CONUNDRUM 1 - THE CANDLE PROBLEM

As I have talked about the creativity in the previous blog, we will have a practical experience of it. How creative are you? This question can be answered by taking quick conundrums that psychologists have been using to study ingenious creativity for decades. You don’t need any special lab equipment to take these tests.

The Candle Problem is a classic test of creative problem solving developed by psychologist Karl Duncker in 1945. Subjects are given a candle, a box of thumbtacks, and a book of matches, and asked to affix the lit candle to the wall so that it will not drip wax onto the table below. The test challenges functional fixedness, a cognitive bias that makes it difficult to use familiar objects in abnormal ways.

The candle problem or candle task, also known as Duncker's candle problem, is a cognitive performance test, measuring the influence of functional fixedness on a participant's problem solving capabilities. This test is used in business organisations at various levels. You can now try this and later view the solution given below.

Many of the people who attempted the test explored other creative, but less efficient methods to achieve the goal. For example, some tried to tack the candle to the wall without using the thumbtack box, and others attempted to melt some of the candle’s wax and use it as an adhesive to stick the candle to the wall. Neither method works. However, if the task is presented with the tacks piled next to the box (rather than inside it), virtually all the participants were shown to achieve the optimal solution, which is self-defined.

The solution is to empty the box of thumbtacks, put the candle into the box, use the thumbtacks to nail the box (with the candle in it) to the wall, and light the candle with the match. The concept of functional fixedness predicts that the participant will only see the box as a device to hold the thumbtacks and not immediately perceive it as a separate and functional component available to be used in solving the task.

As long as the task involved only mechanical skills, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. But once the task called for “even rudimentary cognitive skills,” a larger reward led to poor performance. “In eight or nine tasks, which were examined across the three experiments, higher incentives led to worst performance.” We find that the financial incentives can result in a negative impact for overall performance.

Everyone in the life have their own Candle Problem, which do not have a clear set of rules or a single solution. It has a mystifying rule indeed backed up with the surprising and non-obvious solution, if at all it exists. In the Candle problem of any kind and in any field, the ‘if then’ rewards in the business don’t work.  This is not a feeling or a philosophy, but it is a true fact.