Category: Creativity

Creativity is not the exclusive domain of youth.

There are two peaks for creativity across the lifespan, new research finds.

One occurs — as you might imagine — in the mid-20s and a second comes later, in the mid-50s.

At least, these are the ages at which people are most likely to do the work that bags them a Nobel Prize.

Professor Bruce Weinberg, the study’s first author, said:

“Many people believe that creativity is exclusively associated with youth, but it really depends on what kind of creativity you’re talking about.”

The conclusions come from an analysis of Nobel Prize winners in Economics over the years, although Professor Weinberg thinks the results apply to creativity generally.

‘Conceptual’ innovators tended to do their best work in their 20s, the results revealed.

Experimentalists, though, were more likely to get the Nobel Prize for work done in their 50s.

Professor Weinberg said:

“Whether you hit your creative peak early or late in your career depends on whether you have a conceptual or experimental approach.”

The probable reason is that being new to a field helps conceptualists, because they are not yet bogged down with accepted views.

Experimentalists, though, need time to accumulate their findings, digging slowly, layer after layer, until they unearth the mother lode.

The same is likely true for other areas of creativity outside the sciences.

Breakthrough ideas are more likely to come from the young, but older people have more time to perfect their art.

Creative peak

Other studies have compared different disciplines to look for creative peaks.

These have generally found that scientific creativity peaks in people’s mid-30s to early 40s.

Professor Weinberg said:

“These studies attribute differences in creative peaks to the nature of the scientific fields themselves, not to the scientists doing the work.

Our research suggests than when you’re most creative is less a product of the scientific field that you’re in and is more about how you approach the work you do.”

The study was published in the journal De Economist (Weinberg & Galenson, 2019).

It can enhance mental flexibility.

Creativity can be unlocked by ‘microdoses’ of psychedelics, new research suggests.

Taking very small amounts of psychoactive substances, like magic mushrooms or truffles — known as ‘microdosing’ — is thought to avoid the ‘bad trip’, but still provide creative benefits.

Microdosing has become fashionable among Silicon Valley workers and others looking for a creative boost.

Now, the first study of the phenomenon suggests microdosing might be effective.

The study involved giving 36 people a microdose of psychedelic truffles (0.37g).

They were then given tests of creativity and intelligence.

The results showed that people were more creative after consuming the microdose of truffles.

Ms Luisa Prochazkova, the study’s first author, said:

“Taken together, our results suggest that consuming a microdose of truffles allowed participants to create more out-of-the-box alternative solutions for a problem, thus providing preliminary support for the assumption that microdosing improves divergent thinking.

Moreover, we also observed an improvement in convergent thinking, that is, increased performance on a task that requires the convergence on one single correct or best solution.”

However, the microdose did not affect their intelligence or analytical abilities.

Ms Prochazkova said:

“Apart from its benefits as a potential cognitive enhancement technique, microdosing could be further investigated for its therapeutic efficacy to help individuals who suffer from rigid thought patterns or behavior such as individuals with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

However, note that the study had no control group, so the results could be down to expectations: what’s usually called the placebo effect.

In other words, it is possible people believed they were going to be more creative after microdosing, and so they were.

The study was published in the journal Psychopharmacology (Prochazkova et al., 2018).

Being rejected socially, can give you this outsider advantage.

Being rejected socially makes people more creative, research finds.

Feeling outside the group helps people generate more novel ideas.

It may help to explain why so many great artists were outsiders — people who lived separate lives in order to produce works that would surprise and delight the rest of us.

The study’s authors call it the ‘outsider advantage’.

Professor Jack Goncalo, who led the study, said:

“If you have the right way of managing rejection, feeling different can help you reach creative solutions.

Unlike people who have a strong need to belong, some socially rejected people shrug off rejection with an attitude of ‘normal people don’t get me and I am meant for something better.’

Our paper shows how that works.”

For the study, half the participants were told they were not selected for a group and had to do a creativity task on their own.

These people subsequently came up with more novel, unusual solutions to creative problems.

Professor Goncalo said:

“We’re note dismissing the negative consequences rejection has on many individuals, but for some people, the rejection has a golden lining.

For the socially rejected, creativity may be the best revenge.”

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (Kim et al., 2012).

This type of music helps you search longer and harder for a creative solution.

Listening to happy, energetic music increases people’s creativity, a new study finds.

Researchers found that listening to the violin concerto “The Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi helped their divergent creativity.

Divergent creativity refers to creating lots of potential answers to a problem.

For example, try to think of as many uses as you can for a brick.

Building a house is the obvious one, but you might also list sitting on it, using it to smash open a coconut, or painting a face on it and using it as a puppet (admittedly not a very expressive puppet!).

The more you can come up with, the more divergent creativity you display.

Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” was compared with, among other pieces, Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for String”, which is a sad and melancholic piece by comparison.

The study’s authors explain their results:

“The main conclusion of the results we obtained is that listening to ‘happy music’ (i.e., classical music that elicits positive mood and is high on arousal), as compared to a silence control condition, is associated with an increase in divergent thinking, but not convergent creativity.”

Convergent creativity is the type where you are trying to reach one specific solution.

Examples of this might include a math problem, a riddle or a crossword.

Here your brain is trying to ‘converge’ on the solution.

Happy classical music had little effect on this type of creativity.

Why, then, does upbeat music have this effect on divergent creativity?

The study’s authors write:

“…creative ideation is a function of persistence and flexibility, and that situational variables can influence creativity either through their effects on persistence, on flexibility, or on both.”

In other words: happy music encourages you to try harder for longer and to search in more places.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Ritter & Ferguson, 2017).