From The Atlantic:

I have spent much of my career focusing on the neuroscience of mental illness, but in recent decades I’ve also focused on what we might call the science of genius, trying to discern what combination of elements tends to produce particularly creative brains. What, in short, is the essence of creativity? Over the course of my life, I’ve kept coming back to two more-specific questions: What differences in nature and nurture can explain why some people suffer from mental illness and some do not? And why are so many of the world’s most creative minds among the most afflicted? My latest study, for which I’ve been scanning the brains of some of today’s most illustrious scientists, mathematicians, artists, and writers, has come closer to answering this second question than any other research to date.

. . . .

Although many people continue to equate intelligence with genius, a crucial conclusion from Terman’s study is that having a high IQ is not equivalent to being highly creative. Subsequent studies by other researchers have reinforced Terman’s conclusions, leading to what’s known as the threshold theory, which holds that above a certain level, intelligence doesn’t have much effect on creativity: most creative people are pretty smart, but they don’t have to be that smart, at least as measured by conventional intelligence tests. An IQ of 120, indicating that someone is very smart but not exceptionally so, is generally considered sufficient for creative genius.

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One approach, which is sometimes referred to as the study of “little c,” is to develop quantitative assessments of creativity—a necessarily controversial task, given that it requires settling on what creativity actually is. The basic concept that has been used in the development of these tests is skill in “divergent thinking,” or the ability to come up with many responses to carefully selected questions or probes, as contrasted with “convergent thinking,” or the ability to come up with the correct answer to problems that have only one answer. For example, subjects might be asked, “How many uses can you think of for a brick?” A person skilled in divergent thinking might come up with many varied responses, such as building a wall; edging a garden; and serving as a bludgeoning weapon, a makeshift shot put, a bookend.

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A second approach to defining creativity is the “duck test”: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. This approach usually involves selecting a group of people—writers, visual artists, musicians, inventors, business innovators, scientists—who have been recognized for some kind of creative achievement, usually through the awarding of major prizes (the Nobel, the Pulitzer, and so forth). Because this approach focuses on people whose widely recognized creativity sets them apart from the general population, it is sometimes referred to as the study of “big C.” The problem with this approach is its inherent subjectivity. What does it mean, for example, to have “created” something? Can creativity in the arts be equated with creativity in the sciences or in business, or should such groups be studied separately? For that matter, should science or business innovation be considered creative at all?

Link to the rest at The Atlantic and thanks to Meryl for the tip.

From Fast Company:

Ted Leonhardt always got the jitters before a big client meeting. It didn’t matter that he ran a design firm with big name clients like Boeing and Charles Schwab, raking in $10 million a year in fee revenue. Closing a deal with a new client always brought up those same feelings of insecurity.

Leonhardt would duck into the men’s room before a meeting, lock himself in a stall, and jot down a list on a scrap of paper–projects he’d done successfully, awards his company won, other accomplishments. “I would make two to three lists a week and they were always the same,” he says. “I never needed to read them, but making the list, and putting it in my coat pocket made me feel okay about whatever it was that was stressful.”

And it gave Leonhard the confidence to tackle what so many creative professionals dread doing: negotiating.

. . . .

“For about 10 years I’ve been consulting with creative firms and over and over I would find people who are sophisticated professionals running firms with 50 to 100 people [who are] terrible negotiators,” he says.

. . . .

A common weakness of creative people is impostor syndrome–that nagging voice telling you that you’re just a big fake, no matter how successful you are.

Creative work requires a healthy measure of sensitivity. You want your work to move people, which means being in-tune with their emotions. But at the negotiating table, this same sensitivity can backfire for creative people. “They are too sensitive. They don’t want to bicker over the price. They just want to get over it and get to the work,” says Leonhardt. “Learning to ask for what you need is really important and it’s hard to do.”

Link to the rest at Fast Company

From the Beautiful Minds blog at Scientific American:

There is little that shapes the human experience as profoundly and pervasively as creativity. Creativity drives progress in every human endeavor, from the arts to the sciences, business, and technology. We celebrate and honor people for their creativity, identifying eminent individuals, as well as entire cultures and societies, in terms of their creative achievements. Creativity is the vehicle of self-expression and part of what makes us who we are. One might therefore expect creativity to be a major topic in philosophy, especially since it raises such a wealth of interesting philosophical questions, as we will soon see. Curiously, it isn’t.

To be sure, some of the greatest philosophers in history have been taken with the wonder of creativity. To name just few examples: Plato has Socrates say, in certain dialogues, that when poets produce truly great poetry, they do it not through knowledge or mastery, but rather by being divinely “inspired”—literally, breathed into— by the Muses, in a state of possession that exhibits a kind of madness.

