Functional fixedness

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that makes familiar objects harder to recognize as tools for unfamiliar purposes, limiting problem-solving.

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Mental set: A tendency to approach a problem using methods that worked in previous situations. Like functional fixedness, it carries familiar solutions into problems where they may obstruct progress.
Duncker's candle problem: A puzzle requiring a candle, matches, and a box of tacks to be arranged so the candle can burn on a wall. The box's familiar container function masks its usefulness as a platform.
Karl Duncker: A German Gestalt psychologist known for research on problem-solving and functional fixedness. His experiments and 1945 analysis gave functional fixedness its classic formulation.
Design thinking: An iterative approach to developing solutions by framing problems, generating ideas, and testing prototypes. Reframing and prototyping can expose uses overlooked under an object's conventional description.
Einstellung effect: A problem-solving bias in which a familiar solution prevents discovery of a more effective one. It shows how a known approach can dominate thought even when a better route is available.
Two-string problem: A problem in which two strings hang apart and must be tied together using objects in the room. A tool must be repurposed to make one string swing within reach of the other.
Gestalt psychology: A school of psychology that studies how the mind organizes experience into structured wholes. Duncker's account treats problem-solving as restructuring how a situation is organized.
Creative problem-solving: Methods for generating and evaluating novel solutions to problems. Functional fixedness is one cognitive barrier these methods aim to reduce.
Affordance: A possibility for action that an environment or object offers to an organism. Affordances concern available uses; functional fixedness can hide uses beyond an object's familiar ones.
Maier's pendulum experiment: An experiment in which participants tried to connect two hanging strings, sometimes using an unnoticed weight as a pendulum. It demonstrated that an object's incidental potential use can escape notice during problem-solving.