation), and abstract properties (e.g., function, relational information) that can be differentially tapped by pictorial or verbal stimuli based on the requirements of a given task ( Allport, 1985 ; Humphreys & Forde; 2001 ; Plaut, 2002 ; Shallice, 1993 ; Tyler & Moss, 2001; Warrington & McCarthy, 1987 ; see also Chainay & Humphreys, 2002 ; Rumiati & Humphreys, 1998 ; Thompson-Schill, 2003 ; Thompson-Schill, Kan, & Oliver, 2006 ). Particularly relevant to their potential influence on creative generation or divergent thinking tasks, stimuli in pictorial format may allow for direct access to functional, action-related information (e.g., use-appropriate gesturing, manner of manipulation, object-specific motion attributes), whereas stimuli in verbal format may allow for direct access to other lexical and semantic information.

The Present Study

The investigation of the differential tapping of semantic memory for object concepts by pictures and words has previously exclusively involved simple classification tasks (e.g., naming, gesture generation, similarity judgments), yet these findings may also have important implications for creativity and divergent thinking, specifically in the context of everyday problem solving tasks involving common objects. Indeed, given the apparent link between pictorial stimuli and information related to an object’s canonical function and mode of manipulation as discussed above, pictorial stimuli may induce functional fixedness to an object’s normative or depicted use during creative problem solving. In other words, pictorial stimuli may render properties related to the already-learned actions associated with a given object more salient than others, hence impeding performance on divergent thinking tasks.

Despite its potential importance for understanding the cognitive processes underlying creative thinking, research exploring how the structure and function of semantic memory for objects may guide participant’s performance during open-ended tasks has been limited (e.g., Gilhooly, Fioratou, Anthony, & Wynn, 2007 ; Chrysikou, 2006 , 2008 ; Keane, 1989 ; Valeé-Tourangeau, Anthony, & Austin, 1998 ; see also Walter & Kintch, 1985 ). Notably, Valeé-Tourangeau et al. (1998) asked participants to instantiate taxonomic and ad hoc categories for objects and to report retrospectively the strategies they followed to perform the task. An analysis of these reports revealed that during category instantiation participants largely relied on the retrieval of examples from their personal experiences, and significantly less so on the retrieval of abstract, encyclopedic information about category members. In addition, Gilhooly et al. (2007) presented participants with the Alternative Uses divergent thinking task ( Christensen & Guilford, 1958 ) in which they were asked to generate as many alternative uses as possible for six common objects. Some participants were asked to think aloud during the task and a record of their thought processes was analyzed according to the type of memory retrieval strategy participants followed during the task. It was found that participants’ earlier responses were based on a top-down strategy of retrieval from long-term memory of already known uses for the objects. In contrast, later responses were based on bottom-up strategies, such as generating object properties or disassembling the object into its components. Importantly, the novelty of the generated uses was positively correlated with the bottom-up, disassembling strategy.

Overall, past work has demonstrated that (a) the presence of pictorial examples may lead to functional fixedness in open-ended creative thinking tasks, (b) pictures and words may access different components of semantic memory, and (c) people may rely more or less on top-down or bottom-up strategies when accessing their knowledge about objects depending on task demands. However, despite the reported deleterious effects of pictorial examples for problem solving as discussed above, in conjunction with studies demonstrating privileged access to action-related information from pictorial stimuli in close-ended, convergent thinking tasks, no study has explored how the modality of the stimulus (verbal or pictorial) may influence whether participants will adopt a top-down or a bottom-up memory retrieval strategy in open-ended, divergent thinking tasks.

Accordingly, the present experiment examined whether pictures and words will differentially influence access to semantic knowledge for object concepts depending on whether the task is close- or open-ended. We built on previous work on semantic memory retrieval that has focused on close-ended, convergent thinking tasks (i.e., tasks having a specific correct response) by exploring the effects of verbal and pictorial stimuli on the Object Use task (a version of the Alternative Uses, divergent thinking task adapted from Christensen & Guilford, 1958 ). In each of three subcomponents of the task, the requirements vary such that participants can retrieve from memory and generate the typical function for an object (Common Use task, close-ended), or they are instructed, instead, to generate a secondary function for an object (Common Alternative Use task, finite number of eligible responses) or an ad hoc, non-canonical function for the object (Uncommon Alternative Use task, open-ended). This task, thus, allowed us to manipulate systematically the degree to which participants are asked a close- or open-ended question. In addition, we aimed to extend prior research on semantic memory retrieval strategies in open-ended tasks (e.g., Gilhooly et al., 2007 ; Valeé-Tourangeau, et al., 1998 ) by manipulating stimulus modality (verbal, pictorial, or a combination of the two), to examine whether the type of stimulus would differentially guide participants’ responses as a function of the task requirements. In contrast to prior studies that involved multiple responses for the same stimulus (e.g., in the Alternative Uses task), here participants provided a single response for each study item that additionally allowed for the collection of reaction time measures for the task. Finally, we aimed to develop and introduce a novel coding system for single-response data on the Object Use task. Past assessments of creativity (e.g., the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, Torrance, 1974 ), have evaluated both verbal and figural aspects of divergent thought typically on fluency (i.e., the number of suitable ideas that were produced within a particular time period), flexibility (i.e., the number of unique ideas or types of solutions generated by a given person), and originality (i.e., the number of ideas generated by a given individual that were not produced by many other people), in addition to elaboration (the amount of detail in a given response). Although these traditional metrics are important for assessing creativity, they would not have been able to capture our particular interest in this study in top-down-driven relative to bottom-up-driven responses. As such, we developed a novel coding system that allows for the qualitative coding of responses on a continuum ranging from top-down responses that are based on the retrieval of abstract object properties (i.e., canonical function, use-specific mode of manipulation) to bottom-up responses that are based on the retrieval of concrete object properties (i.e., shape, size, materials, removable parts).

We hypothesized that: (a) if stimulus modality (verbal or pictorial) can influence the availability of object properties for retrieval, this should be significantly more pronounced during the open-ended components of the task (i.e., during the generation of secondary and, particularly, ad hoc uses). That is, when the task is open-ended, participants’ responses would differ depending on which object attributes are tapped by different stimulus modalities; however, when the task is close-ended, being prompted with the name or picture of the object (or a combination of the two) should not lead to differences across stimulus conditions, as measured by reaction times and our novel categorization system. We further hypothesized that: (b) if, as discussed above, pictorial materials render properties related to the learned actions associated with a given object more salient than other properties, the presence of pictorial stimuli will influence the extent to which participants’ responses are based on a top-down or a bottom-up semantic retrieval strategy, thus resulting in functional fixedness. That is, although they need not be associated with longer latencies, pictorial stimuli will interfere with the generation of non-canonical functions, leading to more top-down-based responses, relative to verbal stimuli.

