In some ways, we humans are, as we will see, dim-witted. We fear the wrong things. We allow the day's hot or cold weather to color our judgments of global climate change. We tend to be overconfident in our judgments and to persevere in clinging to discredited beliefs. Yet we also display remarkable mental powers. Our intelligence, creativity, and language mark us as "little less than the angels."
Let's begin our study of cognition - the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating information - by appreciating our human smarts.
Consider, for example, our ability to form concepts - mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, and people. The concept chair includes many items - a baby's high chair, a reclining chair, a dentist's chair - all of which are for sitting. Concepts simplify our thinking. Imagine life without them. We would need a different name for every person, event, object, and idea. We could not ask a child to "throw the ball" because there would be no concept of throw or ball. Instead of saying, "They were angry," we would have to describe expressions, intensities, and words. Concepts such as ball and anger give us much information with little cognitive effort.
We often form our concepts by developing prototypes - a mental image or best example of a category (Rosch, 1978). People more quickly agree that "a robin is a bird" than that "a penguin is a bird." For most of us, the robin is the birdier bird; it more closely resembles our bird prototype. And the more closely something matches our prototype of a concept - bird or car - the more readily we recognize it as an example of the concept.
Once we place an item in a category, our memory of it later shifts toward the category prototype, as it did for Belgian students who viewed ethnically blended faces. For example, when viewing a blended face in which 70 percent of the features were Caucasian and 30 percent were Asian, the students categorized the face as Caucasian. Later, as their memory shifted toward the Caucasian prototype, they were more likely to remember an 80 percent Caucasian face than the 70 percent Caucasian they had actually seen (Corneille et at 2004). Likewise, if shown a 70 percent Asian face, they later remembered a more prototypically Asian face. So, too, with gender: People who viewed 70 percent male faces categorized them as male (no surprise there) and then later misremembered them as even more prototypically male (Huart et al., 2005).
Move away from our prototypes, and category boundaries may blur. Is a tomato a fruit? Is a 17-year-old female a girl or a woman? Is a whale a fish or a mammal? Because a whale fails to match our "mammal" prototype, we are slower to recognize it as a mammal. Similarly, when symptoms don't fit one of our disease prototypes, we are slow to perceive an illness (Bishop, 1991). People whose heart attack symptoms (shortness of breath, exhaustion, a dull weight in the chest) don't match their heart attack prototype (sharp chest pain) may not seek help. And when behaviors don't fit our discrimination prototypes - of White against Black, male against female, young against old - we often fail to notice prejudice. People more easily detect male prejudice against females than female against males or female against females (Inman & Baron, 1996; Marti et al., 2000). Concepts speed and guide our thinking. But they don't always make us wise.
Pierre de Fermat a seventeenth-century mischievous genius, challenged mathematicians of his day to match his solutions to various number theory problems. His most famous challenge - Fermat's last theorem - baffled the greatest mathematical minds, even after a $2 million prize (in today's dollars) was offered in 1908 to whoever first created a proof.
Princeton mathematician Andrew Wiles had pondered the problem for more than 30 years and had come to the brink of a solution. One morning, out of the blue, the final "incredible revelation" struck him. "It was so indescribably beautiful; it was so simple and so elegant. I couldn't understand how I'd missed it. ... It was the most important moment of my working life" (Singh, 1997, p. 25).
Wiles' incredible moment illustrates creativity - the ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable (Hennessey & Amabile, 2010). Studies suggest that a certain level of aptitude - a score above 120 on a standard intelligence test-supports creativity. Those who score exceptionally high in quantitative aptitude as 13-year-olds are more likely to obtain graduate science and math degrees and create published or patented work (Park et al., 2008; Robertson et al., 2010). Intelligence matters. Yet, there is more to creativity than what intelligence tests reveal. Indeed, the two kinds of thinking engage different brain areas. Intelligence tests, which typically demand a single correct answer, require convergent thinking. Injury to the left parietal lobe damages this ability. Creativity tests (How many uses can you think of for a brick?) require divergent thinking. Injury to certain areas of the frontal lobes can leave reading, writing, and arithmetic skills intact but destroy imagination (Kolb & Whishaw, 2006).
Although there is no agreed-upon creativity measure - there is no Creativity Quotient (CQ) corresponding to an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) score - Robert Sternberg and his colleagues have identified five components of creativity (Sternberg, 1988, 2003; Sternberg & Lubart, 1991, 1992):
For those seeking to boost the creative process, research offers some ideas: