Psychology: Thinking, Problem Solving, and Creativity

• Psychology: Thinking, Problem Solving, and Creativity

What is Thinking?

• Thinking is a behavior pattern using internal representations (symbols, signs) to solve a specific problem.
• Thinking involves rearranging or manipulating information from the environment and long-term memory.

Nature of Thinking

• Thinking is a cognitive activity directed towards a purpose.
• Described as a problem-solving behavior, resolves a problem and relates to inner cognitive behavior
• Thinking involves mental exploration rather than motor exploration.
• It is a symbolic activity using signs, symbols, and mental images.
• Thinking can shift instantaneously across time and space.

Elements of Thinking

• Thinking relies on existing knowledge, represented as mental images or words.
• People usually think using mental images or words.

Mental Images

• Mental images are abstractions of features from previous experiences.
• They are mental pictures/representations of objects/events experienced through senses.
• Images are incomplete and mental pictures symbolized to aid in the thinking process.
• Images are manipulated and reorganized and are important for understanding new information .
• Images help in finding out solutions and overcoming obstacles.
• Contemporary researchers: mental images/impressions may develop through sensory input.
• Seeing a flower creates a visual image and stores it.

Sensory Images

• Auditory, olfactory, and kinesthetic experiences also form mental pictures.
• Hearing fairy tales creates auditory images, smelling a flower creates olfactory images.
• A mother's care and touch creates feelings of love that the child identifies.
• A physical assault leaves a mental image about the assault.

Visual Images

• Mental pictures of objects/events experienced visually.
• Visual images may represent natural concepts.
• Mental manipulations on images are similar to those performed on actual objects.
• Once formed, mental images are read, perceived, and thought about like they exist.
• Visual images help understand verbal instructions, enhance moods by visualizing events.
• Mental imagery can help change behavior and achieve goals like losing weight.
• Greatest benefits derive from mentally simulating the process to reach a desired outcome.

Concepts

• Concepts are mental categories for objects, events, experiences, or ideas that are similar to one another.
• Concepts allow us to represent a great deal of information and simplify our complex world.
• Natural concepts are formed by associating attributes stored in memory.
• Features are compared to new items to determine if they fit the concept.

Visual Images

• Mental pictures of objects/events in the external world.

Schemas

• Schemas are more complex than concepts.
• Schemas contain a broad range of information.

Language

• Language is a system of symbols and rules for communication.
• Symbols used in thinking are often words and language.
• Language offers many symbols and makes human thinking sophisticated.
• It combines symbols (words) to create meaningful statements.
• Language represents internal mental activity and communicates with others.

Interdependence of Language and Thought

• Nature versus nurture debated for relationship between language & thought.
• Piaget theorized concept precedes & aids language development, observing egocentric speech in children.
• Vygotsky theorized language develops concepts and helps control behavior.
• For Vygotsky, words form the concept, like "mama" encompassing warmth, safety, etc.
• Vygotsky believed egocentric speech helps children form thoughts and control actions: private speech.

Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

• Suggests language shapes/determines thought.
• People speaking different languages perceive the world differently due to available words.
• Innuits of Alaska, with many words for snow, perceive it differently than English speakers.
• Different view is that thought shapes language, reflecting how our minds work.
• Structural characteristics of language can influence how people think about relationships.

Convergent Thinking

• Convergent thinking provides the "correct" answer to standard questions, coined by Joy Paul Guilford
• It is logical and focused, starting with limited choices and selecting the correct one.
• Efforts are directed to achieve a fixed solution after understanding a problem.
• Outcome is conventional, leading to the standard solution without creative endeavors.
• Ideas are synthesized to find a single, optimum solution to a well-defined problem.
• Works best when a single correct answer exists and can be found via analysis.
• The thinker gathers relevant information and uses problem-solving rules.
• The solution is usually previously discovered by someone else.
• Most school tasks and formal education emphasize this type of thinking.