Participants

Sixty-three right-handed, native English speakers ( N = 63; mean age = 21.12 years, 23 males) participated in this study for course credit. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, based on the type of stimuli they were shown: (a) The Name condition ( n = 22; mean age = 22.39 years, 8 males); (b) the Picture condition ( n = 23; mean age = 21.59 years, 6 males); or (c) the Name and Picture condition ( n = 18; mean age = 21.88 years, 9 males). Participants across the three conditions did not differ in mean age and distribution of males to females. All participants provided informed consent according to university guidelines.

For the Picture condition, 144 black-and-white images of everyday objects, divided randomly into six blocks of 24 items, were used as stimuli. They were selected from a larger set of 220 items based on data from a different group of participants ( N = 62, mean age = 20.14, 28 males), who completed a web-based survey asking for the name of each object and for common, common alternative, and uncommon alternative uses for each of them. They further reported how easy it was to generate each type of use for each item (on a 7-point Likert-like scale). Objects with high name agreement (> 75%) and ease of use-generation rating (> 5) were selected for the experiment. For the Name condition, the stimuli were the object names, as determined by the modal name produced by the majority of subjects in the norming study. For the Picture and Name condition, the stimuli consisted of the combination of the names and the pictures of the objects, with the image placed below the name of each object. Examples of stimuli are presented in Figure 1 .

Examples of stimuli by condition and task

Each participant completed two blocks of each of the three experimental tasks (i.e., common use task, common alternative use task, and uncommon alternative use task) for a total of six blocks, the order of which was counterbalanced across participants. The assignment of stimuli to task conditions was also counterbalanced across subjects, and no stimuli were repeated during the experiment.

A desktop PC computer was used for stimulus presentation. A microphone compatible with the stimulus presentation program (E-prime, Psychology Software Tools, Inc.) and a digital voice recorder (Sony electronics, Inc.) were used to record participants’ voice onset and their verbal responses, respectively.

For each experimental block participants performed either the Common Use (CU) task, or the Common Alternative Use (CAU) task, or the Uncommon Alternative Use (UAU) task. For the CU task, participants reported (aloud) the most typical or commonly-encountered use for each object (e.g., Kleenex tissue : use to wipe one’s nose); for the CAU task, participants reported a relatively common use for the object, that was frequent but not the most typical (e.g., Kleenex tissue : use to wipe up a spill); finally, for the UAU task, participants generated a novel use for the object, one they had not seen or attempted before or may have seen only once or twice in their lives, that would be plausible, yet, which would deviate significantly from the object’s common and common alternative uses (e.g., Kleenex tissue : use as stuffing in a box). Participants were informed that the tasks had no right or wrong answers and that they should feel free to produce any response they judged fit. They were instructed to respond as quickly as possible and to remain silent if unable to generate a response.

Each 7-minute block comprised 24 experimental trials, presented for 9000 ms followed by a fixation screen for 3000 ms (see Figure 2 for trial timing and composition). The task instructions were presented at the beginning of each block; a prompt also appeared above each trial item (i.e., “Common Use”, “Common Alternative Use”, or “Uncommon Alternative Use”; see Figure 1 ). Each subject completed a 5-minute training session consisting of three trials of each of the three experimental tasks. The experimental session lasted approximately one hour. At the end of the experiment, participants were debriefed on the purpose of the study and they were urged not to discuss the experiment with their classmates.

Examples of trial timing and composition for: (a) the Name condition, (b) the Picture condition, and (c) the Name and Picture condition, for the Common use task. The timing and composition of the trials was the same for the Common alternative and Uncommon alternative tasks.

Each participant’s voice-onset reaction times (RTs) per trial were recorded for quantitative analysis. Participants’ verbal responses were further recorded and later transcribed for qualitative analysis. We report the results for each of these measures separately in the sections that follow.

Analysis of Voice-Onset Reaction Times

Median voice-onset RTs were derived for each participant for each of the three experimental tasks (see Table 1 ), after eliminating any trials for which participants did not respond. Voice-onset RT data from one participant in the Picture condition were missing due to a software malfunction. Median RT data were subjected to a mixed, 3×3 analysis of variance (ANOVA), with type of task (CU, CAU, and UAU) as the within-subjects factor, and condition (Name, Picture, Name & Picture) as the between-subjects factor. The results revealed a significant main effect for task ( F [2, 118] = 349.67, p < .001, η 2 = .86), but no main effect for condition ( F [1, 59] = 0.26, p = .77, η 2 = .01), and no task by condition interaction ( F [4, 118] = 0.65, p = .63, η 2 = .02). Across conditions, planned pairwise contrast comparisons showed that the common use task elicited significantly faster responses relative to the common alternative ( F [1, 59] = 493.19, p < .001, η 2 = .89, Bonferroni correction) and uncommon alternative ( F [1, 59] = 654.83, p < .001, η 2 = .92, Bonferroni correction) tasks, which did not reliably differ from each other ( F [1, 59] = 2.22, p = .14, η 2 = .04). Overall, the generation of common uses was associated with significantly faster RTs relative to the generation of secondary and, particularly, ad hoc uses. Regarding the effects of condition—predominantly for the open-ended components of the task—the type of stimulus was not associated with reliable differences in RTs. However, according to our hypotheses and previous research on functional fixedness (e.g., Chrysikou & Weisberg, 2005 ), if during ad hoc use generation the presence of an object’s name or picture (or a combination of the two) influences the extent to which participants’ responses are based on top-down or bottom-up memory retrieval strategies, then these differences would be present in the kinds of functions participants would generate and not, necessarily, in the speed in which they would generate them. These are the differences we attempted to capture with the novel qualitative coding scheme for participants’ responses that we present in the following section.

Mean Median Voice Onset RTs in milliseconds by Condition and Task (standard errors in parentheses)

Note . RT = Reaction times; CU = Common use task; CAU = Common alternative use task; UAU = Uncommon alternative use task.

Qualitative Analysis of Verbal Responses

Description of coding system for object function.

Participants’ verbal responses were analyzed with a novel coding system that classifies object function in one of four categories, on a continuum ranging from top-down responses that are based on the retrieval of abstract object properties (i.e., canonical function, typical mode of manipulation; Categories 1 and 2), to bottom-up responses that are based on the retrieval of concrete object properties (i.e., shape, size, materials, removable parts; Categories 3 and 4; see Table 2 ).

Qualitative Response Coding System for Object Function based on Top-down and Bottom-up Object Properties

In this system, responses are coded as belonging in Category 1 when they describe functions that are typical of the object’s canonical use (e.g., chair : to sit on) or reflect a use of the object in the same way but in a different context (e.g., chair : to sit on when on the beach).

Category 2 is meant to reflect functions that are not typical of the object, but which originate from top-down retrieval of object features that are associated with its canonical function and are not available simply by observing the object. Responses are also coded as belonging to Category 2 when the object is used to substitute for the function of another tool based on shared top-down or abstract properties (i.e., properties not visible or available without prior knowledge of what the object is); for example, using a football as a life saver is based on the knowledge that a football is filled with air and can float. This category is further used to describe the generation of a new function for an object, based on such top-down, abstract properties; for example, using a hairdryer to blow leaves is a function based on the top-down knowledge that a hairdryer is a device that blows air. Category 2 also includes responses for which an object is modified to allow for a new function based on top-down properties that cannot be inferred exclusively from its component features; for example, cutting a football in half and using it to collect water is a function based on the preexisting (i.e., not manifestly available) knowledge that a football is hollow. Responses that refer to common secondary functions for an object (e.g., ironing board : to fold clothes on) or which incorporate cultural and culturally-instantiated influences (e.g., sock : use as a stocking for Christmas) are further coded as belonging to Category 2.

