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Study: People Are Biased Against Creative Thinking
An anonymous reader writes "Despite how much people might say they like creative thinking, they don't, at least according to studies. 'We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,' says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity. 'As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,' he says."
Just like most mutations are unsuccessful, most creative ideas are not "welfare increasing", after all, the status quo came about for a reason and your idea has to be pretty clever to beat it in all, or even most, metrics.
Of course, on the off chance a creative idea *is* successful, we're all for it, but that's pretty hard to determine in advance. And more importantly, after the fact, all the discomfort from change (and one shouldn't underestimate how much change hurts psychologically) has already been paid for, so we can simply enjoy the benefits.
To be fair, he introduced a lot of innovation into the mainstream, even if the ideas already existed beforehand.
The problem is that technically innovative people often aren't talented or even interested when it comes to marketing or interface design. Steve was good at bringing new ideas to market in a way that people found attractive and easy to use, and thus the ideas became mainstream.
As I usually say in reply to comments like this: I don't want an iPhone, but I'm glad they exist.
which is totally what she said
People are frightened by what they can't control, can't predict, and don't understand. That's why people invented gods to help explain unpredictable weather and other disasters. It works that way with people too. People want other people to be predictable, controllable, and understandable.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
An idea can be judged on "creativity" and "practicality". A creative practical idea is a wonderful thing, but its also quite rare. Fairly often people use "creativity" to excuse not considering practical issues. Flying cars, stratospheric power generation kites, vacuum tube trains, etc. are all "creative" but are not currently practical. Some people, including me, get irritated when someone claiming to be creative effectively says: "here is my design for a flying car - just a few engineering details to work out", when in fact it is the engineering "details" that have prevented practical flying cars for the last 50 years.
Granted, but the other problem exists...without creativity, you become a soul-less automaton. Your whole world is a static dying place...dead because no new life is growing in it.
I am John Hurt.
Well, what reasons are there to invent Gods?
The main reason I could come up with is explaining what cannot be explained and thus control what cannot be controlled.
If you don't know how something works, you might try to find out, but if you can't find out, it scares you. Mostly for the reason that you have no way to control it. You can't say "if I do this, $bad_thing will not happen and/or $good_thing will". There is no "if I don't touch the hot stove I won't get burned" with whether lightning hits your hut or whether the weather finally gets better so your crops will grow enough to feed you the next Winter. And of course our fear of dying. Not only do we not want to die, but we want to have that nice, fuzzy feeling that there's something better coming for us afterwards. Or at least that there is something and that we're important enough that we don't simply cease to exist.
But the main thing is trying to control what can't be controlled. Because with a God, you can. You can pray. You pray and then God will make the lightning not hit your hut and your crops will grow well. You will not die in that next war and the plague will not kill your family. There is no "worldly" way to do that. And humans are scared of things that are beyond their control. They need something to comfort them. And even if their loved ones die, at least they need to be comforted that they're in some "better place" now.
That's where gods come in.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Also, the hive mind.
Here is a good philosophical exercise that everyone can do. Think about your values and opinions on various things. Ponder which ones of them are just you repeating what you have been told to think about the particular topic.
That'd be most of them. Most of people's ideas, attitudes and opinions are not their own. They have either been told what to think, or have selected a position from a menu presented to them by some teacher, parent, P.R. firm, news channel, religion, etc. Careful though, most people are likewise unreceptive to that idea. I include myself in this estimation, though I do try to examine my beliefs. It is unavoidable, in a way. It's not easy to transfer knowledge, information or something like values without some form of indoctrination.
But people come to see the established order, or consensus as iron-clad. They are threatened by the idea that the truth can be fluid, and facts they have known their whole lives could turn out to be wrong. It is unsettling, so they avoid such realizations. We see this dynamic in studies that show how people will retain a belief even in the face of contradicting evidence. They will explain away or discount the new evidence so that they may continue with their belief. It is interesting and sometimes maddening to me. But as I said earlier, I know what I think and why I think it. So when most people disagree with me on some subject, I am not bothered as much.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Replying instead of moderating..
They never did think that, it's a modern invention, introduced as late as 1828 after Washington Irving's publication of A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. The ancient Greeks could show that the Earth was round already. In fact, if in the medieval ages they thought that the Earth was flat, why would Columbus (and his contemporaries) even bother sailing west in order to reach India?
You have some points but please do not perpetuate this myth.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
Also...It sometimes help to remember that half of us have below average intelligence.
I'm not sure what this statistical tautology has to do with anything.
It follows then that some of us are incapable of objective reasoning.
Are you claiming that anyone of "below average intelligence" is "incapable of objective reasoning"? That's a pretty strong claim. (And weird -- why exactly would the threshold of "objective reasoning" capability fall along some arbitrary statistical dividing line?) And if you're not claiming that, I don't know how it "follows" from the first statement.
Anyhow... actually, there are a number of studies that have shown that more intelligent people are often the ones with the most rigidity in their beliefs -- particularly when confronted by evidence that conflicts with them. A person of lesser intellect may simply accept new findings from a reputable source or authority, but smart people are significantly better at "explaining away" information that conflicts with their views.
Many of us who are capable of rational thought are just plain intellectually lazy.
Laziness probably has much less to do with it than egotism does. A dumb person who encounters something that conflicts with his/her beliefs may simply ignore it or avoid it, and perhaps you might call that "lazy." Smart people are much more likely to find reasons to be dismissive, particularly if they view themselves as superior to others... e.g., among the chosen few "capable of rational thought."