Effect of Imagery, Strategy and Individual Differences in Solving Insight Problems

Abstract

Creativity research has not shown specifically how imagery, strategy and individual differences may interact in problem solving performance, and an experiment was designed to explore this issue. Four groups of male subjects were instructed to use verbal and visual thinking, and analytic and exploratory strategies while trying to solve two insight problems. Individual differences were measured in cognitive style, as well as verbal and spatial abilities. The results revealed a significant main effect for the strategy instructions. Furthermore, interaction effects between the cognitive style dimensions and the instructions indicate that people with different styles can vary in the kinds of strategies they profit from using in problem‐solving.