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Agonizing Creativity

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A study to be published in the journal Psychological Science shows that many people harbor an anti-creativity bias that they are generally not aware of. Despite professing a desire for creative thinking, most people are actually unable to identify a creative idea when they encounter one.

Instead, they associate creativity with words like "agony," "vomit" and "poison". They also rejected novel ideas for products that employed new technologies. 

The study, "The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas," also revealed that novelty in itself made people squirm: test subjects did not like the idea of a nanotechnology-powered running shoe with the ability to adjust fabric thickness and reduce blisters. Even objective evidence was found not to reduce resistance to new ideas. Anti-creativity bias was found to be unconscious, like racism: the bias was also so subtle that they were simply unaware of it, leaving them unable to recognize creativity.

Uncertain about the value of creative ideas, people eschew the novel and experimental in favor of the tried and tested. In light of this strong general bias against novelty, study co-authors Jack Goncalo, Jennifer Mueller and Shimul Melwani advise that creatives spend more time devising ways to help institutions accept innovation and recognize creative thought.

Image by Kelbv on Flickr, courtesy of Creative Commons Licensing.

 

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Comments

Curtailing the redundantcies

Submitted by Vajraju on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 17:40.
Curtailing the redundantcies we call it.

natural human state

Submitted by adamastiamat on Thu, 09/08/2011 - 04:38.
We all forget how the body instinctively tries to avoid change, or moving into some new space as this is generally associated with anxiety as the body sees it as a threat. I think it is this survival instinct which is at the core of it more than anything else, and only when we deliberately overide it can we move forward into the sea of new ideas. www.buddhabrats.com Adamas

natural human state

Submitted by adamastiamat on Thu, 09/08/2011 - 04:38.
We all forget how the body instinctively tries to avoid change, or moving into some new space as this is generally associated with anxiety as the body sees it as a threat. I think it is this survival instinct which is at the core of it more than anything else, and only when we deliberately overide it can we move forward into the sea of new ideas. www.buddhabrats.com Adamas

that makes total sense,

Submitted by JO on Thu, 09/08/2011 - 14:10.
that makes total sense, especially when you think about how resistant we are to change in general. i imagine that those who are most attached to their personal view of reality are likely the most oblivious and obstructive to creativity.

Sounds like a really poorly

Submitted by Stephen Jack on Tue, 09/13/2011 - 12:18.
Sounds like a really poorly done study. First of Novelty by itself has no merit and is, in general, bloody stupid. I can definitely see people disliking novelty for the sake of novelty, it's a waste of time. You need novelty coupled with a reasonable advantage or benefit for it to be worthwhile. I mean, look at the example, "Nano-technology powered running shoe" of course people reacted badly, that's a really, really, REALLY stupid idea. It's PAINFULLY stupid. And if people instinctively hate novelty so much how come things like the iPad take off so quickly and just try to explain how the creation of stories and whole other worlds of the imagination has been universally possible FOR ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. I'm not even going to be polite, these people were plainly incompetent.

That's Nature for ya

Submitted by Michael Garfield on Mon, 09/19/2011 - 13:19.
My first impulse is to say, "Thus the ongoing marginalization of artists, scientific pioneers, and the literate..."
But as Stephen Jack mentions above, there's a natural barrier to the acceptance of new ideas - which, like genes, exist in a complex ecology of cooperation.  Novelty whatever its medium must be not only new but demonstrably improved in order to fix itself in the minds and bodies of a population.
That said, just as Dean Radin mentioned in his RS article on the psychological barriers some scientists have to accepting the evidence for psi, that "hump" a new idea must surmount often has less to do with the efficacy or other merits of the idea and more to do with the energy required to completely reformat one's understanding and paradigm.  There's an intense resistance to the new not because it has yet to prove its worth (necessarily), but because that proof is subconsciously blocked out in order to preserve an "it has worked so far" theory.  Which in many cases a person has spent their entire life struggling to develop.
Furthermore, as Charles Eisenstein discusses at length in The Ascent of Humanity, our school system isn't exactly designed to cultivate curiosity.  Quite the opposite...
This might be even more a cultural phenomenon than a trait of evolutionary systems in general. http://michaelgarfield.blogspot.com 

this is a totally rediculous article

Submitted by annatheother on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 10:26.
there are many many reasons why someone might not like the idea of nano technology in their shoes! how anyone could conclude it is because of their lack of creativity is beyond me!

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