Sometimes, it’s a good thing that we don’t use certain objects for unintended purposes. Using a sharp knife as a screwdriver may seem like a good idea in a pinch, but this kind of ‘thinking outside the box’ can lead to serious injury if (more like when) it goes wrong. In other situations, however, functional fixedness can be an issue. 

Functional fixedness can negatively affect a person’s ability to problem-solve and innovate. The bias causes us to look at a problem in one specific way and prevents us from developing effective solutions. For instance, someone might fail to realize they could use a coin to tighten a loose screw if a screwdriver isn’t available simply because they are fixated on using the “correct” tool and overlook unconventional but effective alternatives. 

Functional fixedness can impact many areas of one’s life, including academics, career, and personal life. An individual’s inability to recognize alternative approaches constrains their creativity and limits their potential ideas when looking to solve a problem. 

Functional fixedness can prevent companies and societies from innovating and solving pressing challenges. Passiveness and familiarity stem from an individual’s need to maintain the status quo and do things as they have always been done. There is comfort in familiarity, and it’s a natural human tendency to do what is comfortable.²

From a corporate level, functional fixedness has led to issues in developing breakthrough products and solutions for internal challenges. For nations, functional fixedness has resulted in a lack of innovative solutions to tackle more significant societal problems. Systemic issues arising from functional fixedness have real-world impacts and are a real pain point for societies, as leaders cannot look past traditional solutions to solve complex problems.

From a very early age, we learn to associate objects with their intended or designed purposes, using them as they are meant to be used. Toddlers as young as 24 months have been found to quickly learn what objects are for by watching others, information they imitate and hold onto for a long time.⁸ While this information might help us as we make sense of the world, it can hinder our problem-solving skills later on in life. 

When faced with a new task or a challenge, how we approach and solve it depends on positive transfer and negative transfer. Positive transfer occurs when previous learning actually helps us with a new task, while negative transfer happens when our previous knowledge and learning hold us back.¹⁵ 

Misleading functional knowledge

Research shows that misleading functional knowledge is the main cause of functional fixedness. Misleading functional knowledge refers to information about an object’s typical use that is accurate in familiar contexts but becomes obstructive when attempting to solve novel problems. In other words, it's the knowledge that causes a person to see an object strictly through the lens of its original, intended function, making it difficult for them to consider alternative ways it could be used.

A study conducted by researchers in Chile and the United States examined the impact of misleading functional knowledge on people’s ability to use everyday tools to solve problems.⁷ The participants were assigned to five groups, each corresponding to a different learning method about tool functions: Reading, Video, Manual, No Functional Fixedness, and No Training. The participants were then asked to solve six mechanical puzzles of varying difficulty using tools they learned about during the training phase. The experiment tested a range of factors: whether misleading functional information impacted problem-solving performance, how puzzle difficulty influenced the effects of functional fixedness, and whether intuitive physics knowledge, fine motor skills, or creativity could reduce the effect of the bias. 

The findings of the experiments showed that functional fixedness arose from misleading functional information regardless of how the participants were taught to use the tools. However, the negative effects of functional fixedness only appeared in simpler puzzles and dissipated after the participants’ initial failures. Additionally, the study found that people’s prior knowledge of physics and fine motor skills reduced their susceptibility to functional fixedness. A person’s level of creativity, on the other hand, had no impact. 

The results challenge the assumption that functional fixedness consistently impairs problem-solving across all contexts, demonstrating instead that its effects might be confined to simple problems. When we have a more complex problem to solve, our ability to override functional fixedness increases. 

Age

Researchers have found that functional fixedness is a bias that develops and strengthens as we age. When studying functional fixedness in children, a study at the University of Essex found that 5-year-old children showed no initial signs of the bias in early development when problem-solving. Meanwhile, as early as the age of 7, children were more likely to treat objects as they were meant to be used, already developing the bias.² Younger participants present initial immunity to the bias due to their initial lack of problem-solving experience, allowing them to be more creative in their solutions.¹

Experience

Functional fixedness has also proven to develop more as individuals gain more experience with problem-solving. Ironically, the more practice we have with identifying solutions to a problem, the more difficult it is to identify alternative or more creative solutions.³ Though individuals may be aware that their traditional method of solving a problem may be over-used and ineffective, they are typically still tempted to use the same problem-solving approach due to their familiarity with it.

