Empowering cognitive fixedness

Abstract

Our goal was to understand potential aspects of cognitive fixedness in people who possess traditional viewpoints. We conducted an experiment that involved design training (in-studio design and creativity training). We observed several stages of idea generation during which artisans generated ideas for new design of traditional wooden sandals. During the first stage, artisans were challenged to generate ideas at extreme levels based on their prior knowledge. We examined their conceptual sketches and verbalized thoughts to obtain stimuli (stimulating keywords). Interestingly, the stimuli, painful, broken, and upside-down, did not match their fundamental knowledge and conceptions of sandals related to criteria, "continuity" and "appropriateness." During the second stage, the artisans redeveloped previous ideas by employing stimulating keywords. Finally, design trainers evaluated transformations that occurred during idea generation. The experiment demonstrated that the ability to capture and utilize stimuli during extreme levels of cognitive fixedness may lead to unconventional ways of thinking.