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Nevertheless, while some of the topics explored by earlier thinkers have come to occupy a central place in philosophy today—such as freedom, justice, consciousness, and knowledge—creativity is not among them. Philosophy has seen some very important work on creativity in the last few decades, but not nearly at the rate that we see for subjects of comparable range and importance. Indeed, “the philosophy of creativity” is still a neologism in most quarters—just as, for example, “the philosophy of action” and “the philosophy of music” were not too long ago.

In contrast, psychology has seen a definite surge of interest in creativity. In 1950, J. P. Guilford gave a presidential address at the American Psychological Association calling for research on the topic. And the field soon took off with waves of research investigating the traits and dispositions of creative personalities; the cognitive and neurological mechanisms at play in creative thought; the motivational determinants of creative achievement; the interplay between individual and collective creativity; the range of institutional, educational, and environmental factors that enhance or inhibit creativity; and more.

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Perhaps the most fundamental question for any study of creativity, philosophical or otherwise, is What is creativity? The term “creative” is used to describe three kinds of things: a person, a process or activity, or a product, whether it is an idea in someone’s mind or an observable performance or artifact. There is an emerging consensus that a product must meet two conditions in order to be creative. It must be new, of course, but since novelty can be worthless (as in a meaningless string of letters), it must also be of value. (Researchers sometimes express this second condition by saying a product must be “useful,” “appropriate,” or “effective.”) This definition is anticipated, in a way, by Immanuel Kant, who viewed artistic genius as an ability to produce works that are not only original—“since there can be original nonsense”— but also “exemplary.”

In chapter 1, Bence Nanay argues that creativity is primarily an attribute not of products, but of mental processes. Some have suggested that what makes a mental process creative is the use of a certain kind of functional or computational mechanism, such as the recombination of old ideas or the transformation of one’s conceptual space. Against this view, Nanay offers what he calls an experiential account of creativity. He contends that what is distinctive about the creative mental process is not any functional/computational mechanism, but the way in which it is experienced. In particular, the process yields an idea that the creator experiences as one she hadn’t taken to be possible before.

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 Art was long thought to have a monopoly on human creativity; it is still the paradigm of a creative domain, as “creative” is sometimes used more or less as a synonym for “artistic” and, at least in modern times, artists are disparaged when seen as derivative and praised for originality.

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 Gregory Currie brings the issue of creativity to the fore in chapter 2, where he examines the popular idea that eminently creative works of literature provide insight into the workings of the human mind. Many advocates of this view write as if its truth were self-evident. Currie suggests that it is not, that indeed there is little evidence in its favor, and he considers how the claim might be tested. Recent experimental studies by Oatley and colleagues look promising in this regard, but Currie suggests that their results so far provide very weak evidence at best. In the absence of better evidence, Currie puts a new spin on the debate by emphasizing the creativity that goes into producing such great works of fiction. Are there aspects of literary creativity that should reliably lead to insights about the mind? He considers two such aspects—the institutions of literary production and the psychology of literary creativity—and suggests that in both cases, there are some grounds for thinking that literary creativity is not reliably connected with the production of insight.

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One thing that makes creativity such a gripping topic is that we cannot fully understand ourselves without taking it into account. Creativity seems to be linked to our very identity; it is part of what makes us who we are both as human beings and individuals. With regard to the latter, each of us can ask, “What makes me who I am (as an individual)?” and we might wonder whether the answer has something to do with creativity.

According to an ancient and still influential view, the self (one’s life) is some kind of dramatic or artistic performance.

Link to the rest at Scientific American

From the American Psychological Association:

When the task at hand requires some imagination, taking a walk may lead to more creative thinking than sitting, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

“Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking,” said Marily Oppezzo, PhD, of Santa Clara University. “With this study, we finally may be taking a step or two toward discovering why.”

While at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, Oppezzo and colleague Daniel L. Schwartz, PhD, conducted studies involving 176 people, mostly college students. They found that those who walked instead of sitting or being pushed in a wheelchair consistently gave more creative responses on tests commonly used to measure creative thinking, such as thinking of alternate uses for common objects and coming up with original analogies to capture complex ideas.

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While previous research has shown that regular aerobic exercise may protect cognitive abilities, these researchers examined whether simply walking could temporarily improve some types of thinking, such as free-flowing thought compared to focused concentration. “Asking someone to take a 30-minute run to improve creativity at work would be an unpopular prescription for many people,” Schwartz said. “We wanted to see if a simple walk might lead to more free-flowing thoughts and more creativity.” 

