Creativity
- Creative expressions/solutions: original and valuable
- Divergent vs Convergent thinking: creative vs analytical thinking
- Brainstorming: a strategy to yield creative solutions
- Functional fixedness: unable to think of unconventional ways to use a tool
The Basics
- Prototypes: typical/classic examples of a concept (apple for fruits, lily for flowers)
- Schemas: mental frameworks with which we organize old info and interpret/add new information
- Assimilation: taking in new info but not changing the schema in light of it
- Accommodation: taking in new info and changing the schema to incorporate the new info
Problem-Solving Strategies
- Algorithm (step-by-step)
- Heuristics (mental shortcuts)
- Trial-and-error (trying solutions and compare results one by one)
- Insight (sudden realization, e.g. "Eureka!")
- Inductive reasoning (make generalizations from a few data/examples)
- Deductive reasoning (yield conclusions from premises)
Influences and Biases
- Mental set: trying to solve problems with only the solution that's been successful before
- Availability heuristics: estimating probability with info that most readily comes to mind
- Representativeness heuristics: judging new info by how they match stereotype/prototype
- Framing effect: people come to different conclusions based on how issues are presented
- Priming effect: exposure to a stimulus affects our response to a subsequent prompt, without awareness of the connection
- Anchoring effect: our response is influenced by a suggested reference point
- Confirmation bias: only seeking out info that confirms your preexisting beliefs and ignore info that contradicts your beliefs
- Belief perseverance: we tend to keep our current beliefs even when shown discrediting evidence
- Hindsight bias: "knew-it-all-along"; thinking that we would have predicted an outcome
- Overconfidence bias: less competent people tend to overestimate their skills
- Gambler's fallacy: incorrect belief that previous outcomes influence the likelihood of a random event happening, e.g. if a dice rolls 6 this time, it's less likely to roll 6 next time
- Sunk-cost fallacy: when we feel that we have invested too much to quit, even when it is more against your interest not to quit
Executive functions: cognitive processes that allow people to generate, organize, plan, and enact goal-directed behaviors and critical thinking