Divergent Thinking

• Divergent thinking generates creative ideas by exploring many solutions.
• Characterized by variety of thoughts when thinking creatively.
• Typical for solving problems with many possible solutions, subjective evaluation.
• Loosely organized and partially directed.
• Solutions searched innovatively from different perspectives.
• Process creates many unique solutions, is spontaneous, and emphasizes creativity.
• Works best in open-ended problems that allow creativity.
• Outcome is unconventional and creative, brainstorming ideas in multiple ways.

Creative Thinking

• Creative thinking looks at problems from a fresh perspective, suggesting unorthodox solutions.
• Creates or constructs something new, novel, or unusual.
• Looks for new relationships and associations to describe and interpret.
• Not restricted by pre-established rules.
• Provides ideal examples for thinking from scientists, artists or inventors
• In creative thinking, sometimes new is sought after little progress; this appearance of new ideas is insight.
• Insights are triggered by lucky environmental circumstances and direct thoughts.

Goal-Oriented Thinking

• Improves circumstances by setting goals, measuring progress, and evaluating outcomes.
• Deeply ingrained in Western culture and in science-based education.
• You advance toward defined outcomes.

Aimless Thinking

• Unique thinking that is non-directed and without a goal.
• Reflected through daydreaming, delusions, fantasy, free-associations, and dreaming.
• Aimsless thnking serves no purpose or goal and has no problem or solution.

Daydreaming and Fantasy

• Withdrawal behavior category helps escape real world demands.
• Makes thinking free, non-directed, and floating.
• Fantasy is more self-directed than daydreaming.
• Thoughts unconsciously floats in unexpected directions.
• Have both positive and negative consequences.
• They reflect repressed desires and lead to an individual withdrawing.
• Prove constructive by building cognitive and creative skills, and helping in problem-solving.

Concepts Defined

• Mental categories for objects, events, experiences, or ideas that are similar.
• Represent information efficiently, simplifying a complex world with diversities.

Importance of Concepts in Thinking

• Learning and remembering becomes easy.
• Thinking becomes economical, reducing time and effort.
• Solutions come quickly by observing common elements and figuring things out.
• Concepts learned by asking questions and getting answers.
• Provides information about the world and allow us to organize experiences into patterns.
• Allow inferences and save mental effort by applying prior knowledge to new situations.

Artificial/Logical Concepts

• Can be clearly defined by a set of rules/properties and have a unique set of traits and features.
• These concepts are easy to define and elaborate.
• Used for test or experimental purposes.

Natural Concepts

• Not based on precise attributes/properties, lack clear boundaries, and defined by prototypes.
• More difficult to define because they are are known, familiar & relatively simple.
• Concepts vary in definition and explanation, grow/develop from daily experiences, especially childhood.

Simple Concepts

• Formed based on a single, common feature.
• Develops among animals and young children during early life.
• Formed by observing similar features among various articles, building simple relationships.
• First ideas about any object/event.

Complex Concepts

• Complex concepts need identification, understanding, generalization, and differentiation of characteristics.
• Primarily done through interactions and sorting objects into groups.
• Formation requires intelligence and logical thinking.
• Usually observed among adults and depend on intellectual capacity.
• Utilized in higher-order thinking skills like reasoning, creative thinking, and abstract thinking.

How are Concepts Formed?

• Concept formation IDs and classifies items.
• It is a strategy which compare and differentiate categories where thinkers focus on concept-relevent features.
• Stages:
  • Observation: First stage, awareeness. Direct or indirect.
  • Generalisation: Repeated observations form general ideas. Child sees different dogs and develops general dog concept.
  • Discrimination: Awareness of differences. Dogs and cows alike.
  • Abstraction: Compare experiences across different times.

Reasoning Defined

• Cognitive activity transforms information to reach specific conclusions.
• Specialized thinking explores cause-effect relationships and problem solutions.
• Uses organized steps, past experiences, and present observations.
• Key aspect of thinking, involving inference used to logically solves problems.
• Goal-directed, drawing conclusions/judgments from facts using rules.
• Involves gathering and analyzing information to draw conclusions.

