Better Keep the Instructions: People Aren't That Good at Solving Complex Problems
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Loading... - Justine Geelen
- 05 Jul 2022
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How good are people at finding optimal solutions to complex problems? New research finds that people may not be as capable as generally assumed.
Who hasn’t felt the temptation to fling a lengthy manual into the trash bin, or just drive on instead of asking for directions? After all, following instructions is often tiresome, and we can just figure it out on our own… Or can we? A study published in the scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour challenges prevalent theories about our ability to tackle complex problems and how certain mental disorders affect it.
“Patients that suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) are thought to have a problem with developing sophisticated problem-solving strategies,” said the study’s senior author, Albino Oliveira-Maia, head of the Neuropsychiatry Unit at the Champalimaud Foundation. “However, our novel experimental approach provides strong evidence against this theory.”
Two Ways to Solve One Problem
Oliveira-Maia’s research team made this finding when investigating how healthy subjects and patients with OCD differ in the way they solve problems. “In general, people use a combination of two complementary strategies, known as the model-free and the model-based approaches,” Oliveira-Maia explained. “While healthy individuals use both strategies flexibly, patients with OCD tend to exercise the model-free approach.”
The model-free strategy is relatively simple and it works well in stable environments. For example, imagine the following scenario: You have breakfast outside every morning on your way to work. There are two coffee shops on your route: “The Bean” and “Aroma.” Since you have to be at work early, with time, you learn that Aroma usually gets your breakfast staple — fresh croissants — delivered before the other shop does. So, following the model-free approach, you would typically go to Aroma first, and only when it doesn’t have croissants, you would head over to The Bean.
However, the model-free approach won’t work very well if the croissant supplier employed two delivery people who followed opposite routes. On weeks when the first delivery person is on duty, The Bean would get the croissants earlier. But if the second delivery person is working that week, then Aroma would receive them first.
If you were able to discover the “model” — that the availability of croissants depends on which delivery person is working that week — you would save yourself unnecessary trips. So even if The Bean has had croissants bright and early for weeks, on the first Monday that it doesn’t, you would immediately know that this week Aroma is the safer choice.
“Even though the model-based strategy is more computationally heavy, especially while you are still working out what’s going on, it’s more effective for optimizing your actions in complex circumstances such as the one in this example,” said Oliveira-Maia. Read More...
