Assignment description
The purpose of this assignment is to create an informational blog post that highlights 3 specific
concepts that you can apply to your own life. Why a blog post? Psychological research can
have an incredible impact on people’s everyday lives. Thus, it is important for psychologists to
present their research to a broad audience of non-expert readers. This can be achieved by
writing informational blog posts that describe complex research findings and psychological
concepts in a manner that those less familiar with the subject can understand. For this
assignment you will do just this: write about your chosen topics as if you are explaining it to
someone who has no background in psychology.
Title & Introduction
Include a title for your blog post. Be creative with this! You should also describe your interest in
psychology and give an overview of what topics you will address in your post.
Psychology in your life
For the main content of your blog, you will select 3 concepts (or theories) that you can apply to
your own life. Consider concepts that may help improve your life in some way or simply
something you feel connects to your experiences. For each concept, there will be two
components you should address: a description of the concept and a specific example of how it
applies to your life. All 3 concepts you should have a description and an example.
Description of the concept
●
●
●
Describe (define) the concept you have selected in your own words.
State what type of psychologist studies this concept (e.g. social psychologists, cognitive
psychologists etc.).
Briefly explain why you think it is important for psychologists to study and understand
this concept.
Example
Describe how your chosen concept is applicable to your own life. Provide a specific
example. For instance, explain how you plan to use “shaping” to train your dog to learn a
new trick.
Writing style & format
Be sure to clearly define any terms they would be unfamiliar with and make it
understandable to anyone without a background in psychology. Your blog should be
clear and concise, well-organized, and free from typos and spelling or grammatical
errors. You can use images or any design elements you would like, just make sure the
document is readable and the written text is at least 2 pages double
spaced. It is important to cite any sources used. You must cite the relevant readings
from the textbook. Any other resources cited must be from an academic journal,
book, or textbook (no Wikipedia or Simply Psychology!). Include on the last page of
your document a reference page (title “References”) with the citation for the textbook and
any other optional resources.
Topic 1 : Motivation (Grit) Page 352
Topic 2 : Memory (Context and State Aid Retrieval) page 278 – 290
Topic 3: Cognition (Subgoal and Working Backwords 308 – 309)
Textbook citation:
Grison, S. & Gazzaniga, M. (2019). Psychology in Your Life. 3rd Edition. W.W. Norton
& Company.
Grading rubric:
Component Points
Blog title & Introduction 2
Psychology in your life Part 1:
Description (3 points)
●
●
●
Define concept
Area of psychology that studies
it
Why it is important to study
Example (2 points)
5
Psychology in your life Part 2:
5
Description (3 points)
●
●
●
Define concept
Area of psychology that studies
it
Why it is important to study
Example (2 points)
Psychology in your life Part 3:
5
Description (3 points)
●
●
●
Define concept
Area of psychology that studies
it
Why it is important to study
Example (2 points)
Writing style & format
●
●
●
●
Total 20
Heading (or title page)
Document named correctly
Citation(s) included
Free from errors & typos
3
like to dine together or go to parties. Over the course of human evolution, our ancestors who lived with others were more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass along
their genes. Children who stayed with adults were more likely to survive until their
reproductive years, because the adults would protect and take care of them. Similarly, adults who developed long-term, committed relationships were more likely
to reproduce and to have children who survived to reproduce. Successful groups
shared food, provided mates, and helped care for children, including orphans.
Some survival tasks (such as hunting large mammals or looking out for predatory
enemies) were best accomplished by group cooperation. It therefore makes great
sense that, over the millennia, humans have lived in groups.
PEOPLE ARE MOTIVATED TO FORM GROUPS
The need to belong theory
states that the need for social relations is a fundamental motive that has evolved for
adaptive reasons (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). This theory explains why most people
make friends easily (Figure 9.14). All societies have some form of group membership,
though the types of groups may differ (Brewer & Caporael, 1990). Not belonging to a
group increases risk for various negative consequences, such as illness and premature
death (Elovainio et al., 2017; Rico-Uribe et al., 2018). Such ill effects suggest that the need
to belong is a basic motive that drives behavior. The need to belong motivates people the
same way that hunger drives people to seek food and avoid dying from starvation.
