Humans are the smartest animals on Earth. We have lots of abilities that other animals don't have. But sometimes, our way of thinking can become a problem.
Julia Watzek, a graduate student in psychology_(心理学) at Georgia State University, US, recently did research on the problem-solving abilities of both monkeys and humans. She and her team tested their ability to change their strategies(策略) by having them play a simple game.
In this game, each player was shown four squares on a computer screen: one striped square, one spotted square and two blank squares. While being trained to play the game, they learned that clicking the striped square and then the spotted square would cause a blue triangle to appear suddenly in one of the blank squares. Clicking on the blue triangle would give them a reward - human players would hear a "woop!" sound and monkey players would receive a snack.
But halfway through the game, the researchers introduced ashortcut. Suddenly, the blue triangle started appearing at the start of gameplay, beside the striped and spotted squares. If a player clicked on the blue triangle, they'd receive their reward right away.
To their surprise, about 70 percent of the monkeys found out this way immediately. Humans, however, were much slower. Only I out of 56 human players found out the shortcut right away.
Watzek's conclusion was that humans tend to get "stuck in their ways" when it comes to strategic thinking. Things such as standardized testing and formal schooling might cause humans to use the same strategy over and over, even when it doesn't work very well.