Problem-solving is an essential part of everyday life, influencing both personal and professional success. However, functional fixedness can hinder innovation and creative thinking by restricting individuals to conventional uses of objects and familiar solutions. This cognitive bias limits problem-solving flexibility, making it harder to develop novel approaches to challenges.

In fields like design, engineering, and business, overcoming functional fixedness is especially important for fostering innovation and thinking outside the box. Individuals who recognize this bias can actively work to overcome it, broadening their perspectives and enhancing their problem-solving abilities. By consciously adopting a more open and adaptable mindset, they can tackle challenges more effectively and strive toward unique, innovative solutions in their professional and personal lives.

As with many cognitive biases, functional fixedness can appear when tackling challenges in many different areas of life. Avoiding functional fixedness requires a conscious effort on the individual’s part towards promoting innovative ways of thinking and problem-solving.

Abstract the Problem

The first step to overcoming functional fixedness is done by first developing an awareness of the problem and simplifying it. A practice referred to as “uncommitting,” describes simplifying a challenge and distilling it down to the problem’s essential elements. By eliminating the details of the problem, we allow ourselves to think more creatively about the solution. By focusing on identifying the problem, and not judging ideas too early in the problem-solving process, alternative perspectives and possible solutions can be identified.³

Draw Inspiration from Unexpected Places

Researchers have found that when people look for inspiration from distant domains, they tend to generate more creative solutions to their problems, especially in comparison to those who draw inspiration from more closely related fields.³ Solutions from the abstract and distantly-related industries provide novel fixes, which tend to deliver creative and successful solutions.

Opinions from Different Disciplines

Like drawing inspiration from different disciplines, reaching out to experts in various fields also serves as a solution to avoiding functional fixedness and better-solving problems within one’s domain. Crowdsourcing initiatives by large technology companies provide an excellent example of this fix in play. Samsung, Unilever, and Lego have used crowdsourcing campaigns to share internal company challenges and call for innovative solutions from those external to their company in different industries. Crowdsourcing initiatives have continued to gain traction due to the success companies have seen in their ability to garner innovative solutions at a low cost, aiding these companies to avoid functional fixedness.⁴ Crowdsourcing has proven to be an innovative way to avoid functional fixedness, as participants from outside of corporations do not hold the same preconceived notions of internal employees within these companies. Without these preconceived notions and set standards and processes, crowdsourcing participants are able to avoid the restrictive innovative barriers typically developed in these traditional settings.

Avoid pictures? 

Words and pictures heavily influence our creative thinking about everyday objects and the ability to see them as tools beyond their common function. More specifically, different stimuli can affect our access to stored knowledge (semantic memory) of these objects. In one study, participants were shown different objects either as pictures, described through words, or both.¹⁰ They were then asked to suggest common, secondary, or unusual uses for the objects. The researchers measured how quickly participants responded and analyzed the creativity of their responses based on whether they relied heavily on existing knowledge (top-down) or generated more original solutions (bottom-up). Results showed that seeing pictures led participants to rely more on existing, top-down knowledge when generating unusual uses, resulting in less innovative responses than when they were exposed only to object names. This suggests that pictures may cause people to fixate on familiar visual features and which limits their creativity. Therefore, talking about objects rather than showing pictures can help to reduce the effect of functional fixedness.

Functional fixedness was first defined by the German psychologist Karl Duncker in 1945. Karl Duncker described functional fixedness as a mental block when using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem.⁵ The block Karl emphasizes in his famous experiment demonstrates how an individual’s ability to complete a task with specific components were limited, as they were unable to rationalize their use outside of their original purpose.

The famous experiment conducted by Karl Duncker is well-known in psychology for demonstrating functional fixedness. In this experiment, Duncker gave participants a book of matches, a candle and a box of thumbtacks, and asked them to attach the candle to the wall so that when it was lit, it would not drip onto the table below it. Initially, most of the participants attempted to attach the candle to the wall by directly using the tacks or by trying to glue the candle to the wall by melting it. Because the Duncker gave participants a box with thumbtacks in them, few of the participants thought of using the box as a candle-holder and attaching the box to the wall with the tacks. Since the experiment participants fixated on the functionality of the box being used to hold the thumbtacks, they were unable to conceptualize the box as a potential solution for holding the candle, thus solving the challenge.

