Preliminary Study of the Effectiveness of Some Heuristics Used to Generate Solutions 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 study examined the consequences of three solution-generating heuristics (incubation, 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 involving a roommate who smoked and then were trained to use brainstorming to generate solutions, to use a hierarchical heuristic to generate solutions, or were assigned to an incubation condition. Once trained, they returned to work on the problem concerning the roommate who smoked. Analysis indicated that the active techniques (brainstorming and the hierarchical method) led to more solutions than passive ones (incubation). The brainstorming technique produced the lowest quality of solutions. Those who used brainstorming produced more illegal solutions and were less likely to indicate that their best solution was generated after training. Participants also indicated that they liked the active techniques more than they liked incubation. Some conceptual replications have been obtained in our laboratory, but more work is needed to determine the relative advantages of these heuristics and the degree to which the results of this study will generalize.