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To see if walking was the source of creative inspiration rather than being outdoors, another experiment with 40 participants compared responses of students walking outside or inside on a treadmill with the responses of students being pushed in a wheelchair outside and sitting inside. Again, the students who walked, whether indoors or outside, came up with more creative responses than those either sitting inside or being pushed in a wheelchair outdoors. “While being outdoors has many cognitive benefits, walking appears to have a very specific benefit of improving creativity,” said Oppezzo. 

Link to the rest at American Psychological Association

From the BBC:

Artists have structurally different brains compared with non-artists, a study has found.

Participants’ brain scans revealed that artists had increased neural matter in areas relating to fine motor movements and visual imagery.

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Lead author Rebecca Chamberlain from KU Leuven, Belgium, said she was interested in finding out how artists saw the world differently.

“The people who are better at drawing really seem to have more developed structures in regions of the brain that control for fine motor performance and what we call procedural memory,” she explained.

. . . .

These detailed scans revealed that the artist group had significantly more grey matter in an area of the brain called the precuneus in the parietal lobe.

“This region is involved in a range of functions but potentially in things that could be linked to creativity, like visual imagery – being able to manipulate visual images in your brain, combine them and deconstruct them.”

. . . .

“It falls into line with evidence that focus of expertise really does change the brain. The brain is incredibly flexible in response to training and there are huge individual differences that we are only beginning to tap into.”

Link to the rest at the BBC and thanks to Joshua for the tip.

From clarewriteswords:

I don’t sleep very well. I’ve had serious chronic insomnia since I was a child, and have been known to go for several days at a time without sleep. Specifically I have both sleep-onset and sleep-maintaining insomnia. In recent years my sleeping habits have improved, mostly due to complete physical exhaustion. And wine.

Lately though I’ve been experiencing a regression, and am only getting 2-3 hours sleep per night, if I’m lucky. I don’t feel tired, I’m fully functioning. Typically I am up at 6am, having finally gone to bed at about 3am. Insomnia is not like having a restless night. You don’t feel tired and sleepy the next day. Don’t get me wrong, it does have an effect on your body, but not like general lack of sleep will.

. . . .

However, there has been much research done into sleep and creativity, with studies showing that doing creative work while deprived of sleep can actually lead to better outcomes and creativity. It’s all to do with the way out brains are wired – when tired they don’t function as well, and things don’t tend to link up properly, so the analytical part of our brain doesn’t function quite so well. However, this is great news for the creative part, which relishes the leaps in logic and non-linear thinking that lead to ‘thinking outside the box’ – making connections that we normally wouldn’t make when fully refreshed.

. . . .

There must be something in this link if the number of successful and creative people with insomnia is anything to go by. Insomniacs include Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Mark Twain, Alexandre Dumas, Franz Kafka, and many, many others have suffered with insomnia.

Link to the rest at clarewriteswords

From Fast Company:

Most of us have had a professional failure we’ve had to overcome at some point in our careers. But when you were the lead on a Super Bowl ad that bombed so spectacularly it cost your company the $300 million account–and the whole situation is covered in the New York Times, it can be tough to shake off.

But if that which does not kill us makes us stronger, then Tor Myhren is Iron Man. After that dismal 2006 Cadillac Escalade spot which was called the worst Super Bowl ad, Myhren moved from Leo Burnett Detroit to take the chief creative officer post at Grey New York in 2007. It was just in time for him to take the lead on E*Trade’s Super Bowl commercial. He oversaw the development of the iconic E*Trade baby: a fixture in the company’s advertising until this year. He says it changed how he viewed failure.

“[I had] a big public failure and, having gone through that, I really admired the people that supported me and especially admired the people who gave me the chance the next year to try to do it again,” he says.

. . . .

What’s the secret behind transformational success?

Myhren credits it in large part to a culture that places a high value on creativity. Employees are not permitted to schedule meetings on Thursdays before noon, so they have at least one block of time during the week to think and work on creative projects without interruption.

He encourages them to go to the many museums and cultural events in New York City. And he even encourages them to have creative endeavors outside of work. He’s been known to highlight employees’ side businesses at agency-wide meetings.

He also works hard to make employees feel safe in their creative process because he believes fear of failure kills creative thought. Myhren says his employees know that if they come up with a breakthrough idea or creative approach, the agency will support them, even if the idea falls flat.

. . . .

In fact, seven years ago, Grey even instituted its “Heroic Failure Award,” which is given to someone whose approach was an epic fail. It’s a large trophy that remains in the possession of the winner until the next failure.

. . . .

To further take the sting out of failure, every business pitch or meeting, successful or not, goes through a painstakingly candid postmortem, he says. Everyone involved gathers and speaks very honestly about what worked and what didn’t.

