What Is Functional Fixedness?

Functional affordability is a new concept in the field of perception. Affordance of psychological significance believes that what people perceive is that the behavior provided by things may not be the nature of things, and the behavior provided by things may be Called availability.

Functional availability

The attributes of things are often very rich, among which there is function availability. For example, keys have two basic types of functional availability: availability in power and availability due to physical attributes. The availability of power means that the key can open and lock our room. This availability comes from the matching of the key and the lock. The availability provided by physical properties refers to the availability provided by physical properties such as the shape and weight of the key. For example, we will use the key as a serrated knife to cut the package. We will weigh the key in advance to determine whether the electronic scale is Short of two shortfalls. And what attributes of things will be perceived as usability is closely related to physical capabilities. This shows that the availability of things has a close relationship with people. William H. Warren of Brown University provided a classic example to explain this in his 1984 study: climbing stairs [1]. Stairs of the same height, for adults, have the functional availability for climbing up; however, for infants who can only climb on the ground, this functional availability does not exist. Similarly, for a baby who cannot insert the key into the keyhole, the key does not have the function of unlocking. And the individual's goals, expectations, plans, values and other psychological attributes will also affect our perception of availability. Only when we need to unwrap the package will we use the key as a serrated knife; similarly, if there are no shortages in the market, no one will realize that the weight of the key can be used to measure the electronic scale. In some more extreme cases, we may only perceive an availability of things. This availability is often the most commonly used and is preset by the designer. At this time our psychology The so-called "functional fixation" [2]. For example, for some people who have no experience in unpacking, it may be difficult for them to think that they can use the key as a knife and can only worry about the parcel.

[1] Warren, WH (1984). Perceiving affordances: Visual guidance of stair climbing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10, 683703.

[2] Ye, L., Cardwell, W., & Mark, LS (2009). Perceiving multiple affordances for objects. Ecological Psychology, 21, 185-217.