When Archimedes and King Solomon Meet: Wisdom as Intuitive Problem Solving
Melissa Ferguson and Baruch Eitam
Short Definition
This research tests for the non-conscious processes that lead to solving an intuitive problem.
Summary Points
- This research tests for the non-conscious processes that lead to solving an intuitive problem.
- This research addresses the important similarities between wisdom and the process of insight.
- The current work identifies the mechanics of such an implicit problem solving process by testing the underlying principles of accessibility and implicit value.
- reveal the benefits of conceptualizing wisdom as intuitive problem solving.
- Ferguson has conducted a large-scale pilot study in which normative data were collected on the difficulty of solving a large set of intuition problems. These intuition problems were taken from the (RAT),
- This study generated the surprising finding that the accessibility of the solutions as measured in a lexical decision task was positively related to solving the RAT items in the second attempt.
Text from Wisdom Institute
There are important similarities between wisdom and insight. Arguably, both wisdom and insight depend on intuitive problem solving. This research tests for the non-conscious processes that lead to solving an intuitive problem. Specifically, this project tests how the cognitive accessibility and affective value of a particular solution to a problem non-consciously increase in the mind as the person is trying to generate that solution. Findings indicate that there may be a non-conscious “a-ha” response to solutions of problems that the mind is occupied with.
When Archimedes and King Solomon Meet: Wisdom as Intuitive Problem Solving
This research addresses the important similarities between wisdom and the process of insight. Both wisdom and insight arguably depend on intuitive (i.e., implicit) problem solving. The current work identifies the mechanics of such an implicit problem solving process by testing the underlying principles of accessibility and implicit value. Specifically, the more accessible and implicitly positive a concept is while a person reasons about a related insight problem, the more likely the person should generate that concept as a solution to the problem. Four experiments test these hypotheses. In the first two experiments, accessibility and implicit positivity will be measured (Experiment 1) or manipulated (Experiment 2), and then regressed onto performance on an intuitive problem solving task (a version of the Remote Associates Task; Mednick, 1962). The next two experiments will use these two principles of accessibility and implicit positivity to examine the related phenomena of incubation (Experiment 3) and nonconscious thought (Experiment 4). The predicted findings would together suggest that the two principles of accessibility and implicit positivity are valid markers of intuitive problem solving performance, and of nonconscious thought processes more generally. More broadly, these findings would reveal the benefits of conceptualizing wisdom as intuitive problem solving.
Thus far, Ferguson has conducted a large-scale pilot study in which normative data were collected on the difficulty of solving a large set of intuition problems. These intuition problems were taken from the Remote Associates Test (RAT), and each one required the respondent to generate a solution word that is related to each of three other clues (all of which are unrelated to each other). These problems require flexible and intuitive thought, and have been traditionally used as a measure of intuitive problem solving.
In the next experiment, the central hypothesis was that the accessibility and positivity of solutions to RAT items, as measured implicitly after a brief (3 sec) initial attempt to solve them, will jointly predict whether participants generate these solutions in a second opportunity to solve the problems. This study generated the surprising finding that the accessibility of the solutions as measured in a lexical decision task was positively related to solving the RAT items in the second attempt. In light of this finding, two additional experiments have been conducted to test the stability of this surprising result. These experiments were modified according to the conclusions from Experiment 1. The data collection is now complete and data analysis is currently underway.
https://wisdomcenter.uchicago.edu/about/project-1-defining-wisdom