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Ormerod, Thomas C. and Ross, Wendy (2024) Modelling insight as a creative domain: process or phenomenology? In: MBR_023, 2023. (In Press)
In this paper, we examine a recent shift in research on insight problem solving research away from how people solve problems characterised by an underlying structure designed to mislead and towards how problems and problem solution types elicit feelings of insight. We suggest that this focus on the phenomenology accompanying problem-solving has led to a neglect of the question of how people solve an insight-type problem, instead replacing that question with an investigation of the metacognitive effects of experiencing insight. We argue that this shift leaves unaddressed the issue of how new knowledge and understanding are generated and instead relies on circularity– the feeling of insight shows a problem was solved by insight. We argue that the assumptions of current models unwittingly commit researchers to as-yet untested theoretical assumptions about the nature of problem solutions. We propose that this shift of the research field has led to a disproportionate focus on outcome over process and a worrying aggregation of idiosyncratic tendencies. We conclude with a call to generate multiple research pathways, one examining the phenomenology of the feeling of insight, the other returning to tackle unanswered questions about the process of generating novel understanding when faced with a problem which seems unsurmountable.
![[thumbnail of Ormerod & Ross 2024 MBR Ch.pdf]](https://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/style/images/fileicons/text.png "Ormerod & Ross 2024 MBR Ch.pdf")
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