If humans have a fundamental need to belong, then it is reasonable to expect
that we have ways of detecting whether we are included in particular groups. In other
words, given the importance of being a group member, people need to be sensitive to
signs that the group might reject them. Indeed, evidence indicates that people feel
anxious when facing exclusion from their social groups (MacDonald & Leary, 2005).
Further, people who are shy and lonely tend to worry most about social evaluation and pay much more attention to social information (Gardner, Pickett,
Jefferis, & Knowles, 2005). The take-home message is that just as a lack of
food causes hunger, a lack of social contact causes emptiness and despair.
In the movie Cast Away, Tom Hanks’s character becomes stranded on
a desert island. The man has such a strong need for companionship that he
begins carrying on a friendship with a volleyball he calls Wilson (named for
the manufacturer, whose name is on the ball). As the film reviewer Susan
Stark (2000) notes, this film convinces us that “human company, as much as
shelter, water, food and fire, is essential to life as most of us understand it.” To
see how you can satisfy a need to belong, read Using Psychology in Your Life
on p. 350.
9.6 People Have a Need to
Achieve Long-Term Goals
HAS IT HAPPENED
TO YOU?
Food and Traditions
Do you eat turkey and cranberries
in July? Many Americans eat these
foods at Thanksgiving but not at
other times of the year. Every family
has its own traditions for what and
how they eat. The particular choices
may be due to ethnicity, religion, or
other reasons. Family food traditions are especially strong around
particular holidays. Does the culture
of your family sometimes set up a
motivation for you to eat (or not
eat) certain things? If so, you have
learned the motivation to eat based
on cultural experiences.
need to belong theory
The need for interpersonal attachments is a fundamental motive that has
evolved for adaptive purposes.
FIGURE 9.14
Making Friends
We generally have a need to belong.
This need motivates us to form
friendships and join social groups.
9.6 LEARNING GOAL ACTIVITIES
To maximize your learning, complete the following learning goal activities.
a. Understand all bold and italic terms by writing explanations of them in your
own words.
b. Apply achievement motivation by describing three changes you can make to
demonstrate high achievement motivation in your schoolwork or job.
So far, this chapter has focused on motivation to fulfill short-term goals, such as
satisfying hunger or bonding with loved ones. But motivation applies to long-term
WHAT ARE YOUR MOST IMPORTANT MOTIVATED BEHAVIORS?
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349
USING PSYCHOLOGY
IN YOUR LIFE
How Can You Satisfy
a Need to Belong?
People have a strong need to form stable and satisfying relationships with
friends, family, romantic partners, colleagues, and the community. But
we are also often told to “look out for number one,” suggesting that our
self-interest should be a primary motivator. Jennifer Crocker is a research
psychologist interested in the ways that motivations influence our sense
of well-being. Crocker has examined two motivational perspectives. These
perspectives are based on egosystem goals and ecosystem goals. Both
perspectives have important implications for our ability to satisfy the
need to belong.
Egosystem goals motivate us to build and maintain other people’s
impressions of us. People motivated by egosystem goals focus on proving
themselves, showing their good qualities, and validating their worth. Such
people prioritize their own perceived needs over those of others (Crocker,
Olivier, & Nuer, 2009). When we are so focused on building and maintaining others’ perceptions of us, we see relationships with others in terms of
winning and losing: If I win, you lose. If you win, I lose. Crocker’s research
shows that students who hold these goals became more depressed and
anxious during their first semester in college. These goals are also associated with problematic alcohol use (Moeller & Crocker, 2009).
In contrast, people with ecosystem goals perceive themselves as part
of a system where their own circumstances are linked to those of others.
They prioritize the needs of others because they understand these social
connections and care about the well-being of others (Crocker et al., 2009).
These individuals are likely to think that both people can benefit from a
situation, and that they are responsible for working together to make that
happen. Students who hold ecosystem goals tend to be less depressed
and anxious during their first semester in college. They are more engaged
in their courses and more eager to learn from failure. In a nutshell, people
with ecosystem goals seem to enjoy a host of positive benefits.
