Aha experience
Aha-experience is a term from psychology coined by the German psychologist Karl Bühler , which describes the sudden recognition of a searched but previously unknown context. In psychological research on insight it often appears as a characteristic that appears after a supposedly completed cognitive process.
The vernacular also describes the occurrence of an aha moment as "The penny has fallen."
definition
A more recent theoretical approach to the aha experience is based on four defining features:
- The aha moment comes suddenly
- The solution to a problem can be processed smoothly
- The aha experience triggers a positive affect (the emphasis on pleasure mentioned by Bühler)
- A person who experiences a sudden insight is convinced of the correctness of the solution
According to this approach, however, these four characteristics are not detached, but rather connected with one another, because high processing fluency , especially when it occurs unexpectedly and suddenly, leads to a more positive affective evaluation as well as to judgments of higher correctness or truth of statements.
Other countries
Although “aha” experiences occur universally, there are no names for them in many languages. The German term is therefore adopted in other languages, for example by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in his theory of the mirror stage . In the English language the terms “ Eureka effect ” and “aha! effect “ used synonymously .
Web links
- Thorsten Trippel (1997): Differentiation of aha experience, flow experience and aesthetic experience
Footnotes
- ↑ Topolinski, S., & Reber, R. (2010). Gaining insight into the "Aha" experience. Current Directions in Psychological Science , 19, 402-405.
- ^ Wray, H. (2011). Aha! The 23-Across Phenomenon. APS Observer, 24 (1) .
- ↑ Kjell Kühne (2008): The aha experience. University of Heidelberg.