Category 3 reflects functions that are distant from the object’s canonical function, and which originate from a consideration of the overall shape of an object after some modification. Category 3 describes functions generated from bottom-up properties of the object (i.e., properties visible or available without prior knowledge of the object’s functional identity) after minor modification. For example, folding a blanket and using it to carry things (i.e., as a bag) is a function originating from bottom-up properties of the item, which is far-removed from its use as a cover during sleep. Responses in which objects were used in the place of another object based on visual likeness are also coded as Category 3. For example, a bowl may prompt participants to generate the use “to wear as a hat;” in this case, top-down knowledge about the bowl (e.g., it’s use in food consumption) is overridden by the visual similarities to a hat (i.e., the round semicircular shape, the visibly hollow interior). Finally, functions classified under this category can further reflect the active modification or modeling of an object after a different item to allow for a function based on shared bottom-up or concrete properties (i.e., properties visible or readily available without existing knowledge of the object’s identity). For example, a response that suggests adding straps to a tennis racket to make a snowshoe is based on the visual similarities between the tennis racket and the snowshoe. This response does not refer to previous top-down knowledge or the common functions for a tennis racket (even though abstract properties of the second item—the snowshoe—are likely activated for the generation of this function).

Finally, Category 4 includes responses describing the generation of a function for the object based on specific bottom-up properties rather than the overall shape of the object; as with Category 3, these properties are visible or available without prior knowledge of the object’s identity; furthermore, in Category 4 the function is not based on overall visual similarity with an already existing item, as was the case in Category 3. For example, using a flashlight to open a beer bottle is a function based on a concrete, visually-observed property— having a thin, rigid edge —that does not reflect abstract, top-down knowledge about the object’s typical use. This category further incorporates responses involving the deconstruction of the object to allow for a different function based on the object’s concrete or bottom-up properties (e.g., chair : to burn and use as firewood). All responses that were vague, revealed a misunderstanding of a given object, indicated the participant’s failure to follow task instructions, or otherwise did fall into categories 1, 2, 3, or 4 were coded as miscellaneous.

The present coding system classifies responses on a top-down to bottom-up continuum , that is, as being either closer to an object’s abstract normative functional identity (e.g., chair : a piece of furniture, something to sit on), or as reflecting a distance from that identity and a stronger focus on stimulus-guided knowledge retrieval of the object’s concrete, bottom-up properties (e.g., chair : an artifact made of wood, to burn and use as fuel for a fire). That is, we emphasize that classification of an object’s function in one of the four categories does not imply an absolute either-or distinction between retrieval of top-down and bottom-up properties of an object’s representation. We further note that due to our particular interest in the effects of verbal or pictorial stimulus modality and the nature of the task, this coding system focuses on the retrieval of visual object properties; although not present in our dataset, the present coding system does not exclude bottom-up properties from other modalities (e.g., tactile, auditory).

Rating procedure

The total number of participants’ verbal responses, across conditions, exceeded 8,000 items. Three independent raters, blind to the participants’ condition, were trained on the use of the coding system and coded all responses. Regular biweekly meetings were conducted to ensure compliance with the coding system, in addition to resolving coding disagreements among the raters. Inter-rater reliability between rater pairs was examined by means of the Kappa statistic, which includes corrections for chance agreement levels. The average inter-rater reliability (Kappa coefficient) was .83 ( p < .001), 95% CI (0.79, 0.87), ranging from .63 to .99, which is considered substantial to outstanding ( Landis & Koch, 1977 ). Any differences among the raters were resolved in conference. The ratings across raters (after consensus) were used for subsequent analyses.

Analysis of response type

To achieve the most direct assessment of the experimental hypothesis, after coding and analyses were completed on the four-category coding system, we computed the percentage of each participant’s answers under each category for each task (CU, CAU, and UAU, out of the total number of answers they provided for that task; see Table 3 for average percentages by category, condition, and task). Subsequently, we combined the percentage of each subject’s answers for each task separately for categories 1 and 2 (top-down responses) and for categories 3 and 4 (bottom-up responses). We then classified categorically each participant’s performance overall for each task as predominantly either top-down- or bottom-up-driven, depending on whether the majority of their responses for each task fell under the one or the other category (see Figure 3 for an expression of these classifications in percentages by condition and task). Due to the qualitative nature of these results, we employed nonparametric statistics to examine whether participants generated predominantly top-down versus bottom-up responses for each task, based on the kind of stimulus they received. For the CU and the CAU tasks, all participants generated exclusively top-down responses (see Figure 3 ); hence, no measures of association were computed. For the UAU task, however, the association of stimulus condition (Name, Picture, Name & Picture) with response type (top-down, bottom-up) was significant (Pearson’s χ 2 [2, N = 63] = 11.44, p = .003, two-tailed, Cramer’s ϕ = .43). Focused pairwise analyses by stimulus condition with Bonferroni-adjusted α = .017 showed that, as expected, more participants who were presented with the stimuli in the form of pictures than participants who were presented with the stimuli in the form of words generated responses that were judged to be based on a top-down strategy (Pearson’s χ 2 [1, N = 45] = 10.29, p = .001, two-tailed, Cramer’s ϕ = .48; Fisher’s exact test p = .002). There was no difference between participants who were shown pictures and participants who were shown pictures and words (Pearson’s χ 2 [1, N = 41] = 1.74, p = .19, two-tailed, Cramer’s ϕ = .21; Fisher’s exact test p = .30) or between participants who were shown words and participants who were shown a combination of pictures and words (Pearson’s χ 2 [1, N = 40] = 3.74, p = .053, two-tailed, Cramer’s ϕ = .31; Fisher’s exact test p = .09). Overall, the qualitative analysis of subjects’ responses showed that, as predicted, for the open-ended UAU task, pictorial stimuli elicited significantly more top-down-driven responses, closer to the object’s canonical function, than did verbal stimuli.

Percentage of participants generating predominantly top-down responses by condition and task.

Average Percentage of Responses Under Each Coding Scheme Category by Condition and Task

Note . CU = Common use task; CAU = Common alternative use task; UAU = Uncommon alternative use task. Categories 1 and 2 are considered top-down driven, whereas Categories 3 and 4 are considered bottom-up-driven.