How might you cultivate your ecosystem goals and satisfy your need
to belong? Three strategies will help you see yourself as more interconnected in relationships with others.
1. Think and write about your personal values and priorities. The
ability to think beyond the self is at the heart of ecosystem goals.
Interestingly, you can do this by clarifying your own values. Write
down the values (that is, personal principles or standards of behavior)
that are important to you, and explain why they are important. A
study by Crocker and her colleagues found that people who did that
felt more loving, joyful, giving, empathic, connected, sympathetic,
grateful, and so on (Crocker, Niiya, & Mischkowski, 2008).
2. Think about goals you have that would help other people.
Ask yourself how the tasks in your everyday life support your
other-oriented goals. For example, if you are interested in studying medicine, you might say, “I want to help relieve other people’s
physical pain.” You might then see your organic chemistry class as
an opportunity to learn something that will help in future work with
patients rather than as a difficult barrier that could show the world
you are not cut out to be a doctor.
3. Be grateful. Other people touch our lives in many ways that we
can be thankful for. One way to identify and appreciate moments of
humanity and moments of connection is to keep a gratitude journal.
Each evening before you go to bed, think of an instance or two where
you were affected in a good way by another person. The event might
be something small, such as when a kind driver made room for you to
merge into traffic. It might be something larger, such as when a friend
sat with you for hours as you grieved the loss of a loved one.
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CHAPTER 9#MOTIVATION AND EMOTION
aspirations as well. Consider: What would you like to be doing 10 years from now?
What things about yourself would you change? Your aspirations might not be as
newsworthy as Malala Yousafzai’s dreams of ensuring that all girls have access to
educational opportunities, but they matter greatly. What might motivate you to
fulfill those long-term goals?
achievement motivation
The need, or desire, to attain a certain
standard of excellence.
ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION
In the 1930s, the personality psychologist
Henry Murray (1938) proposed four psychosocial needs: the needs for power, autonomy, achievement, and play. The study of psychosocial needs has yielded important
insights into what motivates human behavior. A key insight is that people are especially motivated to achieve long-term personal goals. But people differ in how much
they pursue challenging goals.
Achievement motivation is the need, or desire, to do well relative to standards
of excellence. Indeed, achievement may be the motivation for the student studying hard in Figure 9.2b. Compared with those low in achievement motivation,
students high in achievement motivation sit closer to the front of classrooms,
score higher on exams, and obtain better grades in courses relevant to their career
goals (McClelland, 1987). Students with high achievement motivation also are more
realistic in their career aspirations. Those high in achievement motivation set challenging but attainable personal goals. Those low in achievement motivation set
extremely easy or impossibly high goals.
Four other factors affect your ability to achieve long-term goals: the goals themselves, your sense of self-efficacy, your ability to delay gratification, and grit.
GOALS AFFECT ACHIEVEMENT Good goals should motivate you to work
hard, but what is a good goal? Challenging—but not overly difficult—and specific
goals are best (Locke & Latham, 1990). Challenging goals encourage effort, persistence, and concentration. In contrast, goals that are too easy or too hard can undermine motivation and lead to failure. Dividing specific goals into concrete steps also
leads to success, just as setting subgoals is helpful in solving problems (see study
unit 8.6). If you are interested in running the Boston Marathon, for instance, your
first goal might be gaining the stamina to run 1 mile. When you can run a mile, you
can set another goal and eventually build up to running the 26-mile marathon.
Focusing on concrete, short-term goals helps in achieving long-term goals.
SELF-EFFICACY AFFECTS ACHIEVEMENT
Personal expectations for success
also play an important role in motivation to achieve long-term goals. For instance,
if you believe studying hard will lead to a good grade on an exam, you will be motivated to study. Self-efficacy is the expectation that your efforts will lead to success
(Bandura, 1977a). This expectation helps get you going. If you have low selfefficacy—if you do not believe your efforts will pay off—you may be too discouraged even to study for the exam. People with high self-efficacy often set challenging
goals that lead to success. However, those with inflated self-views may set goals
they cannot possibly achieve. Again, goals that are challenging but not overwhelming usually are most likely to lead to success.
