Cognitive Fixation Mechanisms and Creativity: An Integrative Review

Cognitive fixation mechanisms, such as functional fixedness, mental set (including Einstellung), and design fixation, have long been studied as mental barriers to individual problem solving and creativity. While the literatures on each of these mechanisms draw from similar theoretical traditions and have a shared language focused on cognitive fixation, each literature developed with its own set of foci, methodological paradigms, and findings, resulting in an empirically rich, but disconnected, broader literature on cognitive fixation and creativity. This narrative review organizes the literatures on these cognitive fixation mechanisms and their relationships with creativity, summarizing their conceptual and methodological underpinnings, key findings, and limitations. More importantly, this review integrates these literatures by mapping common and distinct features across fixation types. The results demonstrate how fixation mechanisms can be viewed as a family of interrelated, yet distinct, cognitive phenomena that influence creativity and the thinking processes underlying creativity. Finally, this review highlights theoretical and practical implications and provides an agenda for future research on cognitive fixation mechanisms and creativity.