The dark side of Eureka: Artificially induced Aha moments make facts feel true

Laukkonen, Ruben; Kaveladze, Benjamin; Tangen, Jason M.; Schooler, Jonathan W.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104122

Cited by 61 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 40 publications

(54 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Insights have in common with heuristics the fact that they are automatic, involuntary, linked to emotions, independent from working memory, and (we suggest) are foremost adaptive. Moreover, new evidence is showing that they also influence decision-making processes, specifically beliefs about what is true or false (Laukkonen et al, 2020). Here it's again valuable to emphasize that in this paper we are focusing on the feeling of insight (e.g., the Aha experience) rather than the processes that might precede the feeling, such as problem restructuring.…”

Section: The Feeling and Function Of Insightmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…This feeling can then provide a useful heuristic signal about whether the idea is valuable, given past experience and existing knowledge. Crucially, humans use this signal to guide their decisions about which ideas can be trusted, often unknowingly (Laukkonen et al, 2020, )but to good effect .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As an explicit prediction arising out of the Eureka Heuristic model, we recently showed that artificially induced Aha experiences could make facts appear truer, even if they were false (Laukkonen et al, 2020). In this study, we used anagrams to induce Aha moments at the same moment that a proposition (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Insight and the selection of ideas

Laukkonen¹,

Webb²,

Salvi³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Perhaps it is no accident that “Eureka” moments accompany some of humanity’s most important discoveries in science, medicine, and art. Ideas often appear unexpectedly in the human mind, so we must possess some capacity for appraising the idea in order to use it efficiently. Here we describe an account where the feeling of insight plays this adaptive role by signaling that a new idea appearing in consciousness can be trusted, given what one knows. Consistent with this perspective, recent experiments show that feelings of Aha tend to accompany correct solutions to problems. However, we have also shown that an artificially induced Aha moment can make false propositions seem true, demonstrating that Aha moments can exert influence regardless of ground truth. Drawing on these and other findings, we contend that humans use feelings of Aha heuristically in order to appraise new ideas that appear in awareness. In other words, from the manifold thoughts and ideas appearing in our stream of consciousness, the feeling of insight draws attention to the ‘best’ ones. Usually the heuristic works, but like all mental shortcuts, it is error prone. In this paper we encourage research on insight to move beyond questions about where insight comes from, and into questions about what insights do and how they affect decisions, belief, and the appraisal of ideas. It also brings to the forefront the dangers of false insight moments and their relevance for future research and the current age of information.

show abstract

Section: The Feeling and Function Of Insightmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Insight and the selection of ideas

Laukkonen¹,

Webb²,

Salvi³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Moreover, they proposed that since much of creative problem solving is carried out implicitly, then humans use the feeling of insight as a heuristic to determine which ideas they can trust. Consistent with this idea, Laukkonen et al (2020) showed that triggering feelings of insight using an anagram could make propositions seem more true if they were presented at the same time, suggesting that participants overgeneralized their Aha experience. In other words, the heuristic "If I feel Aha, then I have had a good idea" spilled over to a temporally coincident (but irrelevant) fact.…”

Section: Insights Are Accurate But How?mentioning

confidence: 63%

“…For instance, we recently demonstrated that artificially elicited insight experiences could make facts (both true and false) appear true (Laukkonen et al, 2020). Thus, in addition to integrating existing measures, we hope to capture the insight experience with high sensitivity, fidelity, and prior to any opportunity of reflection, to remove any doubt that the feeling of Aha is an informative marker of an accurate solution.…”

Section: The Best Of Both Phenomenology and Cognition: An Embodied Rementioning

confidence: 99%

Getting a grip on insight: An embodied measure of Aha! and metacognition during problem solving

Laukkonen¹,

Ingledew²,

Tangen³

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A challenge unique to psychology is objectively capturing ephemeral subjective states during controlled experiments. Large bodies of literature use metacognitive probes and self-reports in order to measure states of knowing, perceived progress, as well as the onset of phenomenologies such as surprise or insight. Here we evaluate the usefulness of a visceral measure—the dynamometer—in a problem solving context to detect feelings of progress and insight experiences. The continuous measure of hand grip strength provides multiple data points per second and effectively captures the onset of insight experiences in real-time, and maps onto other measures showing convergent validity. Our results highlight the importance of viewing metacognitions during problem solving and insight moments as dissociable events that show different behavioural outcomes. We also found evidence that the participants were embodying the intensity of the insight experience, despite not being instructed to do so. The dynamometer may be a useful tool in any context where metacognitions are monitored continuously, and is particularly well suited for research in problem solving and insight.

show abstract

Commentary: Moment of (Perceived) Truth: Exploring Accuracy of Aha! Experiences

Webb

Laukkonen

Cropper

et al. 2019

Journal of Creative Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Danek and Salvi (The Journal of Creative Behavior, 1–3, 2018) provide a sound overview of research on the relationship between feelings of aha and the accuracy of problem‐solving solutions. However, there are reasons to be cautious in concluding that a characteristic of insightful solutions is their superior accuracy. A relationship between correct solutions and aha experiences clearly exists in the literature. However, the strength and frequency of aha experiences seem to be variable across individuals and can be manipulated. We provide a brief overview of some literature that challenges the claim that aha experience indicates accurate solutions, particularly, manipulations of aha experiences, metacognitive misattributions and erroneous insights, and dispositions toward insight.

show abstract

The dark side of Eureka: Artificially induced Aha moments make facts feel true

Cited by 61 publications

References 40 publications

Insight and the selection of ideas

Insight and the selection of ideas

Getting a grip on insight: An embodied measure of Aha! and metacognition during problem solving

Commentary: Moment of (Perceived) Truth: Exploring Accuracy of Aha! Experiences

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About