ABILITY TO DELAY GRATIFICATION Suppose that you are applying to graduate school and the entrance exam is coming up soon. You know you should stay in
and study, but all your friends are going out to the basketball game and are begging
you to come with them. Which would you do?
One common challenge in meeting our long-term goals is postponing immediate gratification. In a series of now-classic studies, children were given the choice of
WHAT ARE YOUR MOST IMPORTANT MOTIVATED BEHAVIORS?
■
351
(a)
Ignore tempting items
by looking away.
(b)
Use self-distraction to
focus on something else.
waiting to receive a preferred toy or food item or having a less preferred toy or food
item right away (Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989). Some children were better at
delaying gratification than other children were.
How did some of the children in these studies manage to delay gratification?
Given the choice between eating one marshmallow right away or eating two after
several minutes, some 4-year-olds used strategies to help them not eat the marshmallow while they waited. One strategy was simply ignoring the tempting item
rather than looking at it (Figure 9.15a). For example, some of them covered their
eyes or looked away. Alternatively, some children were able to use the related strategy of self-distraction to focus on something else (Figure 9.15b). For example, they
sang, played games, or pretended to sleep. On average, older children were better at
delaying gratification. Very young children tended to look directly at the item they
were trying to resist, making the delay especially difficult.
The ability to delay gratification is an indicator of success in life (Mischel, 2014).
Children able to delay gratification at age 4 were rated 10 years later as being more
socially competent and better able to handle frustration. The ability to delay gratification in childhood has also been found to predict higher SAT scores and better
school grades (Mischel et al., 1989).
GRIT
FIGURE 9.15
Delaying Gratification
It is often hard to meet long-term goals
because there is no immediate reward,
or gratification, for our hard work.
Luckily, several techniques can help
you cope with delaying gratification,
including: (a) ignoring a tempting
item and (b) distracting yourself from
thinking about it.
One final, very important factor that is related to your ability to achieve
long-term goals is grit. People with grit have a deep passion for their goals and a
willingness to keep working toward them, even in spite of hardships and pitfalls
(Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007; Figure 9.16a). Malala Yousafzai,
the activist who survived an attack by the Taliban to continue promoting education
for girls, clearly has grit. By contrast, people who have less grit get discouraged more
easily, lose steam in the middle of pursuing their goals, or get sidetracked from their
goals by new interests.
Is it true that grit is even more important than having natural talent? Recent
research suggests that the answer may be yes. For example, grit has been shown to
be a better predictor than intelligence for achieving long-term goals in several areas,
such as educational attainment, retention in the United States Military Academy
at West Point, and ranking in a national spelling bee (Duckworth et al., 2007). In
addition, grit has been shown to be a significant predictor for the grades of college
students (Duckworth et al., 2007; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009), especially those
of African American men (Strayhom, 2014). Why is grit so important to achieving
FIGURE 9.16
Grit
(a) The nature of grit is symbolized
by this sign. (b) Grit is perfectly
characterized by the musician, actor,
and producer Will Smith, when he
explains how he achieved so many
goals even though he came from a
humble background in Philadelphia:
“The only thing that I see that is
distinctly different about me is I’m
not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will
not be outworked, period. You might
have more talent than me, you might
be smarter than me, you might be
sexier than me, you might be all of
those things—you got it on me in
nine categories. But if we get on the
treadmill together, there’s two things:
You’re getting off first, or I’m going to
die. It’s really that simple.”
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(a)
CHAPTER 9#MOTIVATION AND EMOTION
(b)
Q
What Are Your Different Long-Term
Storage Systems?
To make sure you learned what you just read, write answers to the following
questions and check your answers.
7.8 If you have a car crash and can’t remember anything from the week before
the crash, what form of amnesia are you experiencing?
7.9 When you recall your last vacation, are you retrieving an implicit memory or
an explicit memory?
7.10 Practicing a dance routine requires what type of implicit memory?
7.11 What type of memory lets you remember to do something in the future?
7.12 What is the main difference between consolidation of a memory and reconsolidation?
See Appendix B for answers to the red Q questions.