Analysis across the coding system categories

To examine differences among the conditions on the entire spectrum of the coding system, we first entered the percentage of each participant’s answers for each task (CU, CAU, and UAU; out of the total number of answers they provided for that task) for each category into a 4 × 3 repeated measures, mixed ANOVA, with category (1, 2, 3, or 4) as the within-subjects factor and the type of condition (Name, Picture, or Name & Picture) as the between-subjects factor. Given the vast majority of subjects producing responses that were exclusively classified under categories 1 and 2, for both the CU and the CAU tasks there was a main effect of category ( p s < .001), but no effect of condition and no category by condition interaction ( p s > .12). No post hoc comparisons across categories or tasks were significant (all p s > .11). In contrast, for the UAU task there was a main effect of category ( F [3, 180] = 99.01, p < .001, η 2 = .62) and a marginally significant main effect of condition ( F [2, 60] = 3.09, p = .053, η 2 = .09); the category by condition interaction was not significant F [6, 180] = 1.48, p = .19, η 2 = .05). Post-hoc comparisons revealed a significant difference across categories between participants who received picture stimuli relative to those receiving the objects’ names (Tukey’s honestly significant difference test, p = .044). None of the other pairwise comparisons reached significance (all p s > .30).

We subsequently entered the percentage of each participant’s answers for each task (CU, CAU, and UAU; out of the total number of answers they provided for that task) that were categorized as top-down-driven into a 3 × 3 repeated measures, mixed ANOVA, with the type of task (CU, CAU, and UAU) as the within-subjects factor and the type of condition (Name, Picture, or Name & Picture) as the between-subjects factor. Participants generated more top-down-driven responses when they were instructed to produce the common function for the objects relative to secondary and ad hoc functions (main effect of task, F [2, 120] = 205.65, p < .001, η 2 = .77). Although the task × condition interaction was not significant ( F [4, 120] = 0.99, p = .42, η 2 = .03), there was a significant main effect of condition ( F [2, 60] = 3.16, p = .049, η 2 = .10). Post-hoc comparisons revealed that participants in the Picture condition generated significantly more top-down-driven responses than did participants in the Name condition (Tukey’s honestly significant difference test, p = .049). This difference was not significant between participants in the Picture condition relative to participants in the Name and Picture condition (Tukey’s honestly significant difference test, p = .19) or between participants in the Name condition and those in the Name and Picture condition (Tukey’s honestly significant difference test, p = .86).

Analysis of omissions

To examine the possibility that the type of stimulus format might have influenced the number of trials for which participants did not give a response, particularly for the common and uncommon alternative tasks, we entered the percent of non-responses by subject and task into a 3 × 3 repeated measures, mixed ANOVA, with the type of task (CU, CAU, and UAU) as the within-subjects factor and the type of condition (Name, Picture, or Name & Picture) as the between-subjects factor (see Figure 4 ). As expected, there was a main effect of task ( F [2, 120] = 70.00, p < .001, η 2 = .54), especially given that the number of omissions was minimal for the CU task relative to the other tasks; importantly, however, the results did not reveal a significant effect of condition ( F [1, 60] = 1.26, p = .29, η 2 = .04) or a task × condition interaction ( F [4, 120] = 1.26, p = .29, η 2 = .04). Post-hoc pairwise contrast comparisons (Tukey’s honestly significant difference test) between conditions for all tasks were not significant ( p > .30), thus confirming that the type of stimulus did not influence the number of trials for which participants did not provide a response.

Average percentage of omissions by condition and task. The error bars depict the standard error of the mean.

Coming up with creative solutions to problems, designing new products, or creating novel pieces of art often involves exposure to examples either generated by others or the creators themselves. Although examples can facilitate creativity through analogical transfer (e.g., Holyoak, 1984 , 2005 ) or by constraining the creative task space (see Sagiv, Arieli, Goldenberg, & Goldschmidt, 2010 ), they can also lead to functional fixedness, thus limiting the generation of novel ideas. In this study we focused on the influence of verbal and pictorial examples for creativity and divergent thinking. We examined whether memory retrieval (specifically the activation of object representations) based on the influence of verbal and pictorial stimuli would differentially bias participants’ responses in the Object Use task; this task allowed us to manipulate systematically the degree to which participants are asked a close- or open-ended question. Our results suggested that (1) participants showed different biases toward top-down or bottom-up semantic retrieval strategies depending on the nature of the task (i.e., CU, CAU, UAU), such that canonical uses were generated faster than secondary and ad hoc uses; (2) although across all three tasks participants generally employed more top-down than bottom-up retrieval strategies, in open-ended, creative thinking tasks that involve the generation of secondary, and, particularly, ad hoc, uncommon uses for objects, the kinds of responses participants generated were based on bottom-up retrieval strategies more so than during the generation of canonical uses. This analysis was only possible through the classification of responses by means of our novel coding system that captures the extent to which a function is based on the retrieval of top-down or bottom-up attributes of the object’s representation; (3) the effects of stimulus type (name, picture, or a combination of the two) on the availability of object properties for retrieval was, as predicted, more pronounced during the generation of ad hoc, uncommon uses. Specifically, during the UAU task the presence of stimuli in pictorial format primed top-down, abstract aspects of object knowledge that are more closely tied to the object’s normative function, more so than the presence of an object’s name. Interestingly, the combination of the two types of stimuli (i.e., name and picture) seemed to elicit performance that fell somewhere between that of participants in the other two conditions (Name, Picture).

Our quantitative and qualitative results showed that for the UAU subcomponent of the task there is an increase in the generation of bottom-up-driven functions (measured by our novel coding scheme), in addition to an increase in processing time (measured by voice-onset RTs) as participants are forced to move away from a top-down strategy of retrieving the object’s canonical, abstract, and context-independent function, so as to generate an atypical, specific, and context-bound use for it. These results suggest that even though we typically categorize objects by accessing our top-down, abstract knowledge of their functions, under specific circumstances that require creativity and divergent thinking—when such abstract information would be counterproductive (i.e., when one needs to use an object in an ad hoc, goal-determined way, e.g., use a chair as firewood to keep oneself warm)—our conceptual system appears to allow for a temporary retreat or reorientation to more basic bottom-up knowledge, as guided by task demands.

Critically, we have shown that stimulus modality significantly influenced participants’ response type, such that pictorial stimuli led to more top-down-driven (and less bottom-up-driven) responses associated with the object’s canonical function, relative to verbal stimuli. This finding is consistent with the results of previous studies (e.g., Boronat et al., 2005 ; Chainay & Humphreys, 2002 ; Postler et al., 2003 ; Saffran, Coslett & Keener; 2003 ) showing facilitated access to action- and manipulation-related information from pictures relative to words. Importantly, the present research extends earlier findings by demonstrating that the action-relevant information elicited by pictorial stimuli does not pertain to general actions one can perform with the object—that are guided exclusively by its affordances (see Gibson, 1979 )—but rather that the elicited action information is tightly linked to the object’s canonical, normative function.

