Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

confi rmation bias
The tendency to 
seek out and weight more heavily 
information that supports one’s 
initial hypotheses and to ignore 
contradictory information that 
supports alternative hypotheses or 
solutions.
FIGURE 10 
A solution to the problem 
in Figure 8 involves tacking the boxes to 
the door and placing the candles in the 
boxes.
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Module 24 
Problem Solving 
261
Creativity and Problem Solving
Despite obstacles to problem solving, many people adeptly discover creative solu-
tions to problems. One enduring question that cognitive psychologists have sought 
to answer is what factors underlie
 creativity, 
the ability to generate original ideas or 
solve problems in novel ways.
Although identifying the stages of problem solving helps us understand how 
people approach and solve problems, it does little to explain why some people 
come up with better solutions than others do. For instance, even the possible solu-
tions to a simple problem often show wide discrepancies. Consider, for example, 
how you might respond to the question “How many uses can you think of for a 
newspaper?” 
Now compare your solution with this one proposed by a 10-year-old boy:
You can read it, write on it, lay it down and paint a picture on it . . . You could put 
it in your door for decoration, put it in the garbage can, put it on a chair if the chair 
is messy. If you have a puppy, you put newspaper in its box or put it in your 
backyard for the dog to play with. When you build something and you don’t want 
anyone to see it, put newspaper around it. Put newspaper on the fl oor if you have 
no mattress, use it to pick up something hot, use it to stop bleeding, or to catch the 
drips from drying clothes. You can use a newspaper for curtains, put it in your shoe 
to cover what is hurting your foot, make a kite out of it, shade a light that is too 
bright. You can wrap fi sh in it, wipe windows, or wrap money in it . . . You put 
washed shoes in newspaper, wipe eyeglasses with it, put it under a dripping sink, 
put a plant on it, make a paper bowl out of it, use it for a hat if it is raining, tie it on 
your feet for slippers. You can put it on the sand if you had no towel, use it for 
bases in baseball, make paper airplanes with it, use it as a dustpan when you sweep, 
ball it up for the cat to play with, wrap your hands in it if it is cold. (Ward, Kogan, 
& Pankove, 1972)
This list shows extraordinary creativity. Unfortunately, it is much easier to iden-
tify examples of creativity than to determine its causes. Similarly, it’s not clear that 
the kind of creativity shown by highly creative people in the arts, such as Pablo