Far-Out Thinking: Generating Solutions to Distant Analogies Promotes Relational Thinking

Is it possible to induce a mind-set that will affect relational thinking in a subsequent reasoning task involving unrelated materials? We investigated whether evaluating the validity of verbal analogies (Experiment 1a) or generating solutions for them (Experiment 1b) could induce a relational mind-s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2014-04, Vol.25 (4), p.928-933
Main Authors: Vendetti, Michael S., Wu, Aaron, Holyoak, Keith J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Cognition. Intelligence
Cognitive psychology
Creativity
Fluid and crystallized intelligence
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Intelligence
Intelligence quotient
Metaphor
Prefrontal cortex
Psychological aspects
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reasoning
Reasoning. Problem solving
Semantics
Social theory
Thinking
Thought processes
Transfer (Psychology)
Umbrellas
Young Adult
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Summary:Is it possible to induce a mind-set that will affect relational thinking in a subsequent reasoning task involving unrelated materials? We investigated whether evaluating the validity of verbal analogies (Experiment 1a) or generating solutions for them (Experiment 1b) could induce a relational mind-set that would transfer to an unrelated picture-mapping task. The verbal analogies were based on either near or far semantic relations. We found that generating (but not evaluating) solutions for semantically distant analogies increased the proportion of relational mappings on the transfer task, even after we controlled for fluid intelligence and response time. Solving near analogies did not produce transfer. Generation of solutions to far analogies appears to provide a potent method for triggering a mind-set that can enhance relational thinking in a different task.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797613518079