Additionally, in 1952 the experiment was later conducted by giving one set of participants an empty box without the thumbtacks while giving the other set of participants the box with thumbtacks inside. Participants who were given the box without the thumbtacks inside of the box were two times as likely to solve the problem.⁶ The box no longer was used to hold the thumbtacks; therefore, its functionality was not tied to one single use.

Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer explored the question of why some people are more creative at solving problems than others. Wertheimer distinguished between two types of thinking: productive thinking and reproductive thinking. Productive thinking involves generating new solutions when faced with a problem, while reproductive thinking relies on previously learned solution methods from past problem-solving experiences. These two categories are closely related to the concept of functional fixedness. Reproductive thinking, which relies on familiar problem-solving methods, reinforces functional fixedness by encouraging individuals to approach problems in habitual ways rather than considering novel solutions. Productive thinking, on the other hand, requires overcoming functional fixedness by rethinking assumptions and finding innovative approaches to problem-solving.¹⁵

On a very basic level, functional fixedness impacts the way we use and consume products. If we limit ourselves to using objects only in ways we’ve learned or assumed they’re intended for, we risk overlooking many potential uses and only tapping into a small part of their true versatility. If we reflect on the amount of things we have in our homes, we could probably substantially reduce our possessions by simply using one item for multiple functions. Some experts have argued that combining parts of elements from very different kinds of products (what’s called ‘distant product domain’) can lead consumers to view the resulting product as more creative and attractive.¹³ 

Functional fixedness can also impact products before they even reach our hands. Design fixation refers to our tendency to resort to familiar or existing solutions when we’re trying to design something original or new. The phenomenon is closely related to functional fixedness in that it also limits problem-solving and creativity, but is slightly broader in scope because it encompasses generating creative solutions at large. 

When humans succumb to design fixation, they are overly influenced by existing examples, past experiences, or prior knowledge, resulting in repetitive, unoriginal, or constrained design outcomes. This can be a significant problem for product innovation as it stops designers from seeing the full range of possible solutions and outcomes. 

You may be forgiven for thinking that AI tools can help designers overcome their design fixation, develop divergent thinking, and augment their creativity. However, research shows that using AI to help in ideation tasks can actually increase design fixation and hinder innovation.¹¹ In one experiment, 60 participants were split into three groups and were given 20 minutes to sketch original and interesting ideas for a chatbot avatar. Group one received no additional inspiration, group two had access to Google Image Search, and group three could use Midjourney, a generative AI tool to generate images based on the prompts they created. 

The participants who used Midjourney demonstrated higher fixation on initial design examples, produced fewer ideas overall, and their designs had less variety and originality compared to the non-AI groups. Speculating on the reasons for the fixation among group three members, the researchers suggested two areas. First, that the participants gave limited prompts because they were simply copying keywords from the original design brief. And second, that the participants shifted their fixation from initial examples directly onto the AI-generated images, limiting their creative exploration.

Overall, the study highlights the need for careful integration of AI into creative workflows and to encourage genuine creative exploration. 

AI itself is also subject to design fixation. A group of researchers from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou and Stockholm University demonstrated how Generative AI (GenAI) experiences design fixation by repeatedly producing similar or limited creative outputs due to biases or constraints learned during training.¹² Their experiment involved ten novice designers who were asked to collaborate with GenAI (in this case, ChatGPT for text generation and Midjourney for image generation) to develop innovative office chair designs. After they completed the task, the participants were interviewed about their experiences and perceptions of fixation. 

The results showed clear signs of design fixation. In the case of text generation, the AI tended to repeat common descriptions, themes, and high-frequency keywords, showing limited variation and creativity. Similarly, the images produced by Midjourney were constrained by standard angles, repetitive visual motifs, and limited variations in color, shape, or texture. Interestingly, the AI’s fixation issues were picked up by the participants who discussed it during their interviews. 

So, what causes design fixation in AI? The authors believe that it’s partly down to data biases and the architectural constraints of algorithms. But we’re also partly to blame as we may be giving the AI limited prompts as a result of our own fixation on the AI’s response (as we saw above). Unfortunately, we’re stuck in a vicious cycle of fixedness.  

How does the environment around us and our access to tools, products, and technology influence our level of functional fixedness? In today’s consumerist society, we have a gadget for just about everything, from avocado separators and egg pressers to steam mops and pressure washers. But what would happen if we didn’t have access to all this stuff? Would we be more imaginative in the way we use things?

