Preliminary study of the effectiveness of some heuristics used to generatesolutions to ill-structured problems

Many of the problems people encounter in daily life are ill-structured and typically require use of heuristics to generate possible solutions. This st udy examined the consequences of three solution-generating heuristics (incu bation, brainstorming, and a hierarchical method) on 28 male and 70 female undergraduates' ability to generate solutions to an ill-structured problem involving a roommate who smoked. Subjects first worked on the problem invol ving a roommate who smoked and then were trained to use brainstorming to ge nerate solutions, to use a hierarchical heuristic to generate solutions, or were assigned to an incubation condition. Once trained, they returned to w ork on the problem concerning the roommate who smoked. Analysis indicated t hat the active techniques (brainstorming and the hierarchical method) led t o more solutions than passive ones (incubation). The brainstorming techniqu e produced the lowest quality of solutions. Those who used brainstorming pr oduced more illegal solutions and were less likely to indicate that their b est solution was generated after training. Participants also indicated that they liked the active techniques more than they liked incubation. Some con ceptual replications have been obtained in our laboratory, but more work is needed to determine the relative advantages of these heuristics and the de gree to which the results of this study will generalize.