How Do You Retrieve
Memories?
Austin Rogers and other Jeopardy! champions are able to store large amounts of
information in their brains by using various processing techniques. But when it
comes time to compete, how do they actually remember the information? How do
they get the information out of storage?
Up to this point, you have learned primarily about two phases of information
processing. In the first phase, memories are created through encoding. In the second
phase, memories are stored in one of three systems. The third phase of processing
information is to access the stored memories at a later date to use that information
in some way. Four processes affect the ability to access stored memories, as shown in
the Learning Tip on p. 279.
7.13 Retrieval Cues Help You
Access Your Memories
7.13 LEARNING GOAL ACTIVITIES
To maximize your learning, complete the following learning goal activities.
a. Understand all bold and italic terms by writing explanations of them in your
own words.
b. Understand retrieval cues by naming and explaining, in your own words, three
ways that retrieval cues can be used to access memories in long-term storage.
Encountering stimuli can automatically trigger memories. So a retrieval cue can be
anything that helps you access a memory. Think about the smell of turkey, a favorite
song from years past, a familiar building, and so on. The properties of any experience are encoded with a memory and can later aid retrieval of that memory.
retrieval cue
Anything that helps a person access
information in long-term storage.
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CHAPTER 7″MEMORY
CONTEXT AND STATE AID RETRIEVAL
The context of an event includes
details such as the physical location, odors, and background music. That context is
LEARNING TIP: Remembering the Ways That Stored Memories Are Accessed
This graphic will help you remember the four categories of processes that affect the ability to access stored memories.
Processes that affect access of memories in long-term storage
Retrieval cues
Forgetting
Persistence
Distortion
Anything that helps a
person access a memory
in long-term storage,
including . . .
The inability to retrieve a
memory from long-term
storage, including . . .
Continual recurrence of
unwanted memories from
long-term storage
Memory is flawed in
several ways,
including . . .
• context-dependent
memory
• state-dependent
memory
• mnemonics
• memory bias
• flashbulb memories
• interference
• blocking
• absentmindedness
• misattribution
• suggestibility
• false memories
encoded along with the memory. As a result, the context produces a sense of familiarity that helps us retrieve the memory (Hockley, 2008).
In a dramatic research demonstration of this c te t e e e t e r effect,
two groups of scuba divers learned lists of words. Some divers learned the words
on land. Other divers learned the words underwater (Godden & Baddeley, 1975;
Figure 7.21a). Later, both groups recalled the words better when they were in the
same environment where they had learned them (Figure 7.21b). That is, when divers
learned information on land, they recalled that information better on land than
underwater. When divers learned the words underwater, they recalled them better
underwater than on land. This study confirms that when the person is in the same
context where information was learned, the environment where learning took place
provides a cue that aids access to the information.
Like physical context, internal cues—such as mood and physiological states—
are also encoded with a memory. When our internal states are the same during
both encoding and retrieval, the situation can provide a retrieval cue that enhances
access to a memory. This effect is known as state e e e t e r
(a)
(b)
14
12
Test on land
Test underwater
10
FIGURE 7.21
Mean
8
number
of words 6
recalled
Context-Dependent Memory
4
2
0
Study on land
Study underwater
A unique study showed that the
context of a memory can help retrieve
that memory. (a) People learned lists
of words either on land or underwater.
(b) Later, they remembered more
words if they were tested in the same
environment where they had learned
the words.
HOW DO YOU RETRIEVE MEMORIES?
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279
Research on this topic was inspired by the observation that people experiencing alcoholism often can’t find important objects, such as paychecks. They store the
objects in safe places while they are drinking, but cannot remember the places when
they are sober. The next time they are drinking, however, they may remember where
they put the objects.
FIGURE 7.22
Using Mnemonics in Memory
Competitions
Contestants in the Extreme Memory
Tournament—as shown here at the 2015
meet, held at Dart NeuroScience in San
Diego—memorize names, faces, and
even decks of cards. To aid retrieval of
information, almost all participants in
such memory contests use elaborative
rehearsal to create mnemonics that aid
retrieval of information.
