7 Surprising Facts About
Creativity, According To Science
The brain's creative
circuitry holds some unexpected secrets that scientists are only just beginning
to understand.
Daydreaming. Horsing around. Aimless wandering. A sudden, traumatic
loss. So many things that seem to conjure an automatic, negative connotation
can actually have an interesting—indeed, often positive—impact on our
creativity. In fact, the further you dig into the inner workings of the
creative side of our minds, the more surprises you’re likely to uncover.
Paging through Wired to Create:
Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott
Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire, the pattern is hard to miss. While much
about the mechanics of human creativity is obvious—meditation, for instance,
has long been known to boost a number of cognitive functions—much of it is
downright counterintuitive.
The book offers a broad, digestible survey of the latest science
about creative thinking, often tying it to historical examples and famous
names. In the process, it paints a picture that is not just informative, but
useful.
It’s not just a cliche: Standing
naked beneath a stream of hot water and letting your mind wander is good for
your creativity. In a chapter that explores the links between creativity and
various solitary activities (spoiler alert: Both daydreaming and taking a walk
are encouraged), Gregoire and Kaufman confirm a hunch many of us have had.
Something about the absolute isolation of our morning shower makes an excellent
incubator for ideas. Woody Allen is just one famous person who touts the
creative benefits of a long, hot shower, but he’s far from alone. In a 2014 study conducted
by Kaufman, 72% of respondents around the world reported having some kind of
new insight in the shower.
As productive as we can be in groups, there’s nothing quite like
working—and thinking—alone. As it turns out, the more creative, imaginative
networks of the brain simply work better when we’re alone. That's when we are
able to engage in what neuroscientists call "constructive internal
reflection," a mental state crucial to idea generation and creativity.
When the outside world is tuned out, our brains are better at making certain
connections, crystallizing memories, and processing information.
3. TRYING NEW THINGS MAKES YOU MORE CREATIVE
It stands to reason that a willingness to explore and try new
things would be correlated with creativity. The Beatles’ music famously changed
when they started toying with experimental tape loops and new instruments like
the sitar and the Mellotron, for instance. Beat writers like Jack Kerouac
chronicled real world adventures while playing fast and loose with literary
conventions.
As it turns out, there’s a major neuroscientific basis for the
link between openness to new experience and creative thinking. Exploration is
tied to the neurotransmitter dopamine, which also plays a role in motivation
and learning (among other things) and "facilitates psychological
plasticity, a tendency to explore and engage flexibly with new things,"
the authors write. In fact, a pile of scientific research reviewed by Kaufman
and Gregoire suggests that, in their words, "the drive for exploration, in
its many forms, may be the single most important personal factor predicting
creative achievement."
The story of how chemist Albert Hofmann discovered LSD, and then
famously embarked on the world’s first acid trip, is well-known among those
interested in medicine and psychedelic culture. But what’s less widely known is
one detail: Hoffmann had synthesized LSD-25 (one of several chemical
combinations he had created) a full five years before he decided to go back and
synthesize it again and continue to experiment with it. Why? He just had a
hunch.
This type of intuition—the form of
less-than-conscious thinking revered by Steve Jobs (also a fan of LSD,
incidentally) as "more powerful than intellect"—led to the discovery
of a drug that would go on to have an enormous impact on music and popular
culture. It even piqued the interest of the CIA, who conducted massive experiments into its mind-altering
capabilities.
The unconscious mind may be a much
bigger deal than we ever realized. Intuition and the sudden flashes of insight
that sometimes spring from it are of great—and still little understood—interest
to neuroscientists and psychologists. According to the authors, 1992 research
published in American Psychology suggests that
"nonconscious processes may indeed be faster and structurally more
sophisticated than our conscious thinking systems."
5. TRAUMA HAS HIDDEN CREATIVE PROPERTIES
Frida Kahlo. John Lennon. Paul
McCartney. Truman Capote. Robin Williams. Jerry Garcia. Some of the most
revered creative minds in modern history have one thing in common: They
experienced some kind of major loss or trauma (quite often, the death of a
parent or another loved one) that had an impact on their artistic endeavors.
It’s no coincidence, either. Psychologists call this phenomenon
"post-traumatic growth." In the face of a major loss, our brains
often explore new creative outlets as part of the "rebuilding"
process of our lives, especially as our perspectives, priorities, and ways of
thinking about things shift around. Post-traumatic growth has been explored in
hundreds of scientific studies, including a 2004 study in the Journal of Traumatic
Stressshowing that 70% of survivors experienced some kind of positive
psychological change after a traumatic experience.
You wouldn’t want to drift too far into your mental happy place
during an important budget meeting, but the act of daydreaming can have
unexpectedly positive benefits for your creativity. While fantasizing about a
bouncy castle filled with corgi puppies or mentally reliving your summer
vacation at your desk might not feel very productive, there’s actually more
going on inside that skull of yours when your thoughts wander toward the
seemingly mindless.
According to the science on daydreaming, these moments
provide a sort of mental incubation period that can enhance creative thinking,
long-term planning, and self awareness. Psychologists have been studying the
concept of "positive-constructive daydreaming" for decades and
uncovering the various ways in which, as the authors put it, "the mind’s
wandering is vital to imagination and creative thought."
7. SOME OF THE BEST IDEAS ARE WIDELY RIDICULED BEFORE THEY’RE
REVERED
History is filled with examples of discoveries and ideas that were
initially rejected before being accepted as the norm. For example, Galileo was
famously condemned for sharing astronomical discoveries that conflicted with
Catholic theology at the time. Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis was
committed to an insane asylum after losing his job for suggesting, in the 19th
century, the radical notion that infections could be spread by germs on
doctors’ hands in hospitals. In 1600, philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at
the stake for the heresy of proposing that the universe might be infinite.
As it turns out, this resistance to
new, unconventional ideas has psychological underpinnings, and indeed,
continues well into modern times. In 2009, one paper published in Scientometrics examined
examples of Nobel Prize-winning ideas and discoveries that were initially
resisted by the scientific community, demonstrating a systemic pattern of
skepticism directed at paradigm-challenging theories.
This trend is no coincidence. Psychologists at Cornell University
conducted a study that showed that we have an implicit bias against less
conventional, practical-seeming ideas. This tendency apparently runs deep as
studies going back to the 1950s have shown people to be prone to conforming to
popular opinions and perspectives. Research suggests that whatever
nonconformist tendencies we may have as children are often driven out of us by
the rote learning and direct instruction utilized in schools, which may
counteract our more exploratory and creative modes of thinking and learning.
"In fact," Kaufman and Gregoire write, "teachers have been found
to display a clear preference for students who show less creativity."
JOHN PAUL TITLOW
https://www.fastcompany.com/3063626/work-smart/7-surprising-facts-about-creativity-according-to-science
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