Link to the rest at Fast Company

From Scientific American:

The protagonist of the novel Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks is an only child named Cadel Piggott who has an unusual gift for creative thinking and problem solving. Through his creative instincts, he creates a fictional world based on evil, full of embezzlement, fraud, disguises, and computer hacking. The image of the “evil genius” is a pervasive one, found in movies, novels, comic books, and the popular media. In the 1927 movie Metropolis, Fritz Lang brought this archetype to the silver screen in the form of Rotwang, the scientist whose machines gave life to the dystopian city of the title. Another well-known evil genius is “Lex” Luthor of comic-book fame, a power-mad scientist of high intelligence and technological prowess whose goal is to kill Superman and other superheroes, usually as a stepping stone to world domination.

These fictional examples suggest that creativity and dishonesty often go hand-in-hand. Is there an actual link? Is there something about the creative process that triggers unethical behavior? Or does behaving in dishonest ways spur creative thinking? My research suggests that they both exist: Encouraging people to think outside the box can result in greater cheating, and crossing ethical boundaries can make people more creative in subsequent tasks.

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In one study, we presented our participants with a series of number matrices (a set of boxes containing numbers). For each, participants had to find two numbers that added up to 10. If they did, they would receive a financial bonus. We asked participants to self-report the number they got correct, thus giving them the opportunity to inflate their performance. Unbeknown to the participants, we could track their actual performance. Next, we asked participants to complete another supposedly unrelated task. We presented them with sets of three words (e.g., sore, shoulder, sweat) and asked them to come up with a fourth word (e.g., cold) that was related to each word in the set. The task, which taps a person’s ability to identify words that are so-called “remote associates,” is commonly used to measure creativity. Almost 59% of participants cheated by inflating their performance on the matrix task. More interestingly, those who cheated experienced a boost in creativity: they solved more of the remote associates than those who didn’t cheat.

In follow-up experiments we found further evidence of a relationship between dishonesty and creativity. Consistently, across studies, participants showed greater creativity on various measures after they had been induced to cheat on an earlier task. We also found that cheating encouraged greater creativity by making participants feel less constrained by rules.

Link to the rest at Scientific American and thanks to Chuck for the tip.

From The Huffington Post:

Creativity works in mysterious and often paradoxical ways. Creative thinking is a stable, defining characteristic in some personalities, but it may also change based on situation and context. Inspiration and ideas often arise seemingly out of nowhere and then fail to show up when we most need them, and creative thinking requires complex cognition yet is completely distinct from the thinking process.

Neuroscience paints a complicated picture of creativity. As scientists now understand it, creativity is far more complex than the right-left brain distinction would have us think (the theory being that left brain = rational and analytical, right brain = creative and emotional). In fact, creativity is thought to involve a number of cognitive processes, neural pathways and emotions, and we still don’t have the full picture of how the imaginative mind works.

And psychologically speaking, creative personality types are difficult to pin down, largely because they’re complex, paradoxical and tend to avoid habit or routine. And it’s not just a stereotype of the “tortured artist” — artists really may be more complicated people. Research has suggested that creativity involves the coming together of a multitude of traits, behaviors and social influences in a single person.

“It’s actually hard for creative people to know themselves because the creative self is more complex than the non-creative self,” Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at New York University who has spent years researching creativity, told The Huffington Post. “The things that stand out the most are the paradoxes of the creative self … Imaginative people have messier minds.”

. . . .

They observe everything.

The world is a creative person’s oyster — they see possibilities everywhere and are constantly taking in information that becomes fodder for creative expression. As Henry James is widely quoted, a writer is someone on whom “nothing is lost.”

The writer Joan Didion kept a notebook with her at all times, and said that she wrote down observations about people and events as, ultimately, a way to better understand the complexities and contradictions of her own mind:

“However dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable ‘I,’” Didion wrote in her essay On Keeping A Notebook. “We are talking about something private, about bits of the mind’s string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its marker.”

They work the hours that work for them.

Many great artists have said that they do their best work either very early in the morning or late at night. Vladimir Nabokov started writing immediately after he woke up at 6 or 7 a.m., and Frank Lloyd Wright made a practice of waking up at 3 or 4 a.m. and working for several hours before heading back to bed. No matter when it is, individuals with high creative output will often figure out what time it is that their minds start firing up, and structure their days accordingly.

. . . .

They “fail up.”

Resilience is practically a prerequisite for creative success, says Kaufman. Doing creative work is often described as a process of failing repeatedly until you find something that sticks, and creatives — at least the successful ones — learn not to take failure so personally.

“Creatives fail and the really good ones fail often,” Forbes contributor Steven Kotler wrote in a piece on Einstein’s creative genius.

Link to the rest at The Huffington Post and thanks to Tim for the tip.