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Answer each question based only on what was covered in the video lesson on Section 7.3 of Psychology 2e. No outside knowledge is needed — all answers can be found in the video.
Answer each question using what you learned from the video lesson on Section 7.3 of Psychology 2e. Questions progress from recall and understanding to application and analysis.
This lesson dives into the architecture of human problem solving, covering the strategies your brain uses every day — from trial and error and algorithms to the mental shortcuts known as heuristics. Along the way, you'll see how cognitive traps like functional fixedness, mental sets, and five major decision biases systematically distort your reasoning. Real-world examples — from a broken printer at midnight to NASA engineers saving Apollo 13 — ground every concept in situations you can immediately recognize. In this video: • Trial and error vs. algorithms: when to throw solutions at the wall and when to follow the recipe • Heuristics as mental shortcuts — the five conditions that trigger your brain to take the fast path • Working backwards and breaking tasks into steps: two heuristics in everyday action • Mental sets explained through a locked door with three open alternatives right beside it • Functional fixedness: Karl Duncker's candle-and-thumbtack experiment and the Apollo 13 life-saving improvisation • Cross-cultural research with Ecuador's Shuar group showing functional fixedness is a universal human trait • Five decision biases — anchoring, confirmation, representative, availability, and hindsight — traced through one person's week #OpenStax #Psychology #ProblemSolving #CognitiveBias #Heuristics OpenStax Content adapted from "OpenStax Psychology 2e", by OpenStax licensed under CC BY 4.0. Content based on Web Version: Apr 23, 2026. Read the textbook online https://openstax.org/details/books/psychology-2e Music first girl talking to me. by ikkun (ex. Barradeen) | https://soundcloud.com/ikkunwastaken Royalty Free Music by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US
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