Title: Cognitive Rigidity: The 8-Ball from Hell | Psychology Today
Headings: Cognitive Rigidity: The 8-Ball from Hell
James Coplan MD
Cognitive Rigidity: The 8-Ball from Hell
Cognitive rigidity is one element in a suite of challenging traits.

Content: With the next set of blocks, I say, “Sort these first by color, then by size,” the opposite of what you’ve been doing up to now. Making that kind of switch requires cognitive flexibility. The first few times, you may catch yourself involuntarily doing it the old way, in spite of yourself. And that's on a simple block-sorting task! Think of how much more powerful cognitive rigidity becomes for more complex, or deeply embedded tasks and behaviors. Figure 2. In this example, the subject is required to shift from one strategy to a another. Making this kind of shift is difficult for people with cognitive rigidity (the opposite of "cognitive flexibility"). Source: James Coplan
Cognitive rigidity is all around us.