You Cannot Have Your Cake and Eat It, too: How Induced Goal Conflicts Affect Complex Problem Solving

Abstract

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 goal conflict and balanced goal pursuit. Experiment 2 endorses the hypotheses of motivation loss and reduced acquisition of system-related knowledge in an extended problem-solving paradigm of four conflicting goals. Impairing effects of goal interference on motivation and wellbeing were found, although less distinct and robust as in Experiment 1. Participants undertook fewer interventions in case of a goal conflict and acquired less knowledge about the system. Formal complexity due to the interconnectedness among goals is discussed as a limiting influence on inferring the problem structure.

Complex Problem Solving: What It Is and What It Is Not

“…Numerous articles on the subject have been published in recent years, documenting the increasing research activity relating to this field. In the following collection of papers we list only those published in 2010 and later: theoretical papers (Blech and Funke, 2010; Funke, 2010; Knauff and Wolf, 2010; Leutner et al, 2012; Selten et al, 2012; Wüstenberg et al, 2012; Greiff et al, 2013b; Fischer and Neubert, 2015; Schoppek and Fischer, 2015), papers about measurement issues (Danner et al, 2011a; Greiff et al, 2012, 2015a; Alison et al, 2013; Gobert et al, 2015; Greiff and Fischer, 2013; Herde et al, 2016; Stadler et al, 2016), papers about applications (Fischer and Neubert, 2015; Ederer et al, 2016; Tremblay et al, 2017), papers about differential effects (Barth and Funke, 2010; Danner et al, 2011b; Beckmann and Goode, 2014; Greiff and Neubert, 2014; Scherer et al, 2015; Meißner et al, 2016; Wüstenberg et al, 2016), one paper about developmental effects (Frischkorn et al, 2014), one paper with a neuroscience background (Osman, 2012) 1 , papers about cultural differences (Güss and Dörner, 2011; Sonnleitner et al, 2014; Güss et al, 2015), papers about validity issues (Goode and Beckmann, 2010; Greiff et al, 2013c; Schweizer et al, 2013; Mainert et al, 2015; Funke et al, 2017; Greiff et al, 2017, 2015b; Kretzschmar et al, 2016; Kretzschmar, 2017), review papers and meta-analyses (Osman, 2010; Stadler et al, 2015), and finally books (Qudrat-Ullah, 2015; Csapó and Funke, 2017b) and book chapters (Funke, 2012; Hotaling et al, 2015; Funke and Greiff, 2017; Greiff and Funke, 2017; Csapó and Funke, 2017a; Fischer et al, 2017; Molnàr et al, 2017; Tobinski and Fritz, 2017; Viehrig et al, 2017). In addition, a new “Journal of Dynamic Decision Making” (JDDM) has been launched (Fischer et al, 2015, 2016) to give the field an open-access outlet for research and discussion.…”

Exploring Multiple Goals Balancing in Complex Problem Solving Based on Log Data

“…Blech and Funke (2010) verified that the presence of conflicting goals affects the difficulty of a complex system. They found that increasing the number of goals in CPS – especially with respect to conflicting goals – increases the cognitive and emotional challenges faced by solvers (Funke, 1992).…”

Developing a computer-based assessment of complex problem solving in Chemistry

“…Due to the administration of different subtasks, which referred to the problem-solving steps, students had to focus on the main task in the presence of competitive goals. This program feature referred to goal orientation and polytely (Blech and Funke 2010).…”