Functional Fixedness

Functional Fixedness

If someone is functionally fixed they can only see one use for the object.

Functional fixedness is the way in which a person thinks about the use of objects.
For most people objects have limited uses, for example a saucepan for cooking. But for children the saucepan's use has not become fixed. For the child the saucepan can be a drum as it makes noise when it is banged on, it can be seat or a hat.
The concept of functional fixedness originated in Gestalt Psychology. Karl Duncker defined functional fixedness as being a "mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem." (Duncker, 1945)

Children's play is a natural way for them to engage in the process of meaning making. This meaning making allows the child to explore, discover and learn about their world. As the child grows the process of meaning making in relation to objects becomes fixed. As the child grows the occupation of active learning becomes less focused on the actual world and more abstract. The exploration of the function of objects becomes less playful and less fluid. Play for children facilitates the imaginative engagement with everyday object so they can come to understand them in terms of materials, function and relationship to the world.

For the adult the rediscovery of materials, function and meaning of objects could be helpful in allowing the rediscovery of a playful exploratory approach that would open up possibilities and opportunities, perhaps closed down earlier in childhood. Finding solutions to a range of problems can be facilitated more easily if the mind is open and not fixed.

 Creative engagement with materials and to some extent ideas can help to open up or break the functional fixedness an adult may have. However, the child with the Cardboard box is a classic example of the child seeing the box as an object to be played with in terms of function; a container. It can become a train, a plane, a car, and a rocket. there is no limit to what it can become and there is no right or wrong. The cardboard box is a 'free' object as it no longer has a defined external function after it has competed its original function; the contents have be delivered and the box is vacant. In this sense the cardboard box becomes open to meaning making. The child can play and imagine without restriction or reference to the boxes original function. The freedom of this 'free' object is ever engaging as that what is discovered is always new for the child.  The cardboard box is an object onto which meaning can be applied from the unique viewpoint of the child. The meaning making process does however find its origins in the child's experience and established knowledge, and then finds expression through their play.






Duncker, K. (1945). On problem solving. Psychological Monographs, 58:5 (Whole No. 270)


Further information: 

Functional Fixedness in aTechnologically Sparse Culture