A Wandering Mind Is a Creative Mind

Despite the challenges inherent in conducting creativity research — operationalizing or defining “creativity” can seem like one of those answerless Google job interview questions — some promising findings are turning up that suggest distraction and mind-wandering can have positive effects. A new study attempts to create a more coherent explanation for how these things affect creativity by examining the effects of different kinds of breaks or “incubation” periods.

Researchers first presented participants with a problem, after which participants engaged in either a demanding task, an undemanding task, or a free period of rest. A fourth group was given no break at all. When participants were once again presented with the problem, those who worked on the undemanding task gave more creative responses.

Compared with engaging in a demanding task, rest, or no break, engaging in an undemanding task during an incubation period led to substantial improvements in performance on previously encountered problems. Critically, the context that improved performance after the incubation period was associated with higher levels of mind wandering but not with a greater number of explicitly directed thoughts about the [creativity problem]. These data suggest that engaging in simple external tasks that allow the mind to wander may facilitate creative problem solving.

The neat thing about dull tasks enhancing creativity is that it makes sense from a purely cognitive standpoint. If you were going to design a computer program to come up with “creative” solutions, the first step would be telling it to avoid the 99% of algorithms, permutations, and ideas that are commonly used. People can’t simply turn their brains off and ignore those things, but doing an undemanding task may occupy the parts of consciousness most likely to focus on them. With the “uncreative” part of the mind occupied, the “creative” part can then swoop in and take control of the idea generation and problem solving processes.

The other nice thing about creativity research on mind-wandering is that it’s relatively practical. The idea of “the quantified self” already has people tracking their diets, moods, and work habits, and it seems obvious that this will eventually include figuring out which simple activities maximize mind-wandering. (Many people claim that showering does it for them. For me, it’s driving.) It’s easy to imagine a future where the middle and upper classes do nothing we now consider demanding except for one boring task done to artificially force their mind to wander.
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Baird, B., Smallwood, J., Mrazek, M.D., Kam, J.W.Y., Frankline, M.S., & Schooler, J.W. (2012). Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation Psychological Science DOI: 10.1177/0956797612446024

Not Believing in Stereotypes Can Make You More Creative

If you were a middle-class kid from the suburbs, you’re familiar with the day in elementary school when a community theater group comes in to teach you about the evils of stereotypes (through the magic of the stage!). The lesson was an important one, but a new study suggests that the reason why may be different from what you think. According to two researchers from the University of Kent, when a stereotype is disconfirmed (e.g. female mechanic), it can lead to more flexible thinking and more creativity.

We expected that because exposure to people who disconfirm stereotypes compels students to think “out of the box”, they will subsequently not only rely less on stereotypes, but in more general thinking rely less on easily accessible knowledge structures and be more flexible and creative. As predicted, being encouraged to think counter-stereotypically not only decreased stereotyping, but also, on a divergent creativity task, lead to the generation of more creative ideas – but only for individuals who initially reported a lower Personal Need for Structure.

The finding is fairly intuitive. If you think 30% of old Italian men are mobsters rather than 90%, your brain is going to have to do more creative thinking to create a profile of those 60%.

One another note, one reason I’m optimistic about the future of psychology is that I think we’ll eventually know enough to routinely find these “kill two birds with one stone” situations. Some of them already exist — for example, manipulating lay theories and regulatory orientations can have a variety of positive effects — and as psychologists improve their grasp of the higher-level processes that drive our thoughts and decisions I think we’ll learn about many more. When you figure out how to approach situation with the right outlook, mindset, and thought process, you’ll do better at whatever occurs in that situation.
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Goclowski, M.A., & Crisp, R.J. (2012). On counter-stereotypes and creative cognition: When interventions for reducing prejudice can boost divergent thinking Thinking Skills and Creativity DOI: 10.1016/j.tsc.2012.07.001

Want to Be Creative? Play Dungeons and Dragons

Screenwriter John August (Go, Big Fish) often attributes his success as a storyteller to playing Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. When the game is played at a high (i.e. fun) level, players create detailed histories for their characters and come up with complex explanations for various outcomes. This ultimately builds the creativity, imagination, and storytelling ability that make for a good writer.