Related to the effects of pictorial stimuli, we note that our results did not show a significant influence of type of stimulus on voice onset RTs, particularly for the close-ended (CU) subcomponent of the task. In particular, the presence of pictures did not lead to faster RTs when participants were generating the common use of the objects. We note that some previous studies have reported both facilitation with pictorial stimuli or comparable RTs between stimuli in verbal or pictorial format, depending on the nature of the semantic task. For example, Chainay and Humphreys (2002) have shown faster RTs for action-related decisions (e.g., does a teapot require a pouring action?) from pictures, but similar RT patterns for semantic/contextual decisions (e.g., is a teapot found in the kitchen?) from pictures and words. Regarding the question about typical object function in the CU task component of the present study, it is possible that canonical function representations are accessed equally rapidly from pictorial and verbal stimuli, even though specific types of properties that comprise object function (i.e., manipulation-related properties) are accessed faster through stimuli in pictorial format (see also Boronat et al., 2005 ; Saffran, Coslett, & Keener; 2003 ).

Our finding that participants in the Picture condition generated more top-down-driven responses during the ad hoc, creative use generation task, compared to participants in the Name condition, is consistent with studies of functional fixedness to pictorial examples in problem solving. As mentioned earlier, Chrysikou and Weisberg (2005) have shown that in an open-ended, design problem-solving task, participants prompted with pictorial examples were likely to reproduce in their solutions example design elements, even when these elements were explicitly described as flawed. In contrast, participants who were not given pictorial examples or who were explicitly instructed to avoid them, appeared immune to functional fixedness effects (see also Smith, Ward, & Schumacher, 1993 ). Similarly, participants’ responses in the Picture condition in the present study appeared strongly biased toward the retrieval of top-down, abstract properties linked to the objects’ canonical function during uncommon use generation. This finding may advance our understanding of functional fixedness from pictorial stimuli: Based on prior research on semantic memory retrieval from words and pictures as discussed above, we argue that the stronger bond between an object’s visual form (relative to its name) and function-related actions may have biased participants in the Picture condition toward the retrieval of features tied to the object’s canonical use. We further note that in the Object Use task a picture stimulus represents a single instance of the object category (e.g., a specific chair, knife, hairdryer) that is typical of that category and, as such, may prime the canonical function of the object. In contrast, a word can activate multiple instances of the object category across participants, which may also vary with respect to how typical they are of the object category. As a result, word stimuli may lead to increased variability in responses and reliance on bottom-up features depending on the specific instance of the category each participant will think about. Future work examining these effects with pictures of atypical instances of objects, as well as other modalities (e.g., auditory, tactile) may shed light on this issue. For example, a recent meta-analysis of 43 design studies ( Sio, Kotovsky, & Cagan, 2015 ) suggested that fewer and less common examples might lead to more novel and appropriate responses during creative design problem solving tasks.

Finally, our results build on those of Gilhooly et al. (2007) who analyzed participants’ strategies while generating multiple uses for an object in the Alternative Uses task, a variant of the task employed in the present experiment. Specifically, Gilhooly and colleagues reported that participants’ initial responses were guided by a retrieval strategy of already-known uses for the objects, whereas subsequent responses for the same item were based on other strategies, including disassembly of the object and a search for broad categories for possible uses of the target object. Although participants in the present experiment generated only one function per object (either common, or common alternative, or uncommon alternative) given our intention to collect voice-onset reaction times, the types of responses generated for the ad hoc use conditions partially reflect the strategies detailed by Gilhooly et al. (2007) . Our findings further extend this previous work by showing that stimulus modality (verbal or pictorial) can influence the type of retrieval strategy employed in open-ended tasks, with pictures leading to more top-down than bottom-up responses.

In sum, in this study we examined whether pictures and words will differentially influence access to semantic knowledge for object concepts depending on whether the task is close- or open-ended. Our results suggest that when generating ad hoc uses in an open-ended, creative thinking task, participants exposed to a picture as opposed to a word rely more on top-down-driven memory retrieval strategies and generate responses that are closer to an object’s typical function. Importantly, we have developed and applied a new coding system for object function that allows for a qualitative assessment of participants’ responses on a continuum ranging from top-down, context-independent, and abstract functions to bottom-up, context-bound, and concrete responses. Future research can benefit from the use of these assessments for a comprehensive evaluation of semantic knowledge for objects in studies with normal subjects and patients and for different kinds of stimuli and tasks, thereby further illuminating the organization of knowledge about objects and how this knowledge is accessed in various tasks by different stimulus modalities. Critically, future studies can employ this categorization scheme to evaluate novel idea generation in the context of creative design or artistic products, especially following exposure to different kinds of example prompts. Such applications may have important implications for the use of examples in various educational settings (e.g., industrial and engineering design or art schools) to ensure that these instructional tools promote innovation and creative thinking.

Acknowledgments

We thank the workshop participants for their feedback. We also thank Barbara Malt and the members of the Thompson-Schill lab for their suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript. This research was supported by NIH grant R01-DC009209 to STS.

The groundwork for the coding system for the qualitative analysis of object function was originally developed for a presentation of the first author during the workshop ‘ Principles of Repurposing ’ that was held at the Santa Fe Institute (Santa Fe, NM, July 14–16, 2008).

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5.8 Biases and Errors in Thinking

5 min read • december 22, 2022

Sadiyya Holsey

Haseung Jun

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Errors in Problem Solving

Because of our mental concepts and other processes, we may be biased or think of situations without an open mind. Let's discuss what those other processes are.

Fixation is only thinking from one point of view. It is in the inability to approach a situation from different perspectives 👀 Fixation is used interchangeably with your mental concept.

Functional Fixedness 

Functional fixedness is the tendency to only think of the familiar functions of an object.

An example of functional fixedness would be the candle problem . Individuals were given a box with thumbtacks, matches 🔥, and a candle 🕯️Then they were asked to put the candle on the wall in a way that the candle wax would not drip while it was lit.

Most of the subjects were unable to solve the problem. Some tried to solve it by trying to pin the candle on the wall with a thumbtack. The successful method was to attach the box to the wall using the thumbtacks. Then, put the candle in the box to light it.

Because of functional fixedness , individuals were unsuccessful because they couldn't understand how a box 📦 can be more than just a container for something.

The following two heuristics can lead us to make poor decisions and snap judgements, which downgrade our thinking.

Availability Heuristic

An availability heuristic is the ability to easily recall immediate examples from the mind about something. When someone asks you "What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of . . .," you are using the availability heuristic .

Rather than thinking further about a topic, you just mention/assume other events based on the first thing that comes to your mind (or the first readily available concept in your mind).

This makes us fear the wrong things. Many parents may not let their children walk to school 🏫 because the only thing they could think of is that one kid going missing ⚠️This is the very first thing that comes to their mind and because of it, they fear their children suffering the same fate.

Therefore, we really fear what is readily in our memory.

Image Courtesy of The Decision Lab .

Representativeness Heuristic

The representativeness heuristic is when you judge something based on how they match your prototype. This leads us to ignore information and is honestly the stem of stereotypes.

For example, if someone was asked to decide who most likely went to an ivy league school (when looking at a truck driver 🚚 and a professor 👩‍🏫👨‍🏫), most people would say the professor. This doesn't mean that the professor actually went to an ivy league school, this is just us being stereotypical because of our prototype for a person that goes to an ivy.

There are so many different types of biases and we experience each and every one of them in our everyday lives.