MNEMONICS AID RETRIEVAL
e
ics are learning aids or strategies that
use retrieval cues to improve access to memory. People often find mnemonics helpful for remembering items in long lists. One mnemonic, the eth
ci consists of
associating items you want to remember with physical locations you already know.
Suppose you want to remember a grocery list of items to buy from the store. First,
you might visualize parts of the physical layout of some familiar location, such as
your bedroom. Then you would associate the list of items to buy with certain places
in the room. You might picture your open dresser drawer filled to the top with apples,
a loaf of bread snuggled in your bed under a comforter, and a waterfall of milk flowing
down your curtains. When you later need to remember the items, you would visualize your room and retrieve the information associated with each location.
Why do mnemonics such as the method of loci work? As you may remember from
study unit 7.6, linking new information with what is already meaningful to a person
is called elaborative rehearsal. This deeper form of encoding information during the
use of mnemonics is what makes this strategy so successful at helping retrieval.
Contestants in extreme memory competitions also use elaborative rehearsal to
create mnemonics (Figure 7.22). For example, they may memorize a sequence of
playing cards by linking each card with a person, an action, or an object that they
know. A string of three or more associations makes a very memorable sentence.
For Edward Cooke, a grand master from England, a three of clubs, a nine of hearts,
and a nine of spades trigger a visual image of “Brazilian lingerie model Adriana
Lima in a Biggles biplane shooting at [Cooke’s] old public-school headmaster
in a suit of armor” (Foer, 2005). While the technique may sound silly, using this
mnemonic requires elaborative rehearsal, and this deep encoding creates a meaningful and vivid image that is easy to retrieve later.
7.14 You Forget Some of Your Memories
7.14 LEARNING GOAL ACTIVITIES
To maximize your learning, complete the following learning goal activities.
a. Understand all bold and italic terms by writing explanations of them in your
own words.
b. Apply forgetting to your life by naming and describing three ways to forget
memories in long-term storage with one example of each from your own life.
forgetting
The inability to access a memory from
long-term storage.
retroactive interference
When access to older memories is
impaired by newer memories.
proactive interference
When access to newer memories is
impaired by older memories.
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CHAPTER 7″MEMORY
Ten minutes after you see a movie, you probably remember plenty of the details. The
next week, you might remember mostly the plot and the main characters. Years later,
you might remember only the gist of the story. You might not remember having seen
the movie at all. We forget far more than we remember. Forgetting is the inability to
access memory from long-term storage. This inability is a normal, everyday experience.
The study of forgetting has a long history in psychology. In the late nineteenth
century, the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus examined how long it took him to
relearn lists of unfamiliar nonsense syllables (for example, vut, bik, kuh). Ebbinghaus found that when he repeatedly practiced with the syllables, it took him less time
8.6 You Solve Problems to Achieve Goals
8.6 LEARNING GOAL ACTIVITIES
To maximize your learning, complete the following learning goal activities.
a. Understand all bold and italic terms by writing explanations of them in your
own words.
b. Apply problem solving strategies by naming two problems in your life, then
explaining how you used two of the four problem solving strategies to solve
them.
(a) The Problem
1
(b) The Solution
Move
1
Move
2
Move
3
Move
4
How do you get into your car when you have locked the keys inside? How can you
make enough money to spend your spring break somewhere nice? What do you have
to do to get a grade of A in this course? Your thoughts are often focused on your goals
and how to achieve them. Even so, there aren’t always simple and direct means of
attaining a particular goal. You must use knowledge to determine how to move from
your current state to the goal state, and you must use good strategies to overcome
obstacles. How you think about the problem and use problem solving strategies can
help or hinder your ability to find effective solutions. The four most common problem solving strategies are subgoals, working backward, analogy, and insight.
