![]() Our own studies, for instance, provided expert chess players with scenarios in which they could accomplish a checkmate using a well-known sequence called smothered mate. In such experiments, researchers have presented players with specific arrangements of chess pieces on virtual chessboards and asked them to achieve a checkmate in as few moves as possible. Since at least the early 1990s, psychologists have studied the Einstellung effect by recruiting chess players of varying skill levels, from amateur to grand master. Research also suggests that many different cognitive biases discovered by psychologists over the years-those in the courtroom and the hospital, for instance-are in fact variations of the Einstellung effect. It turns out that people under the influence of this cognitive shortcut literally do not see certain details in their environment that could provide them with a more effective solution. About 15 years ago, by recording the eye movements of highly skilled chess players, we solved the mystery. The trouble with this cognitive shortcut, however, is that it sometimes prevents people from seeing more efficient or appropriate solutions than the ones they already know.īuilding on Luchins’s early work, psychologists replicated the Einstellung effect in many different laboratory studies with both novices and experts exercising a range of mental abilities, but exactly how and why it happened was never clear. Once you have hit on a successful method to, say, peel garlic, there is no point in trying an array of different techniques every time you need a new clove. Often this type of thinking is a useful heuristic. The water jug experiment is one of the most famous examples of the Einstellung effect: the human brain’s dogged tendency to stick with a familiar solution to a problem-the one that first comes to mind-and to ignore alternatives. And when Luchins gave them a problem that had a two-step solution but could not be solved using the three-step method to which the volunteers had become accustomed, they gave up, saying it was impossible. Yet many people in Luchins’s experiment persistently tried to solve the easier problem the old way, emptying the second container into the first and then into the third twice: 49 – 23 – 3 – 3 = 20. The solution is obvious, right? Simply fill the first jug and empty it into the third one: 23 – 3 = 20. This time Luchins asked the participants to measure out 20 units of water using containers that could hold 23, 49 and three liquid units. Yet when he gave them a problem with a simpler and faster solution than the previous tasks, they failed to see it. Luchins presented his volunteers with several more problems that could be solved with essentially the same three steps they made quick work of them. The solution was to first fill the second jug to its capacity of 127 units, then empty it into the first to remove 21 units, leaving 106, and finally to fill the third jug twice to subtract six units for a remainder of 100. They could fill and empty each jug as many times as they wanted, but they had to fill the vessels to their limits. #Checkmate with king and queen how toGiven three empty containers, for example, each with a different capacity-21, 127 and three units of water-the participants had to figure out how to transfer liquid between the containers to measure out precisely 100 units. In a classic 1942 experiment, American psychologist Abraham Luchins asked volunteers to do some basic math by picturing water jugs in their mind. ![]()
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