Types of Reasoning

• Deductive Reasoning: Reasoning 'From general to the specific'. Starts with pre-known statements, applies it to specifics.
  • Draw specific conclusions by making general assumption and drawing true conclusions.
• Inductive reasoning follows the process of induction.
  • It aims to prove a general rule from a particular case, applying it to similar cases.
  • It formulate generalized principles and conclusions based on certain facts and specific examples, "From specific to general."

Common Errors in Reasoning

• Faulty Premises: Incorrect premise forms argument's basis & syllogism. If premise is wrong, conclusion might be wrong.
• Fallacy of Single Cause: Assuming a simple cause for an outcome is incorrect when it has several causes, like President Trump causing gas prices.

Improving Reasoning

• Avoiding Errors: Spot false reasoning & argue effectively via analytical skills.
• Examining Premises And Ambiguities:
  • Examining if concepts/assumptions are faulty, ambiguous, or not.
  • Vague claim: indistinct or imprecise; must reject generalities. Eliminate confusions about goals. Is initial evaluation of subject
• Guarding Against Emotion: Negative feelings harm reasoning. Reasoning activities are controlled, emotion activities are sudden.

Decision Making Defined

• Problem-solving where you choose from several alternatives and involves:
  • The utility or value of outcomes and the probability of those event
• Decision-making sometimes chooses based on decisions of what is personally significant.
  • There are decision-making differs from the general problem-solving process.
• Decisions require the selection of a know solution

Steps of The Decision-Making Process

• Step 1: Identify the Problem and thorughly analyze
• Step 2: Gathering accurate information to decide based on facts & data.
• Step 3: Identify solutions
• Step 4: Weigh pros and cons of options
• Step 5: After the value is judged, the indivudal becomes ready to select alternatives
• Step 6: Take Action and remain committed to that action
• Step 7: After the decision has been made, evaluate the correctness & success of its goal

Heuristics

• Cognitive shortcuts for quick decisions like "rules of thumb (mental guidlines)."
• Heuristics are extracted from experience and may reduce the effort required

Commonly Used Heuristics

• Availability heuristic
• Representativeness heuristic
• Anchoring and adjustment heuristic

Problem Solving

• Is an effort to develop of choose among many options to reach desired goals.
• The productive work used for goal evaluations is problem solving: exercise needs individual advancement and needs of society

Methods/Techniques of Solving Problems

• Algorithm: Exhausts every possible step towards the correct answer of well-defined problems. Following this allows for a guaranteed solution.
• Analogy: Applies past techniques to similar situations by making use of experiences and training to find similar solutions.
• Optimum Expected Utility: Choose actions with the highest perceived benefit. Different people asssign different utilities, or events, may vary among people.
• Mean-End Analysis: Coordination between problem and solutions where means, materials, resources are important. Stands for:
  • ID difference between current and desired states
  • Take action to reduce the difference to make a clear solution

Steps for problem Solving

• Problem ID: Recognise needs
• Formulate Potential Solutions: Think about the problem, and use knowledge or memory
• Evaluate Each Alternative and Outcome: Does the solution get you desired results?
• Try potential solutions

Creative Thinking

• A type of thinking is is novel, new, and original and distinguishes from other types
• Is understood as new, or different

Stages of Creative Thinking

• Preparation: thinker formulates a problem
• Incubation: interferes with the solution begins to fade
• Illumination: sudden idea wells up into consciousness
• Verification: determines insight or solution

How Creativity Can Be Encouraged

• By enriching knowledge and experience: make a broad knowledge base that needs good preparation and exposure to works of others.
• By fostering independence
• By Encouraging the use of analogies: recognize similarities and develop new skills for interested people
• By encouraging curiosity: from early childhood, create interest
• By enhancing positive effect on mood: indicates creative process