There is also some scientific evidence that supports August’s theory. A study forthcoming in Thinking Skills and Creativity found that people who play table-top role playing games (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons) engage in more divergent thinking (a common measure of creativity) than people who play electronic role playing games (e.g. Final Fantasy) or people who don’t play any role playing games.

What makes a game like Dungeons and Dragons so beneficial is that it gets at the cognitive core of what creativity is about — the act of connecting existing knowledge in a novel way in order to generate new knowledge. This new knowledge can be a pleasant way to place paint on a canvass, a plan to stop the leak in your sink, or a way to explain how a Dwarf’s Level 3 Fire spell is repelled by a Dark Ogre.

One of the many things that’s unfortunate about American schools is that students are rarely placed in environments that necessitate this kind of thinking. One reason for this is that art and music (and to a lesser extent, drama) tend to hold a special place in the school day under the guise of teaching creativity. There’s nothing wrong with art and music, but if we think they’re important skills then we should teach them on their own merit. And if we think it’s important to enhance student creativity, then we should allocate instructional time designed to accomplish that goal. Lumping creativity and music into one glob does a diservice to music (by forcing it on kids who aren’t interested) and creativity (by “teaching” it in a half-assed manner.) This shouldn’t be taken as a screed against art and music in schools. It’s a screed against art and music’s monopolization of school time dedicated to creativity.

I think there are two better ways to foster creativity in schools. The first is to present students with specific scenarios in order to generate original thinking. For example, “Your spaceship crash lands on a primitive alien planet. An alien approaches and spots your iPhone. What do you say the iPhone does, and why?” Suddenly you have kids theorizing about the alien, what it thinks, what it wants, what it believes, and what you’re capable of saying.

The second way to teach creativity is to literally do nothing. Strip everything away. Leave students with a box of crayons, or a guitar, or a video camera. Let them explore their own minds by doing whatever they want.

Right now we seem to be getting the worst of both worlds. Because art and music classes are designed to teach art and music, kids don’t have the freedom to truly make connections among whatever chunks of knowledge are floating around in their heads. On the other hand, art and music class also lack the structure to foster the more controlled type of creativity in the alien example. Obviously this isn’t the most pressing issue in our education system, but if we think that creativity is important we should actually try to foster it, not simply assume it’s being taken care of by classes that are designed to teach other things.
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Chung, T.S. (2012). Table-top Role Playing Game and Creativity. Thinking Skills and Creativity DOI: 10.1016/j.tsc.2012.06.002

Pay Attention to Your Clock

My most deeply ingrained memory of high school is staring at that old three-limbed clock on the wall, willing it with all my mental energy to advance deeper into the afternoon. According to a new study, there might have been some benefit to that behavior:

The present experiments show that the rotational direction of meaningless body movements and even passively perceived rotating objects substantially shape novelty orientation, with clockwise compared to counterclockwise rotation increasing preference and openness to novelty as well as exploration behavior.

On one hand, this type of meat-and-potatoes cognition research could never be the basis for actual education policy. On the other hand, is the current effort dedicated to making school aesthetics conducive to thinking greater than zero? Although the utility of presenting students with rotating objects may be debatable, there are some low hanging fruit when it comes to the design of learning environments. Brighter colors. Bigger windows. More student interaction. Is it so farfetched to think that making the aesthetics of school environments more conducive to thinking might help kids learn better? At this point it seems like it’s worth a shot.
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Topolinski, S., & Sparenberg, P. (2011). Turning the Hands of Time: Clockwise Movements Increase Preference for Novelty Social Psychological and Personality Science DOI: 10.1177/1948550611419266