SUBGOALS Once you have identified a goal, how do you get to it? How do you
proceed from one step to the next to the next, what errors might you typically make
in negotiating tricky or difficult steps, and how do you decide on more efficient (or,
in some cases, less efficient) solutions? In many cases, solving the problem requires
breaking the task into subgoals. Reaching each subgoal will result in achieving the
main goal of solving the problem. You can see a classic example of a problem that
must be solved using subgoals in Figure 8.14a. Try to solve it yourself before looking at the solution (Figure 8.14b).
Using subgoals is important for many problems. Suppose a high school student
would like to become a doctor. To achieve this goal, the student needs first to attain
the more immediate subgoal of being admitted to college. Getting into college
means meeting another subgoal: earning good grades in high school. This subgoal
requires developing good study skills and paying attention in class. Breaking down
a problem into subgoals is an important component of problem solving. When you
are facing a complex problem, identifying the appropriate subgoals and their order
can be challenging. The following subsections consider some approaches you can
follow instead.
WORKING BACKWARD
Move
5
When the appropriate steps for solving a problem are
not clear, proceeding from the goal state to the initial state can help yield a solution.
FIGURE 8.14
Using Subgoals to Solve Problems
Move
6
Move
7
308
■
The Tower of Hanoi is a problem that requires using subgoals to solve. Try solving it
yourself here. You can use a quarter, a nickle, and a penny, and a sheet with three dots
on it to represent the three pegs. (a) Move the disks to the peg on the other end. You
can move only one disk at a time. You cannot place a larger disk on top of a smaller disk.
(b) Break the task down into subgoals. The first subgoal is to move the largest disk to the
farthest peg. This requires four moves. The next subgoal is to move the middle disk to the
farthest peg. The smallest disk is moved to the first peg. This requires two moves. Finally,
to reach the main goal, the smallest disk is moved to the farthest peg in one move.
CHAPTER 8″THINKING AND INTELLIGENCE
This process is called working backward. Consider the water lily problem (Fixx, 1978,
p. 50):
(a) The Problem
Water lilies double in area every 24 hours. On the first day of summer there is only one
water lily on the lake. It takes 60 days for the lake to be completely covered in water
lilies. How many days does it take for half of the lake to be covered in water lilies?
One way to solve this problem is to work from the initial state to the goal state:
You figure that on day 1 there is one water lily, on day 2 there are two water lilies,
on day 3 there are four water lilies, and so on, until you discover how many water
lilies there are on day 60 and you see which day had half that many. It will take you
quite a while to solve the problem this way. But consider what happens if you work
backward, from the goal state to the initial state. If on day 60 the lake is covered
in water lilies and water lilies double every 24 hours, then half the lake must have
been covered in water lilies on day 59. In this case, working backward helps you
solve the problem more quickly and easily.
ANALOGY
Imagine that a surgeon needs to use a laser at high intensity to
destroy a patient’s tumor. The surgeon must aim the laser very precisely to avoid
destroying healthy surrounding tissue. This example poses a very difficult problem.
The problem cannot be solved by using subgoals or working backward. Instead, an
analogy can help solve the problem (Figure 8.15a).
The surgeon remembers reading a story about a general who wanted to capture
a fortress. The general needed to move a large number of soldiers up to the fortress,
but all the roads to the fortress were planted with mines. A large group of soldiers
would have set off the mines, but small groups could travel safely. So the general
divided the soldiers into small groups and had each group take a different road to the
fortress, where the groups converged and attacked together.
Because the surgeon’s problem has restrictions that are analogous (that is, similar) to the general’s problem, she gets the idea to aim several lasers at the tumor
from different angles. By itself, each laser will be weak enough to avoid destroying
the living tissue in its path. But the combined intensity of all the converging lasers
will be enough to destroy the tumor (Figure 8.15b).
Finding an appropriate analogy for a problem can help you achieve your goals,
the way it did for the surgeon (Reeves & Weisberg, 1994). Analogous solutions
work, however, only if you recognize the similarities between the problem you face
now and ones that have been solved before (Keane, 1987; Reeves & Weisberg, 1994).
INSIGHT
You may not recognize that something is a problem until it seems
unsolvable and you feel stuck. For example, it is only when you spot the keys in the
ignition of your locked car that you know you have a problem. As you stand there
pondering the problem for a period of time, a solution may pop into your head.
