apsych c8--thinking and creativity

how do we think?

• we each have cognitive rules/concepts we apply to stimuli from our environment that helps us think about what we are seeing

  • sometimes we base our concepts on prototypes of what we think a good example would look like

  • images can be visual, auditory, taste (thinking about what water tastes like)

algorithms

trying every possible solution until we find the answer (checking every JSB photo until i find one of myself)

heuristics

• a “rule of thumb,” like guessing a five-letter password by plugging in actual words because that is what we assume will work

availability heuristic

judging a situation based on similar situations that we think of, like believing ursuline is the best school in town simply because i have gone to UA and nowhere else

representativeness heuristic

• judging a situation based on how similar the aspects are to prototypes the person holds in his or her mind, like seeing someone tall and thinking they may play a sport when you don’t even know them

gambler’s fallacy

• this occurs when a certain event is more or less likely to occur because of how often it has recently occured

  • i will not get more cooking fever diamonds in the casino just because i’ve spent more money already

sunk-cost fallacy

• the unwillingness to change our strategy even when it is clearly not working

impediments to problem-solving—mental set, functional fixedness, and framing

• mental set/rigidity is our tendency to fall into established thought patterns to that we do not see new solutions

  • functional fixedness—not seeing a new use for an object, like if i use my water bottle to hold trash

• framing is the idea that depending on how something is presented to us, we may see it differently than another form of presentation

creativity

• everyone has different levels of creativity, although divergent thinking (looking for multiple solutions) is often more associated with creativity than convergent thinking (stubborn one solution)