Cognitive flexibility and rigidity
The ability to shift perspective, strategy or attention when circumstances change, and to hold more than one interpretation of the same thing. Rigidity is persisting with a frame or approach after it has stopped fitting.
What drives it
Flexibility lets a person update their read of a situation or of someone else; rigidity protects against the anxiety of uncertainty and the effort of change. It drops with stress, fatigue, depression and threat, so the same person can be flexible on a good day and rigid on a bad one.
How it shows
Work
Flexible: changes tack when the data shifts, can argue the other side, adapts management style to different reports. Rigid: 'This is how we've always done it'; repeats the approach that failed, louder; holds one view of each colleague, fixed since year one; treats changed circumstances as others' failure to comply.
Relationships
Rigid: the same argument for years; cannot accept that a partner has changed; holidays, routines and roles must run one way. Flexible: can see a row from the other side and laugh at their own position.
Self
Irritation rather than interest when someone offers a new reading of a person you know, or using the same explanation of someone's behaviour for years. Being unable to imagine that you are wrong about someone is rigidity.
What tells it apart
Obsessive-compulsive personality (OCPD): OCPD rigidity is pervasive, organised around rules, order and moral correctness, and feels right to the person; ordinary rigidity is often situational, rising under stress and easing when the person feels safe.
Autism in adults: Autistic preference for sameness is often about predictability and sensory load and can sit alongside very flexible abstract thinking; general rigidity shows as difficulty switching ideas and interpretations, not only routines.
Need for cognitive closure: Need for closure is a drive to reach any answer quickly; rigidity is difficulty letting go of an answer once held, and can occur in someone who deliberated slowly before settling.
A test
Offer a credible alternative explanation of someone's behaviour and see whether the person can try it on and argue it; if they cannot, even calm and with time, the rigidity is real rather than situational.
Questions to carry
- Offered a credible different explanation, how well can the person try it on and argue it?
- On a bad day, which of my readings of someone hardens, and what does it protect me from?
How strong the research is
moderate. Lab tasks, self-report scales and clinical ratings of flexibility correlate only weakly, so the term covers several related abilities rather than one well-defined trait.
Where it comes from
Milton Rokeach, 1948 (rigidity); Akira Miyake and colleagues, 2000 (shifting as an executive function); Steven Hayes and colleagues, 2000s (psychological flexibility)