How the "Friends" Characters Solve Problems

One important part of our cognitive thinking is how we choose to solve problems. In class we talked about four different types of thinking people use when problem solving.

1. Algorithm- step-by-step procedures that guarantee a solution. It is usually the long way out, there are less errors which means their more likely to succeed, but it takes time. 
2. Heuristic- a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently. Usually speedier, a short way, takes less time, but more error prone. 
3. Insight- a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem, a new way of thinking.
4. Intuition- a person's gut reaction. 

Monica 

• Monica usually uses a algorithm approach to problem solving. She likes to think things through before she commits. Since she is a chef and is usually following a recipe, she follows a list of directions to solve problems as well, so that quality transfers over. Also, I does take her a lot of time to come to a decision. Monica likes to get looks of people's thoughts on ideas before she decides what to do. But in her relationships she tends to throw herself into love, for example when she went back to richard after they broke up, so this would be when she uses intuition and just follows her heart, without analyzing the problem.

Chandler

• Chandler is a algorithm problem solver. His problem sometimes is that he over analyzes issues and doesn't always think rationally. Like Monica his job also influences his cognitive thinking. He works with numbers at his work and is supposed to be able to see the big picture and research effectively to reach the most accurate result.

Ross

• Ross would like Monica use more of a algorithmic approach to problem solving. Which makes sense because they are brother and sister. He doesn't like to be wrong so he really thinks through things. He does have a lot of success because of it. He thinks of effective solutions to problems. He also uses trial and error to find out the best solution to his problem.

Rachel

• Rachel is usually a heuristic problem solver. She likes to spend as little and time and energy on issues as she can. But issues that are really important to her she like to get everyones opinion on what they think she should do first but ultimately she relies on her intuition to make the final call.

Joey

• Joey definitely just goes with his gut reaction on most things in his life, intuition. Most problems he doesn't think through at all, he just does something or he doesn't realize there is a problem is time to fix it. When Joey gets in a big pickle he usually uses heuristic cognitive thinking. He is definitely always looking for the short way that takes less time and effort on his part. 

Phoebe

• Phoebe is very unique in her cognitive thinking and can be difficult to predict. I would say that Phoebe likes to use new insight to solve problems. She has a very open mind and always thinks of new ridiculous ideas. In lecture we learned that this would mean that Phoebe has a right temporal lobe that has frequent in-flex activity. 

*lecture notes and our text book were used to create the four types of problem solving definitions.