Is Success or Failure at Solving Complex Problems Related to Intellectual Ability?

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511615771.004

3 - Is Success or Failure at Solving Complex Problems Related to Intellectual Ability?

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Dorit Wenke and

Peter A. Frensch

Edited by

Janet E. Davidson and

Robert J. Sternberg

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Dorit Wenke: Affiliation:
Humboldt-University at Berlin
Peter A. Frensch: Affiliation:
Humboldt-University at Berlin
Janet E. Davidson: Affiliation:
Lewis and Clark College, Portland
Robert J. Sternberg: Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Imagine you are elected mayor of a town and are given absolute power over all town resources. You may hire workers for the local factory, raise taxes, have schools built, and close down local businesses. The one goal you are to strive for is to make certain that the town prospers.

A situation like this, simulated on a computer, was used in the early 1980s by Dietrich Dörner and his colleagues (e.g., Dörner & Kreuzig, 1983; Dörner, Kreuzig, Reither, & Stäudel, 1983) in Bamberg, Germany, to study individual differences in the human ability to solve complex problems. Dörner was interested in understanding why some of his research participants were much more successful in building prosperous towns than were others. One of his rather striking and hotly debated conclusions was that individual differences in the ability to govern the simulated town were not at all related to the individuals' IQs. Rather, an individual's ability to turn the town into a prosperous community seemed to be related to his or her extroversion and self-confidence.

In this chapter we are concerned with the question of what determines individual differences in complex problem-solving competence. The answer to this question may be traced from many different viewpoints: cognitive, social, biological, and evolutionary, to name just a few. Here, we focus on the contribution of cognitive psychology to providing an answer to the question.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Psychology of Problem Solving , pp. 87 - 126

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615771.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2003

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