Chapter 7 Thinking and Intelligence 231involved when you combine the ingredients and
cook the batter in an oven.
Other problems are fuzzier. There is no
specific goal (“What should I have for dinner
tomorrow?”) and no clearly correct solution, so no
algorithm applies. In such cases, you may resort to
a heuristic, a rule of thumb that suggests a course
of action without guaranteeing an optimal solu-
tion (“Maybe I’ll browse through some recipes
online, or go to the market and see what catches
my eye”). Many heuristics, like those used when
playing chess, help you limit your options to a
manageable number of promising ones, reducing
the cognitive effort it takes to arrive at a decision
(Galotti, 2007). Heuristics are useful to a student
trying to choose a major, an investor trying to pre-
dict the stock market, a doctor trying to determine
the best treatment for a patient, and a factory
owner trying to boost production. All are faced
with incomplete information for reaching a solu-
tion and may therefore resort to rules of thumb
that have proven effective in the past.
Explore the Concept Heuristics
at MyPsychLabAs useful as algorithms and heuristics are,
sometimes the conscious effort to solve a problem
seems to get you nowhere. Then, with insight, you
suddenly see how to solve an equation or finish a
puzzle without quite knowing how you found the
solution. Insight probably involves different stages
of mental processing (Bowers et al., 1990). First,
clues in the problem automatically activate certain
memories or knowledge. You begin to see a pattern
or structure to the problem, although you can-
not yet say what it is; possible solutions percolate
in your mind. Although you are not aware of it,
considerable mental work is guiding you toward
a hypothesis, reflected in your brain as patterns
of activity that differ from those associated with
ordinary, methodical problem solving (Kounios &
Beeman, 2009). Eventually, a solution springs into
mind, seemingly from nowhere (“Aha, now I see!”).
People also say they sometimes rely on intu-
ition—hunches and gut feelings—rather than
conscious thought when they make judgments
or solve problems. Sometimes, in fact, changes
in people’s bodies—such as changes in sweating
and heart rate—signal that they “know” a win-
ning strategy in a laboratory game long before
they can consciously say what it is (Bechara et
al., 1997). But that does not necessarily mean
you should go with your gut or take your pulse
when answering questions on your next exam. In
his book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Daniel
Kahneman explains why: “Fast” thinking applies
to rapid, intuitive, emotional, almost automaticheuristic A rule of
thumb that suggests a
course of action or guides
problem solving but does
not guarantee an optimal
solution.but was actually meaningless (“because I have
to make copies”). They heard the form of the
request but they did not hear its content, and
they mindlessly stepped aside (Langer, Blank, &
Chanowitz, 1978).Problem Solving and Decision
Making LO 7.3
Conscious and nonconscious processes are both
involved in solving such everyday problems as
finding a missing letter in a crossword puzzle,
assembling a cabinet, or increasing a cookie
recipe. In well-defined problems, the nature of
the problem is clear (“I need more cookies for
the party tomorrow”). To solve the problem,
you may only need to apply an algorithm, a set
of procedures guaranteed to produce a solu-
tion whether or not you know how it works. To
increase a cookie recipe, you can simply multiply
the number of cookies you want per person by
the number of people you need to feed. If the
original recipe produced 10 cookies and you
need 40, you can then multiply each ingredient
by four. The recipe itself is also an algorithm
(add flour, stir lightly, add raisins...), though you
probably won’t know what chemical changes arealgorithm A problem-
solving strategy guaran-
teed to produce a solu-
tion even if the user does
not know how it works.Advertisers sometimes count on mindlessness in
consumers.Jennifer K. Berman