Confirmation Bias 

Confirmation bias is the tendency of individuals to support or search for information that aligns with their opinions and ignore information that doesn't. This eventually leads us to be more polarized ⬅️➡️ as individuals, and is another way of experiencing fixation .

A key example is how many republicans 🔴 watch Fox News to view a channel that confirms their political beliefs. People really dislike it when others have differing opinions and continue to find information that back up their own beliefs.

Belief Perseverance and Belief Bias

Belief perseverance is the tendency to hold onto a belief even if it has lost its credibility. This is different from belief bias , which is the tendency for our preexisting beliefs to distort logical thinking, making logical conclusions look illogical.

Halo Effect 

The halo effect is when positive impressions of people lead to positive views about their character and personality traits. For example, if you see someone as attractive you may think of them as having better personality traits and character even though this isn't necessarily true. 

Self-Serving Bias 

Self-serving bias is when a person attributes positive outcomes to their own doing and negative outcomes to external factors.

For example, if you do well on a test 💯 you may think it makes sense, because you did a good job of studying to prepare for the exam. But if you fail the test, you may put the blame on the teacher for not teaching all the material or for making the test too hard.

Attentional Bias 

Attentional bias is when people’s perceptions are influenced by recurring thoughts.

For example, if marine biology has been on your mind a lot lately, your conversations may include references to marine biology. You would also be more likely to notice information that relates to your thoughts (marine biology).

Actor-observer Bias

Actor-observer bias is when a person might attribute their own actions to external factors and the actions of others to internal factors.

For example, if you see someone else litter, you might think about how people are careless. But if you litter, you might say it was because there was no trash can🗑️ within sight.

Anchoring Bias 

Anchoring bias is when an individual relies heavily on the first piece of information given when making a decision. The first piece of information acts as an anchor and compares it to all subsequent information.

Hindsight Bias

Hindsight bias is when you think you knew something all along after the outcome has occurred. People overestimate their ability to have predicted a certain outcome even if it couldn't possibly have been predicted. People often say "I knew that."

Image Courtesy of Giphy .

Framing impacts decisions and judgments. It's the way we present an issue, and it can be a very powerful persuasion tool.

For example, a doctor could say one of two things about a surgery:

10% of people die 😲

90% of people survive 😌

Obviously, 10% of people die is a much more direct way to phrase the same thing. This makes it scarier than "90% of people survive." Framing is a very important tool!

Key Terms to Review ( 17 )

Actor-Observer Bias

Anchoring Bias

Attentional Bias

Belief Bias

Belief Perseverance

Candle Problem

Confirmation Bias

Functional Fixedness

Halo Effect

Self-Serving Bias

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7.3 Problem-Solving

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe problem solving strategies
• Define algorithm and heuristic
• Explain some common roadblocks to effective problem solving

   People face problems every day—usually, multiple problems throughout the day. Sometimes these problems are straightforward: To double a recipe for pizza dough, for example, all that is required is that each ingredient in the recipe be doubled. Sometimes, however, the problems we encounter are more complex. For example, say you have a work deadline, and you must mail a printed copy of a report to your supervisor by the end of the business day. The report is time-sensitive and must be sent overnight. You finished the report last night, but your printer will not work today. What should you do? First, you need to identify the problem and then apply a strategy for solving the problem.

The study of human and animal problem solving processes has provided much insight toward the understanding of our conscious experience and led to advancements in computer science and artificial intelligence. Essentially much of cognitive science today represents studies of how we consciously and unconsciously make decisions and solve problems. For instance, when encountered with a large amount of information, how do we go about making decisions about the most efficient way of sorting and analyzing all the information in order to find what you are looking for as in visual search paradigms in cognitive psychology. Or in a situation where a piece of machinery is not working properly, how do we go about organizing how to address the issue and understand what the cause of the problem might be. How do we sort the procedures that will be needed and focus attention on what is important in order to solve problems efficiently. Within this section we will discuss some of these issues and examine processes related to human, animal and computer problem solving.

PROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGIES

   When people are presented with a problem—whether it is a complex mathematical problem or a broken printer, how do you solve it? Before finding a solution to the problem, the problem must first be clearly identified. After that, one of many problem solving strategies can be applied, hopefully resulting in a solution.

Problems themselves can be classified into two different categories known as ill-defined and well-defined problems (Schacter, 2009). Ill-defined problems represent issues that do not have clear goals, solution paths, or expected solutions whereas well-defined problems have specific goals, clearly defined solutions, and clear expected solutions. Problem solving often incorporates pragmatics (logical reasoning) and semantics (interpretation of meanings behind the problem), and also in many cases require abstract thinking and creativity in order to find novel solutions. Within psychology, problem solving refers to a motivational drive for reading a definite “goal” from a present situation or condition that is either not moving toward that goal, is distant from it, or requires more complex logical analysis for finding a missing description of conditions or steps toward that goal. Processes relating to problem solving include problem finding also known as problem analysis, problem shaping where the organization of the problem occurs, generating alternative strategies, implementation of attempted solutions, and verification of the selected solution. Various methods of studying problem solving exist within the field of psychology including introspection, behavior analysis and behaviorism, simulation, computer modeling, and experimentation.

A problem-solving strategy is a plan of action used to find a solution. Different strategies have different action plans associated with them (table below). For example, a well-known strategy is trial and error. The old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” describes trial and error. In terms of your broken printer, you could try checking the ink levels, and if that doesn’t work, you could check to make sure the paper tray isn’t jammed. Or maybe the printer isn’t actually connected to your laptop. When using trial and error, you would continue to try different solutions until you solved your problem. Although trial and error is not typically one of the most time-efficient strategies, it is a commonly used one.

   Another type of strategy is an algorithm. An algorithm is a problem-solving formula that provides you with step-by-step instructions used to achieve a desired outcome (Kahneman, 2011). You can think of an algorithm as a recipe with highly detailed instructions that produce the same result every time they are performed. Algorithms are used frequently in our everyday lives, especially in computer science. When you run a search on the Internet, search engines like Google use algorithms to decide which entries will appear first in your list of results. Facebook also uses algorithms to decide which posts to display on your newsfeed. Can you identify other situations in which algorithms are used?

A heuristic is another type of problem solving strategy. While an algorithm must be followed exactly to produce a correct result, a heuristic is a general problem-solving framework (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). You can think of these as mental shortcuts that are used to solve problems. A “rule of thumb” is an example of a heuristic. Such a rule saves the person time and energy when making a decision, but despite its time-saving characteristics, it is not always the best method for making a rational decision. Different types of heuristics are used in different types of situations, but the impulse to use a heuristic occurs when one of five conditions is met (Pratkanis, 1989):

• When one is faced with too much information
• When the time to make a decision is limited
• When the decision to be made is unimportant
• When there is access to very little information to use in making the decision
• When an appropriate heuristic happens to come to mind in the same moment

Working backwards is a useful heuristic in which you begin solving the problem by focusing on the end result. Consider this example: You live in Washington, D.C. and have been invited to a wedding at 4 PM on Saturday in Philadelphia. Knowing that Interstate 95 tends to back up any day of the week, you need to plan your route and time your departure accordingly. If you want to be at the wedding service by 3:30 PM, and it takes 2.5 hours to get to Philadelphia without traffic, what time should you leave your house? You use the working backwards heuristic to plan the events of your day on a regular basis, probably without even thinking about it.

