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Yes, and there's good reason why people wouldn't think to tack a tack box to the wall just to hold a candle. The box is holding the tacks already, so you've jus
by tgb 11y ago
Yes, and there's good reason why people wouldn't think to tack a tack box to the wall just to hold a candle. The box is holding the tacks already, so you've just replaced one problem with a different one. We don't pull all stops out to solve problems because usually doing so makes more problems. One time I had to take the bottom panel on my fridge off to switch how the door hinged. I couldn't find the last screw that was holding it in place, so I couldn't get it off. If all I cared about was 'solving the problem' I'd have taken out my tools and broken the plastic panel off and switched the door. But then I'd have a broken panel... so I kept looking and eventually found how to actually remove it.
- jschwartzi 11y agoTrue, but in the case that a small child or animal was trapped under that panel your priorities would change significantly. That's actually a pretty strong argument for many of the "functional fixedness tests" to be invalid, because they don't account for peoples' priorities. For example, with the tack box in the candle problem, I think people don't empty the box because they don't want to scatter the tacks all over everything, so it's not really testing functional fixedness but rather peoples' willingness to break something to accomplish their goals.
- srtjstjsj 11y agoThis is a common problem in psychology research: Researches making grand unfounded conclusions by over-generalizing an observation in a very narrow experiment. In school my professors pushed me to make ridiculous generalizations from my tiny experiments.