PROBLEM SOLVING & CREATIVITY

• Problem-Solving


  An effort to overcome obstacles on the way to achieve the goal
• How people solve problems

  Depends on how they understand the problem
• The Problem-Solving Cycle


  1. Problem Identification

  2. Problem Definition and Representation

  3. Strategy formulation

  4. Organization of information

  5. Allocation of resources

  6. Monitoring

  7. Evaluation
• Emotional intelligence


  The ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people which can affect emotional processing
• Well-Structured Problems/Well-Defined Problems


  • Have clear paths to solutions
  • Yield to a right answer through the application of proper processes or steps
• Well-Structured Problems


  • Conversion of Fahrenheit to Celsius
• Errors when trying to solve well-structured problems

  • Inadvertently moving backward
  • Making illegal moves
  • Not realizing the nature of the next legal move
• Problem Space


  Contains all the possible strategies leading from the initial problem state to the solution
• Algorithms


  A strategy that ensures the correct solution of the problem, if the well-defined rule of the solution is properly followed
• Heuristics


  General suggestions or "rules of thumb" that are useful in solving a variety of problems
• Ill-structured Problems/Ill-defined Problems


  A problem that doesn't yield a particular answer
• Insight


  A distinctive and sometimes seemingly sudden understanding of a problem or of a strategy that aids in solving the problem
• Early Gestaltist Views on Insight

  • Gestalt psychologists held that insight problems require problem solvers to perceive the problem as a whole
  • Reproductive thinking: based on existing associations involving what is already known
  • Productive thinking: involves insights that go beyond the bounds of existing associations
• Neo-Gestaltist Views on Insight

  • Routine problems: problem solvers show remarkable accuracy in their ability to predict their success in solving the problem
  • Insight Problems: problem solvers show a poor ability to predict their success before trying to solve the problems
• Neuroscience and Insight


  • Right anterior superior-temporal gyrus: Increases when a person experiences an insight
  • Right hippocampus: critical in the formation of an insightful solution
  • Right anterior temporal area: active during all types of problem-solving
• Obstacles in Problem-Solving


  • Mental Set/Entrenchment
  • Functional Fixedness
  • Stereotypes
• Transfer


  The carryover of knowledge or skills from one problem situation to another
• Negative Transfer


  Occurs when solving an earlier problem makes it harder to solve a later one
• Negative Transfer


  • A police may have difficulty solving a political crime because it differs so much from the kinds of crime that they typically deal with in the past
• Positive Transfer


  Occurs when the solution of an earlier problem makes it easier to solve a new problem
• Positive Transfer


  • An individual may transfer early math skills, such as addition to advanced math problems
• Transfer of Analogies


  • When the domains or the contexts for two problems were more similar, participants were more likely to see and apply the analogy
  • People need to be looking for analogies to find them
• Intentional Transfer


  • Searching for analogies
  • Importance of how the structural system of relationships match
  • TRANSPARENCY: People see analogies where they do not exist because of similarity of content
  • ANALOGY: Focus on the relationship between the two terms being compared and not just their surface content attributes
• Incubation


  Putting the problem aside for a while without consciously thinking about it
• Neuroscience and Planning during problem-solving

  • FRONTAL LOBE: High-level cognitive processes
  • PREFRONTAL CORTEX: Essential for planning for complex problem-solving tasks
  • LEFT & RIGHT PREFRONTAL AREAS: Active during the planning stage of complex problem-solving
  • BILATERAL PREFRONTAL ACTIVATION: When a person needs to continue working on a problem after giving an incorrect response
• Intelligence and Complex Problem Solving

  • COMPONENTS: Mental processes used in performing problem-solving tasks
  • More intelligent people take longer during global planning- encoding the problem and formulating a general strategy for attacking the problem- and less time in local planning- forming and implementing strategies for the details of the task
• Creativity


  Goal-directed thinking that is unusual, novel, and useful
• Creativity


  • Goes beyond the conventional ways of thinking and addresses the problem in a novel way, reflecting the uniqueness of the individual
  • The process of producing something that is both original and worthwhile - this something could be a theory, a dance, a chemical, a process or procedure, a story, a symphony, or almost anything else
• Criteria for creativity (Newell, Shaw, and Simon 1963)


  • It has novelty and usefulness, either for the individual or the society
  • It demands that we reject ideas we had previously accepted
  • It results from intense motivation and persistence
  • It comes from clarifying a problem that was originally vague
• Divergent Production


  The generation of a diverse assortment of appropriate responses
• Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking


  • A tool to assess creativity by measuring the diversity, quantity, and appropriateness of responses to open-ended questions, e.g. think of all the possible ways in which to use a paper clip or a ballpoint pen
• Highly creative individuals


  • Work long and hard, study the work of their predecessors and contemporaries
• Traits associated with creative individuals

  • Open to new experiences
  • Self-confident
  • Self-accepting
  • Impulsive
  • Ambitious
  • Driven
  • Dominant
  • Hostile
  • Less conventional
• Intrinsic Motivation


  The absolute enjoyment of the creative process
• Extrinsic Motivation


  Desire for fortune or fame can impede creativity under many but not all circumstances
• Creative Contributions


  • Unpredictable because they violate the norms established by the forerunners and the contemporaries of the creator
• Types of Creative Contributions

  • Replication
  • Redefinition
  • Forward Movement
  • Advanced Forward Movement
  • Redirection
  • Redirection from a Point in the Past
  • Starting Over
  • Integration
• Evolutionary Thinking


  Creative ideas evolve much as organisms do, through a process of blind variation and selective retention
• Factors contributing to creativity

  • Divergent Production
  • Creativity as a Cognitive Process
  • Personality and Motivation
  • Creative Contributions
  • Ability to make serendipitous discoveries
  • Evolutionary Thinking
  • Environment
• Investment Theory of Creativity

  Takes a buy-low, sell-high approach to ideas - individuals invest in companies and ideas when they're still new and unconventional and when they explode and become popular, they will sell at a higher price