According to a new paper by researchers from Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina, creative ideas make people uncomfortable. The paper, which is based on two studies from UPenn involving more than 200 people, is set to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science (ungated version here).
From the abstract:
People often reject creative ideas even when espousing creativity as a desired goal. To explain this paradox, we propose that people can hold a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt, and which is activated when people experience a motivation to reduce uncertainty. In two studies, we measure and manipulate uncertainty using different methods including: discrete uncertainty feelings, and an uncertainty reduction prime. The results of both studies demonstrated a negative bias toward creativity (relative to practicality) when participants experienced uncertainty. Furthermore, the bias against creativity interfered with participants’ ability to recognize a creative idea. These results reveal a concealed barrier that creative actors may face as they attempt to gain acceptance for their novel ideas.
The irony is that as a society, we’re constantly talking about how much we value creativity. And yet, the study implies that our minds are biased against it because of the very nature of its novelty. The authors point out that we often view novelty and practicality as inversely related. We generally value practical ideas because they’re familiar and proven, while the more novel an idea, the more uncertainty there exists about whether it’s practical, error-free, or even useful. There is also the social cost that comes with endorsing unproven novel ideas.
Going forward, perhaps it’s not that we need to get better at producing creative ideas, but at learning how to accept them. The authors note:
Revealing the existence and nature of a bias against creativity can help explain why people might reject creative ideas and stifle scientific advancements, even in the face of strong intentions to the contrary. … The field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identify how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity.
[HT: Eric M. Jones]
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I sometimes see young writers discarding the usual structures associated with fiction and going for a more creative, unusual approach. I find this very often tiresome and impossible to read. The familiar old structures of prose let the writing fade into the background, making communication of the story easier. When writers abandon those and try truly original styles the reader has to really labour to get at the story.
Sometimes it can be worth it, like Anthony Burgess’s amazing use of an invented street dialect in A Clockwork Orange, but usually I much prefer conventional writing styles combined with fascinating stories. So I certainly see why extreme creativity can be off-putting. It can take much more work to appreciate, and I often couldn’t be bothered!
Perhaps the same is true for much contemporary art, which I mostly can’t understand and often feel bored by. The old structures of art I’m familiar with don’t apply there and I find it difficult to know what I’m meant to be experiencing.
If the researchers had actually taken ideas that were (somehow) known to be creative and effective (versus not so creative but comparably effective) and shown that people who say they value creativity actually react negatively to the former, then it would be a cool study. (And hard to do.)
But if you look at what they actually did, it all seems to me a lot less compelling than that.
They used the controversial “IAT” measure of implicit attitudes to show that people have less positive associations with the words “creative, inventive, original, and novel” than with the words “practical, functional, constructive, useful”. I think that would be obvious to anyone who is widely read and has encountered the various contexts in which these words are used, and anyway, it is a highly indirect measure of how people react to actual creativity.
The second experiment looks even more indirect and contrived.
Another Psych Science study that sounds more interesting than it really is.
I think the observation you have offered is very interesting! It strikes me that even in this forum, everyone is striving for novelty, creativity, originality, etc; whether it be in the form of an original observation, argument, way of arguing, point–which inversely, shows a striking counterpoint to the study’s claim of the masses’ rejection of creative ideas. This is not at all to say that the study’s claim is altogether wrong as it certainly merits the fact that people do find it easier, depending on what the topic is, to just be sheep,…so to speak. Revisiting your observation though, I think it is a very valid question you have raised as to whether there is truly a direct measure of how people react to actual creativity.
This reminds me of what we’ve seen in the federal grants process. The grant agency declares that it wants “innovative” work. The winning applications often say something like, “This idea is innovative, because it was innovative when Dr Smith at Big Name successfully did it a couple of years ago.”
This is pretty interesting but you have to understand you have just given validation to all the struggling film makers out there that think the reason they can’t make it in hollywood is because “They just don’t get me or my awesome concept” when in reality their ideas/personalities are not that good.
So many fearless leaders come to my mind who at least twice year implore their teams to be creative and innovative, and then leave intact policies, structures and implicit biases against anything that will not lead to short-term revenue and profit with 90% certainty or more. But for good reason, explained well by this research. Tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty are not that widespread in the industrial enterprise (and I mean to include government).
I’m so glad this research was pursued. It validates the intuition behind a design platform my team is building to make the act of design more or less invisible or hidden across routine activities and tasks of an organization. Particularly for organizations that tend to produce massive amounts of antibodies against creative ideas and novel concepts, design is best perhaps by subterfuge. Not subversive. More subliminal.
The idea is to allow creative minds to make “little bets” and seed large programs and initiatives with ideas that can evolve into robust solutions, or die (affordable losses). Ironically, resistance to new and possibly good ideas often comes from those with the capabilities and resources to foster them.
So, what if an organization and its social structure are unaware of an idea until it is strong enough to survive in the open? That idea is distributed across the organization and therefore builds grass-roots as it grows. This what my team is pursuing. Emergent design, that is dynamic, dispersed and asynchronous.
I would have to read the whole paper on the study.
Measuring discomfort with novelty is not equivalent to measuring the tendency to reject creative ideas. Circumstances and what is at stake matter, I’m sure.
I agree with “eric.” It is not always rational to accept creative ideas unless they solve a problem. How was the experiment set up and what were the conditions?
Again, without reading the entire paper, this says nothing that isn’t common sense.
Romer’s Rule The proposal first made by the American palaeontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer (1894–1973), that the effect of many important evolutionary changes is to enable organisms to continue in the same way of life, rather than to adapt to a new one. Similar to the Red Queen Effect – an evolutionary principle, first proposed in 1973 by L. Van Valen, that much of the evolution of a lineage consists simply of keeping up with environmental changes (mainly tracking a deteriorating environment), rather than occupying or adapting to new environments. The name is derived from the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’sThrough the Looking-Glass, who had to run as fast as she could just to stay in the same place.
I remember a study that creativity / new ways are not that helpful for high status members of a group but rather the resource of low status menbers.
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So who wonders about the bias against creativty? It has been reasonalbe for the leaders to refrain from changes as long as not really really nessecary for millions of year. Why should they change? Just because it is reasonable
Let us take your opening sentence. Why would do you think that a study would suggest creativity/new ways are not helpful for high status members? Could it be that it threatens their already tight grip on a CREATIVE order they have either themselves created or, in the case of having inherited, maintained? It has been reasonable for leaders to refrain from whose ideas of changes? Changes that they could have offered, or changes offered from others? I am sure you would perhaps answer both. But if it came down to one of your ancient leaders having to have to choose between the two; had to choose a lesser of the two evils of change, I am sure he/she would opt to go with changes they could offer much sooner than going with change others did, which can argue more for the retaining of power of a leader than anything else. So yes, who really wonders about the THREAT of creativity? The bias against creativity, in your observation that it is not helpful for high status members of a group/leaders, seems to be set forth as an area of concern for those of this group as it more bocomes a question of a threat of their base of power.