Transcript Decision Making/Creativity - Clinton Community College



Problem Solving- Active efforts to discover
what must be done to achieve a goal that is
not readily attainable.
Barriers to Problem Solving:
◦
◦
◦
◦
1.)
2.)
3.)
4.)
Irrelevant Information
Functional Fixedness
Mental Set
Unnecessary Constraints





Sample Problems:
“In the Thompson family there are five brothers,
and each brother has one sister. If you count Mrs.
Thompson, how many females are there in the
Thompson family?”
“15 percent of the people in Topeka have unlisted
telephone numbers. You select 200 names at
random from phone book. How many of these
people can be expected to have unlisted phone
numbers?”
Math Problems (even in Psychology statistics)
We often use all information available without first
determining what is relevant

Functional Fixedness- The tendency to
perceive an item only in terms of its most
common use.
◦ Examples used in research
◦ Sample Problem

Mental Set- When people persist in using
problem solving strategies that have worked
in the past
◦ Water Jug Example
◦ Real world examples

Humans sometimes will place unnecessary
constrains on problems, when they are not
actually part of the problem statement
◦ Demonstration
◦ Men in Black Example
Without lifting pencil from the paper, draw no more than four lines that
will cross through all nine dots


Decision Making – Involves evaluating
alternatives and making choices among them.
Decision Making Issues:
◦ 1.) Availability Heuristic
◦ 2.) Representativeness Heuristic
◦ 3.) Gambler’s Fallacy

The availability heuristic involves basing the
estimated probability of an event on the ease
with which relevant instances come to mind
◦ E.g. We often base our estimates on own
recollection of specific instances



Examples:
How high is the national divorce rate?
Are cigarettes unhealthy?

This involves basing the estimated probability
of an event on how similar it is to the typical
prototype of that event.

Example: If you flip a coin six times, which is
more likely?
1.) T T T T T T
2.) H T T H T H

Real World Examples




Gambler’s Fallacy – The belief that the odds
of a chance event increase in the event hasn’t
occurred recently.
Example

Creativity – Involves generation of ideas that
are original, novel, and useful.
◦ More than just being unusual


Examples used in past:
Subjects given description of movie and are
asked to come up with a title
◦ Demo


Remote Associations Test- Participants asked to
come up with a word between two given words
(Hand_____ Call)
Participants given an everyday object and asked
to come up with as many uses they can think of
◦ Demo


Creative People tend to be “More
autonomous, introverted, open to new
experiences, norm-doubting, self-confident,
self-accepting, driven, ambitious, dominant,
hostile, and impulsive.”
At the Core: independence and
nonconformity



Greatly elevated rates of depression and
other disorders haven been found among
eminent writers, artists, and composers.
Research suggests a correlation between
creative achievement and vulnerability to
mental disorders
David Helfgott Example

Hunter S. Thompson
Robin Williams
Jim Carrey
Heath Ledger
Howard Hughes
Mitch Hedberg
Elliot Smith
John Nash
Kurt Cobain
Peter Sellers

Any others?