Another useful heuristic is the practice of accomplishing a large goal or task by breaking it into a series of smaller steps. Students often use this common method to complete a large research project or long essay for school. For example, students typically brainstorm, develop a thesis or main topic, research the chosen topic, organize their information into an outline, write a rough draft, revise and edit the rough draft, develop a final draft, organize the references list, and proofread their work before turning in the project. The large task becomes less overwhelming when it is broken down into a series of small steps.

Further problem solving strategies have been identified (listed below) that incorporate flexible and creative thinking in order to reach solutions efficiently.

Additional Problem Solving Strategies :

• Abstraction – refers to solving the problem within a model of the situation before applying it to reality.
• Analogy – is using a solution that solves a similar problem.
• Brainstorming – refers to collecting an analyzing a large amount of solutions, especially within a group of people, to combine the solutions and developing them until an optimal solution is reached.
• Divide and conquer – breaking down large complex problems into smaller more manageable problems.
• Hypothesis testing – method used in experimentation where an assumption about what would happen in response to manipulating an independent variable is made, and analysis of the affects of the manipulation are made and compared to the original hypothesis.
• Lateral thinking – approaching problems indirectly and creatively by viewing the problem in a new and unusual light.
• Means-ends analysis – choosing and analyzing an action at a series of smaller steps to move closer to the goal.
• Method of focal objects – putting seemingly non-matching characteristics of different procedures together to make something new that will get you closer to the goal.
• Morphological analysis – analyzing the outputs of and interactions of many pieces that together make up a whole system.
• Proof – trying to prove that a problem cannot be solved. Where the proof fails becomes the starting point or solving the problem.
• Reduction – adapting the problem to be as similar problems where a solution exists.
• Research – using existing knowledge or solutions to similar problems to solve the problem.
• Root cause analysis – trying to identify the cause of the problem.

The strategies listed above outline a short summary of methods we use in working toward solutions and also demonstrate how the mind works when being faced with barriers preventing goals to be reached.

One example of means-end analysis can be found by using the Tower of Hanoi paradigm . This paradigm can be modeled as a word problems as demonstrated by the Missionary-Cannibal Problem :

Missionary-Cannibal Problem

Three missionaries and three cannibals are on one side of a river and need to cross to the other side. The only means of crossing is a boat, and the boat can only hold two people at a time. Your goal is to devise a set of moves that will transport all six of the people across the river, being in mind the following constraint: The number of cannibals can never exceed the number of missionaries in any location. Remember that someone will have to also row that boat back across each time.

Hint : At one point in your solution, you will have to send more people back to the original side than you just sent to the destination.

The actual Tower of Hanoi problem consists of three rods sitting vertically on a base with a number of disks of different sizes that can slide onto any rod. The puzzle starts with the disks in a neat stack in ascending order of size on one rod, the smallest at the top making a conical shape. The objective of the puzzle is to move the entire stack to another rod obeying the following rules:

• 1. Only one disk can be moved at a time.
• 2. Each move consists of taking the upper disk from one of the stacks and placing it on top of another stack or on an empty rod.
• 3. No disc may be placed on top of a smaller disk.

  Figure 7.02. Steps for solving the Tower of Hanoi in the minimum number of moves when there are 3 disks.

Figure 7.03. Graphical representation of nodes (circles) and moves (lines) of Tower of Hanoi.

The Tower of Hanoi is a frequently used psychological technique to study problem solving and procedure analysis. A variation of the Tower of Hanoi known as the Tower of London has been developed which has been an important tool in the neuropsychological diagnosis of executive function disorders and their treatment.

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY AND PROBLEM SOLVING

As you may recall from the sensation and perception chapter, Gestalt psychology describes whole patterns, forms and configurations of perception and cognition such as closure, good continuation, and figure-ground. In addition to patterns of perception, Wolfgang Kohler, a German Gestalt psychologist traveled to the Spanish island of Tenerife in order to study animals behavior and problem solving in the anthropoid ape.

As an interesting side note to Kohler’s studies of chimp problem solving, Dr. Ronald Ley, professor of psychology at State University of New York provides evidence in his book A Whisper of Espionage  (1990) suggesting that while collecting data for what would later be his book  The Mentality of Apes (1925) on Tenerife in the Canary Islands between 1914 and 1920, Kohler was additionally an active spy for the German government alerting Germany to ships that were sailing around the Canary Islands. Ley suggests his investigations in England, Germany and elsewhere in Europe confirm that Kohler had served in the German military by building, maintaining and operating a concealed radio that contributed to Germany’s war effort acting as a strategic outpost in the Canary Islands that could monitor naval military activity approaching the north African coast.

While trapped on the island over the course of World War 1, Kohler applied Gestalt principles to animal perception in order to understand how they solve problems. He recognized that the apes on the islands also perceive relations between stimuli and the environment in Gestalt patterns and understand these patterns as wholes as opposed to pieces that make up a whole. Kohler based his theories of animal intelligence on the ability to understand relations between stimuli, and spent much of his time while trapped on the island investigation what he described as  insight , the sudden perception of useful or proper relations. In order to study insight in animals, Kohler would present problems to chimpanzee’s by hanging some banana’s or some kind of food so it was suspended higher than the apes could reach. Within the room, Kohler would arrange a variety of boxes, sticks or other tools the chimpanzees could use by combining in patterns or organizing in a way that would allow them to obtain the food (Kohler & Winter, 1925).

While viewing the chimpanzee’s, Kohler noticed one chimp that was more efficient at solving problems than some of the others. The chimp, named Sultan, was able to use long poles to reach through bars and organize objects in specific patterns to obtain food or other desirables that were originally out of reach. In order to study insight within these chimps, Kohler would remove objects from the room to systematically make the food more difficult to obtain. As the story goes, after removing many of the objects Sultan was used to using to obtain the food, he sat down ad sulked for a while, and then suddenly got up going over to two poles lying on the ground. Without hesitation Sultan put one pole inside the end of the other creating a longer pole that he could use to obtain the food demonstrating an ideal example of what Kohler described as insight. In another situation, Sultan discovered how to stand on a box to reach a banana that was suspended from the rafters illustrating Sultan’s perception of relations and the importance of insight in problem solving.

Grande (another chimp in the group studied by Kohler) builds a three-box structure to reach the bananas, while Sultan watches from the ground.  Insight , sometimes referred to as an “Ah-ha” experience, was the term Kohler used for the sudden perception of useful relations among objects during problem solving (Kohler, 1927; Radvansky & Ashcraft, 2013).

Solving puzzles.

