Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Mental set occurs when people become entrenched in the problem-solving strategies they develop. Different strategieshave different properties, and it is plausible that those properties might modify the probability of mental set. However, forthe water jar task (Luchins, 1942), there is still no clear consensus on which strategies people use, and whether strategyuse influences the likelihood of mental set. We identified several common strategies used on the water jar task, and foundthat mental set was related to strategy specificity. Specific, algorithmic strategies were associated with a higher rate ofmental set, whereas general problem-solving heuristics were associated with a lower rate. This suggests that people are atthe greatest risk for mental set when they create strategies specific to the problem at hand. Specific strategies may be moreaccurate if the problem demands stay the same, but are less flexible for handling a change in the environment.