The Pervasiveness of Cognitive Impasse Throughout Our Society By Corey F Stedman

Have you ever worked with someone and they are tasked to do something that is relatively simple with a high reward, but there is a minor obstacle that must be overcome and the person just stops. They stall. They may even bail, despite knowing the possibility of reward. They bail or get stuck simply because there is an obstacle, but they are not per se lazy, just that the energy expenditure is too much because there is an energy expenditure that is out of line with the initial path they were taking. This is what I define as a “Cognitive Impasse”, the inability for someone to overcome an obstacle, usually small, only because its an obstacle irrespective of the scale of the reward. “Cognitive Impasse” is when someone encounters a problem and shuts down, sometimes knowing that the barrier for overcoming the obstacle is relatively low, just that there is an obstacle. In other words, that despite the reward being moderate to high, the risk relatively low, and the energy expenditure being low as well, because there is an obstacle, usually a trivial one, the person would rather resort to inaction simply because there is an obstacle, even while understanding the material opportunity loss.