   Problem-solving abilities can improve with practice. Many people challenge themselves every day with puzzles and other mental exercises to sharpen their problem-solving skills. Sudoku puzzles appear daily in most newspapers. Typically, a sudoku puzzle is a 9×9 grid. The simple sudoku below (see figure) is a 4×4 grid. To solve the puzzle, fill in the empty boxes with a single digit: 1, 2, 3, or 4. Here are the rules: The numbers must total 10 in each bolded box, each row, and each column; however, each digit can only appear once in a bolded box, row, and column. Time yourself as you solve this puzzle and compare your time with a classmate.

How long did it take you to solve this sudoku puzzle? (You can see the answer at the end of this section.)

   Here is another popular type of puzzle (figure below) that challenges your spatial reasoning skills. Connect all nine dots with four connecting straight lines without lifting your pencil from the paper:

Did you figure it out? (The answer is at the end of this section.) Once you understand how to crack this puzzle, you won’t forget.

   Take a look at the “Puzzling Scales” logic puzzle below (figure below). Sam Loyd, a well-known puzzle master, created and refined countless puzzles throughout his lifetime (Cyclopedia of Puzzles, n.d.).

What steps did you take to solve this puzzle? You can read the solution at the end of this section.

Pitfalls to problem solving.

   Not all problems are successfully solved, however. What challenges stop us from successfully solving a problem? Albert Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Imagine a person in a room that has four doorways. One doorway that has always been open in the past is now locked. The person, accustomed to exiting the room by that particular doorway, keeps trying to get out through the same doorway even though the other three doorways are open. The person is stuck—but she just needs to go to another doorway, instead of trying to get out through the locked doorway. A mental set is where you persist in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the past but is clearly not working now.

Functional fixedness is a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for. During the Apollo 13 mission to the moon, NASA engineers at Mission Control had to overcome functional fixedness to save the lives of the astronauts aboard the spacecraft. An explosion in a module of the spacecraft damaged multiple systems. The astronauts were in danger of being poisoned by rising levels of carbon dioxide because of problems with the carbon dioxide filters. The engineers found a way for the astronauts to use spare plastic bags, tape, and air hoses to create a makeshift air filter, which saved the lives of the astronauts.

   Researchers have investigated whether functional fixedness is affected by culture. In one experiment, individuals from the Shuar group in Ecuador were asked to use an object for a purpose other than that for which the object was originally intended. For example, the participants were told a story about a bear and a rabbit that were separated by a river and asked to select among various objects, including a spoon, a cup, erasers, and so on, to help the animals. The spoon was the only object long enough to span the imaginary river, but if the spoon was presented in a way that reflected its normal usage, it took participants longer to choose the spoon to solve the problem. (German & Barrett, 2005). The researchers wanted to know if exposure to highly specialized tools, as occurs with individuals in industrialized nations, affects their ability to transcend functional fixedness. It was determined that functional fixedness is experienced in both industrialized and nonindustrialized cultures (German & Barrett, 2005).

In order to make good decisions, we use our knowledge and our reasoning. Often, this knowledge and reasoning is sound and solid. Sometimes, however, we are swayed by biases or by others manipulating a situation. For example, let’s say you and three friends wanted to rent a house and had a combined target budget of $1,600. The realtor shows you only very run-down houses for $1,600 and then shows you a very nice house for $2,000. Might you ask each person to pay more in rent to get the $2,000 home? Why would the realtor show you the run-down houses and the nice house? The realtor may be challenging your anchoring bias. An anchoring bias occurs when you focus on one piece of information when making a decision or solving a problem. In this case, you’re so focused on the amount of money you are willing to spend that you may not recognize what kinds of houses are available at that price point.

The confirmation bias is the tendency to focus on information that confirms your existing beliefs. For example, if you think that your professor is not very nice, you notice all of the instances of rude behavior exhibited by the professor while ignoring the countless pleasant interactions he is involved in on a daily basis. Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Representative bias describes a faulty way of thinking, in which you unintentionally stereotype someone or something; for example, you may assume that your professors spend their free time reading books and engaging in intellectual conversation, because the idea of them spending their time playing volleyball or visiting an amusement park does not fit in with your stereotypes of professors.

Finally, the availability heuristic is a heuristic in which you make a decision based on an example, information, or recent experience that is that readily available to you, even though it may not be the best example to inform your decision . Biases tend to “preserve that which is already established—to maintain our preexisting knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and hypotheses” (Aronson, 1995; Kahneman, 2011). These biases are summarized in the table below.

Were you able to determine how many marbles are needed to balance the scales in the figure below? You need nine. Were you able to solve the problems in the figures above? Here are the answers.

   Many different strategies exist for solving problems. Typical strategies include trial and error, applying algorithms, and using heuristics. To solve a large, complicated problem, it often helps to break the problem into smaller steps that can be accomplished individually, leading to an overall solution. Roadblocks to problem solving include a mental set, functional fixedness, and various biases that can cloud decision making skills.

References:

Openstax Psychology text by Kathryn Dumper, William Jenkins, Arlene Lacombe, Marilyn Lovett and Marion Perlmutter licensed under CC BY v4.0. https://openstax.org/details/books/psychology

Review Questions:

1. A specific formula for solving a problem is called ________.

a. an algorithm

b. a heuristic

c. a mental set

d. trial and error

2. Solving the Tower of Hanoi problem tends to utilize a  ________ strategy of problem solving.

a. divide and conquer

b. means-end analysis

d. experiment

3. A mental shortcut in the form of a general problem-solving framework is called ________.

4. Which type of bias involves becoming fixated on a single trait of a problem?

a. anchoring bias

b. confirmation bias

c. representative bias

d. availability bias

5. Which type of bias involves relying on a false stereotype to make a decision?

6. Wolfgang Kohler analyzed behavior of chimpanzees by applying Gestalt principles to describe ________.

a. social adjustment

b. student load payment options

c. emotional learning

d. insight learning

7. ________ is a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for.

a. functional fixedness

c. working memory

Critical Thinking Questions:

1. What is functional fixedness and how can overcoming it help you solve problems?

2. How does an algorithm save you time and energy when solving a problem?

Personal Application Question:

1. Which type of bias do you recognize in your own decision making processes? How has this bias affected how you’ve made decisions in the past and how can you use your awareness of it to improve your decisions making skills in the future?

anchoring bias

availability heuristic

confirmation bias

functional fixedness

hindsight bias

problem-solving strategy

representative bias

trial and error

working backwards

Answers to Exercises

algorithm:  problem-solving strategy characterized by a specific set of instructions

anchoring bias:  faulty heuristic in which you fixate on a single aspect of a problem to find a solution

availability heuristic:  faulty heuristic in which you make a decision based on information readily available to you

confirmation bias:  faulty heuristic in which you focus on information that confirms your beliefs

functional fixedness:  inability to see an object as useful for any other use other than the one for which it was intended

heuristic:  mental shortcut that saves time when solving a problem

hindsight bias:  belief that the event just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t

mental set:  continually using an old solution to a problem without results

problem-solving strategy:  method for solving problems

representative bias:  faulty heuristic in which you stereotype someone or something without a valid basis for your judgment

trial and error:  problem-solving strategy in which multiple solutions are attempted until the correct one is found

working backwards:  heuristic in which you begin to solve a problem by focusing on the end result

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