Psychology Commons^™

Complex problem solving (CPS) emerged in the last 30 years in Europe as a new part of the psychology of thinking and problem solving. This paper introduces into the field and provides a personal view. Also, related concepts like macrocognition or operative intelligence will be explained in this context. Two examples for the assessment of CPS, Tailorshop and MicroDYN, are presented to illustrate the concept by means of their measurement devices. Also, the relation of complex cognition and emotion in the CPS context is discussed. The question if CPS requires complex cognition is answered with a tentative “yes.”

Based on recent affect-cognition theories (Bless et al., 1996; Fiedler, 2001; Sinclair, 1988), the present study predicts and shows a differentiated influence of nice and nasty environments on complex problem solving (CPS). Environments were constructed by manipulating the target value ‘capital’ of a complex scenario: Participants in the nice environment (N = 42) easily raised the capital and received positive feedback, whereas those in the nasty environment (N = 42) hardly enhanced the capital and got negative feedback. The results showed that nasty environments increased negative and decreased positive affect. The reverse was true for nice environments. Furthermore, nasty environments …

Managing multiple and conflicting goals is a demand typical to both everyday life and complex coordination tasks. Two experiments (N = 111) investigated how goal conflicts affect motivation and cognition in a complex problemsolving paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants dealt with a game-like computer simulation involving a predefined goal relation: Parallel goals were independent, mutually facilitating, or interfering with one another. As expected, goal conflicts entailed lowered motivation and wellbeing. Participants' understanding of causal effects within the simulation was impaired, too. Behavioral measures of subjects' interventions support the idea of adaptive, self-regulatory processes: reduced action with growing awareness of the …