The Science Of Why Scarcity Makes
Us More Creative
Being surrounded with ready-made solutions
to problems can inhibit our creative growth.
The rise of mass
consumption has driven worldwide economic growth for decades. But does it help
our creative growth?
According to a new study,
the answer is no. When we stop buying new things, we look at what we already
have in new ways and come up with new uses for products we own. In other words,
scarcity drives creativity. When we aren't surrounded with ready-made solutions
to problems, we have no trouble coming up with our own.
This finding may surprise
precisely nobody working in any artistic field. This make-do-and-mend mentality
is the way our grandparents—and in some cases parents—approached the world,
ranging from jam-jars used as drinking glasses to cigar-box guitars.
The study, co-authored by
Illinois University professor of business administration Ravi Mehta, set out to
investigate the link between resource availability and consumer creativity.
"While scarcity has been a pervasive aspect of human life," says
Mehta in the paper’s abstract, "people in modern industrialized societies
take resource availability for granted. Consumerism and over-acquisition have
become the order of living and abundance has emerged as the norm, especially in
the first world societies."
Mehta and his co-author
Meng Zhu conducted six experiments to determine how creativity varies under
conditions of scarcity. These ranged from the effect of just writing about
scarcity before building toys from Krinkles building blocks (Stickle
Bricks to older readers), to full-on riddle-style puzzles like this one:
The participants were
shown a picture containing several products on a table: a candle, a pack of matches, and a box of
tacks, all of which were next to a wall. Participants’ task was to figure out
how to attach the candle to the wall by using only the objects on the table, so
that the candle burns properly and does not drip wax on the table or the floor.
For the answer, you can
check the published paper. In all the experiments, the results showed that people are more
creative when they are forced to make the best of a situation, or to come up
with alternative uses for objects with specific uses (this last is
called functional fixedness, and is "defined as a cognitive bias that
limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally
used.")
The results make intuitive
sense. When a creative professional is given a brief with tight constraints,
they will likely thrive, whereas if the brief allows "anything" they
will flounder, now even knowing where to begin. Given a problem with scarce
resources, the human mind will twist and mull until it has a solution. This
creativity is probably our species most important feature.
The study concludes that
the flip side of this is also true, that abundance inhibits creativity, and
cites several published works on the matter. These claim variously that
"the centrality of material possessions hinders intellectual and spiritual
development," that "modern mass production gives rise to the harried
leisure class," and that "overconsumption might lead to the failure
of complex and wealthy societies," and even that "sophisticated
technology can usurp human motivation and skills."
We not only thrive when
resources are scarce, then, but we actually require this kind of challenge. You
could think of it as a mental version of the flabby feelings you get when you
forego your normal, regular exercise routine. It’s certainly a lot more
rewarding and satisfying when you come up with something by yourself, even if
your invention is a bit of a kludge. Now we have one more reason to buy less
and declutter our lives.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3053909/the-science-of-why-scarcity-makes-us-more-creative?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-coexist&position=2&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=12012015
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