Serial 16 Why did Asimov lose? He lost to the mindset The so-called mindset effect refers to the phenomenon that people are stuck in existing information or cognition.

The great American writer Asimov, the author of Galactic Empire, once told a story about himself.

Asimov has been brilliant since he was a child, and he has always scored around 160 on the "IQ test" many times, and belongs to the list of "extremely talented", and he has always been proud of this. Once, he met a familiar auto mechanic. The repairman said to Asimov, "Hey, Doctor! I'll test your intellect and come up with a thinking question to see if you can answer correctly. ”

Asimov nodded in agreement. The repairman began to talk about thinking questions--

A deaf and mute man, wanting to buy a few nails, came to the hardware store and made this gesture to the salesman: two fingers of his left hand stood on the counter, and the fist of his right hand made a knocking appearance. The salesman saw this and brought him a hammer first; the deaf man shook his head and pointed to the two fingers that stood. So the salesman understood that what the deaf and mute wanted to buy was a nail. The deaf-mute man bought the nails and had just walked out of the store, and then a blind man came in. The blind man wants to buy a pair of scissors, and asks: What will the blind man do?

Asimov replied, "The blind will certainly be like this." ”

As he spoke, he held out his index and middle fingers and made the shape of scissors.

The repairman laughed and said, "Haha, you answered wrong!" -If a blind man wants to buy scissors, he just has to say, 'I buy scissors', so why should he make a gesture? ”

Asimov, who has an IQ of 160, has to admit that he is indeed an "idiot". The repairman, on the other hand, said in a pitiful tone, "Before I tested you, I was sure that you would be wrong, that you had too much education to be very clever." ”

In fact, the relationship between the more educated and the impossible to be smarter is not because people become stupid because they learn more knowledge, but because people have more knowledge and experience, and they will form more mindsets in their minds. This mindset binds the person's mind and makes it unfold along its own path.

The so-called fixed thinking effect refers to the phenomenon that people are limited to existing information or cognition. People work and live in a certain environment, and over time will form a fixed mode of thinking, so that people are accustomed to observing and thinking about things from a fixed perspective, and accepting things in a fixed way.

Stereotyping sometimes helps solve problems and sometimes hinders them.

Psychologist Meier studied the role of positivity in problem solving in 1930. In his experiments, instructional language was used to give directional cues to some participants, and no directing hints to other participants. As a result, the vast majority of participants in the former solved the problem, while the latter almost none could solve the problem. This can be said to be the role of fixation in solving problems.

But at the same time, the fixation also hinders the solution of the problem, which can be understood in many real-world events.

There is such a problem:

A public security chief was talking to an old man on the side of the road, when a child ran over and hurriedly said to the public security chief, "Your father and my father have quarreled!" ”

The old man asked, "Who are you with this child?" ”

The police chief said, "It's my son." ”

Please answer: What is the relationship between these two quarrelsome people and the police chief?

Only two of the 100 participants answered this question correctly! Later, when asked this question to a family of three, the parents did not answer correctly, but the child quickly answered: "The director is a woman, and the quarrel is the husband of the director, that is, the father of the child; the other is the father of the director, that is, the grandfather of the child." ”

Why are so many adults less likely than children to answer such simple questions? This is the fixation effect: according to the experience of adults, the director of public security should be male, and from the psychological stereotype of the male bureau chief, the answer can naturally not be found; and the child has no experience in this area, so there is no restriction of psychological fixation, so the correct answer is found at once.

The only person who can restrain people is man himself. The space of the human mind is infinite, like a paperclip, with at least a billion possible variations. Maybe we are trapped in a seemingly cornered situation, maybe we are stuck in a dilemma between choices, then we must understand that this situation is only due to our stubborn fixed thinking, only the courage to reconsider, we must be able to find more than one way out of the predicament.

"The Secret of the Least Stupid" serialized 16, give up the re-edition copyright, 80 psychological rules of success in life to share in full, welcome to exchange!