← all facts
problem solving
You struggle to solve problems you have used before.
Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias where you become unable to see an object as having any function other than its original one.
When participants were given a box and a candle, they struggled to use the box as a platform if it was previously filled with tacks, seeing it only as a container.
Your past experience creates your current limitations.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Karl Duncker, 1945
- What the check found
- The definition and attribution are accurate within the standards of social psychology, though the 1945 date is an English-language citation for work originally published in German in 1935.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.