Insight is the metaphorical lightbulb that goes on in your head when you suddenly
realize the solution to a problem. Unlike the other three problem solving strategies, insight happens only when you stop actively thinking about a problem.
In 1925, the Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Köhler conducted one of psychology’s most famous studies on insight. Convinced that some nonhuman animals
could behave intelligently, Köhler studied whether chimpanzees could solve
problems. He placed bananas beyond a chimp’s reach and provided objects that
the chimp could use to reach the bananas. Could the chimp figure it out?
First the chimp just jumped at the bananas. That didn’t work. Then the chimp
began a period of repeatedly looking at the bananas and walking around to the objects
Tumor
(b) The Solution
Converging
laser beams
FIGURE 8.15
Using Analogies to Solve Problems
The “tumor problem” is best solved
through an analogy. Can you solve
the problem? (a) A surgeon must use
a laser at high intensity to destroy a
tumor deep inside a patient’s body
without destroying healthy surrounding
tissue. (b) To solve the tumor problem,
it may help you to return to the main
text and read the paragraph that
discusses the “fortress problem.” The
surgeon knows the answer to the
fortress problem. So she uses it as
an analogy to solve her problem, by
employing several laser beams at a
lower intensity but aiming them all in
one area to destroy the tumor.
HOW DO YOU USE THINKING?
■
309
TABLE 8.2
Problem Solving Strategies
Strategy
Characteristics
Sample Problem
Solution
Subgoals
Identify the goal state and
several subgoals to be
achieved.
You want to repair your car
muffler, but you don’t have
enough money to pay for
repairs.
To reach the goal of having enough money
for repairs, you research the best price, cut
spending for a month, and work more.
Working
backward
Begin from the goal state
and work backward to the
current state.
You want to graduate in
2 years, but you aren’t sure
what courses you need to
take.
You identify the credits needed to
graduate, then the credits needed per
term, then the credits needed this term,
and finally the classes that provide the
needed credits for this term.
Analogy
Identify a previously solved
problem that is similar to
the current problem.
You cook beef with
broccoli, but the broccoli
ends up soggy.
You think about how, when you put
an iced coffee in your lunch bag, your
sandwich got damp. Similarly, moisture
from the beef ruins the broccoli. Next time,
you cook the beef and broccoli separately,
then combine them.
Insight
Take a break from actively
thinking about the
problem, and the answer
may spontaneously
become apparent.
You have a hard time
solving a difficult calculus
homework problem.
You put the problem away. After a while,
the solution pops into your mind, and you
write the answer in your homework.
in the enclosure. Finally, the chimp began to use the objects to get at the food. Eventually, the chimp was able to stack up several boxes and stand on them to reach the
bananas. Köhler argued that these actions were examples of insight (Figure 8.16).
Having solved the problem, the chimp transferred the solution to new, similar problems and solved them quickly. These additional solutions confirmed that the chimp’s
behavior had resulted from insight (to review insight learning, see study unit 6.12).
Table 8.2 summarizes how subgoals, working backward, analogy, and insight can
help solve many problems. But some problems are harder to solve than others. One
way to solve difficult problems, “thinking outside the box,” has become a cliché (at
least in Western cultures). The next study unit looks at what this approach actually
involves.
FIGURE 8.16
Chimpanzees Use Insight to Solve
Problems
Chimpanzees try to solve problems,
such as reaching bananas that are too
high. They seem to suddenly come to
realize a solution and then implement
it. As shown here, the chimp in Köhler’s
study suddenly stacked several boxes
on top of each other and stood up
on them to reach the bananas. This
behavior suggested that the chimp
solved the problem through insight.
310
■
8.7 You Overcome Obstacles
to Solve Problems
8.7 LEARNING GOAL ACTIVITIES
To maximize your learning, complete the following learning goal activities.
a. Understand all bold and italic terms by writing explanations of them in your
own words.
b. Understand obstacles in problem solving by summarizing in your own words
the three ways that changing representations helps overcome obstacles in
problem solving.
CHAPTER 8″THINKING AND INTELLIGENCE
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