Researchers from the departments of psychology and anthropology at The University of California investigated whether functional fixedness exists in different cultures.¹⁷ They went to the Ecuadorian Amazon to work with the Shuar communities, a culture with limited exposure to single-use tools. In Shuar society, tools like machetes are commonly used for various tasks, from clearing forest paths to food preparation. 

The study was comprised of 29 adolescents and young people who were asked to solve two problems: one involving building a tower to reach a rabbit (the box task) and another involving creating a bridge to cross a river (the spoon task). However, in one condition, that object’s typical function was subtly “primed” by context—e.g., placing other items inside the box or putting the spoon inside a cup of rice—while in the other condition, the object was presented neutrally, without highlighting its conventional use. 

The participants in the function-primed condition took significantly longer to select and use the object in a novel way than the non-primed condition, demonstrating a degree of functional fixedness. This finding suggests that even in cultures where tools are commonly used for multiple purposes, people are still mentally constrained by an object’s designed function. In turn, this evidence suggests that functional fixedness is not just a product of industrialization and overconsumption but actually a universal aspect of human cognition.

Another example of functional fixedness showcases how individuals overcome the cognitive bias by simplifying their initial problem. In an experiment conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, participants were required to design a power strip in which larger plugs would not block adjacent outlets. To promote creative design solutions, researchers gave one set of participants the initial design challenge, and the second set of participants an abstracted version of the problem. The second set of participants were asked to instead fit objects of different sizes into a container without blocking one another, and taking advantage of the container’s full capacity. The challenge was reframed to avoid functional fixedness by stripping away the objects’ details being power strips, plugs, and outlets. By doing this, researchers looked to see which set of participants would develop the most innovative results.

The researchers found that when participants were given the abstracted challenge, they identified relevant but distant domains to aid in their problem-solving. The areas of comparison included landscaping, carpentry, Japanese aesthetics, and contortionism. Participants who were able to gain inspiration from these distant domains found the most novel and practical solutions to the design problem. The study shows that overcoming functional fixedness and drawing from unexpected, distant domains can lead to the most original and effective solutions.⁴

What it is

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person’s ability to use an object in more ways than it is traditionally used and affects an individual’s ability to innovate and be creative when solving challenges.

Why it happens

Functional fixedness occurs due to strong pre-conceived notions that people develop in regards to objects and how they must solve challenges using those objects. These preconceived notions typically develop as we age and gain experience in problem-solving.

Example 1 - The global effect of functional fixedness 

Researchers from the University of California studied whether functional fixedness appears in different cultures by working with the Shuar communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon. They asked 29 adolescents to solve two problems, sometimes subtly priming an object’s typical use and sometimes presenting it neutrally. Participants who were primed took significantly longer to repurpose the object, showing mental constraints based on its usual function. The study suggests that functional fixedness is a universal feature of human thinking, not just a byproduct of industrialized or consumerist societies.

Example 2 - Creatively designing power strips

A study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University tested the quality of design solutions in participants without functional fixedness bias. The first set of participants had to design a power strip which ensured that larger plugs would not block adjacent outlets. The second set of students were asked to develop a similar simplified task. This entailed fitting objects of different sizes into a container so that they wouldn’t block one another to take advantage of the container’s full capacity. The researchers found that when participants were given the abstracted problem, they identified relevant domains to aid in their problem-solving. Participants were able to gain inspiration from these distant domains and found the most novel and practical solutions to the design problem.

How to avoid it

Functional fixedness can be avoided by firstly being aware of the bias. Abstracting the initial problem, drawing inspiration from other domains, and even getting opinions from different types of experts in other industries can help avoid Functional fixedness in one’s quotidian life.

Psychological Sets

Psychological sets refer to a person’s predisposition to perceive, interpret, or respond to a situation in a particular way based on prior experience, expectations, or mental state. Functional fixedness is one type of psychological that informs our realistic expectations of the world around us. This article looks at the concept of psychological sets and the other mental sets that we use in our everyday lives. 

Einstellung Effect

The Einstellung effect describes when we approach a problem with a mindset that worked for us in the past, even if a more efficient solution exists. In the case of functional fixedness, we might not think of using an object in a new or unusual way simply because our mindset leads us to stick with what we know. This article delves deeper into the Einstellung effect and how, like functional fixedness, it can hinder our ability to be creative and solve problems.