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."

Comments

The problem:

[Anonymous Coward]

Creative people just can't shut up and do what they're told.

Re:The problem:

[TWiTfan]

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.

Re:The problem:

[blackbeak]

Monotheism arose contemporaneously with modern civilization as a control framework for large societies. Monotheism encourages homogenous culture, thus discouraging creativity. Prior to that, polytheism, which implicitly implies multiplicity and diversity in all things, was the culture's guide. In a polytheistic culture every man can have his own muse without ridicule, fear or ostracism.

Makes Sense

[west]

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.

Conservatives Survive

[pubwvj]

Makes sense that there is some animosity to creativity.

Being conservative, doing the same thing that worked for your ancestors, is generally a good way to survive. Thus evolution would select for people who tend to be conservative and stick with the tried and true.

On the other hand, the guy who makes a pointy stick and sticks said stick in the side of an animal in attempt to kill and eat it providing more food for his family is being creative but if he picks the wrong animal he ends up rather dead. If he wins then he stands a chance of becoming the new tried and true, the new way. But until he proves it the majority of his peers are wise to be a bit hesitant to follow his lead. If he shows a good history of creative successes then adaptable individuals will follow him because that is a good survival strategy.

As a creative thinker...

[Vitriol Angst]

... I can attest to this bias against me, likely the cause of mega jealousy!

Non-Creative; "What do you make of this report?"

Me; "Well I can make a hat, an airplane or a little swan..."

Re:BZZZZT! Article Suspect!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The mention of Steve Jobs as an "innovator" makes the article suspect. E.G. the author does not know what she is talking about.

It's arguably worse than that: Jobs (and Apple generally) don't really do 'innovative', in the sense that nearly everything they produced had some sort of less-well-refined immediate antecedent elsewhere, or was purchased, or or the like. However, Jobs is quite notable indeed for his willingness to take successful products out and shoot them in order to make room for something new(even when the new thing is still not a safe bet in competition with the older; but cheaper, widely adopted, and widely accepted thing), to tell people who demand backwards-compatible whatever where they can file their futile protests, and other behaviors that, while not innovative in themselves, are more or less required to take an innovation from 'tech demo' to 'product' in a reasonable amount of time. On the other hand, of course, his enthusiasm for ruthless focus would likely have been a very poor fit indeed for a 'blue skies' R&D operation(and indeed, stodgy old Microsoft is the company that has one of those, and seems to carefully avoid applying what it comes up with to anything they actually sell...)

If you want to look at 'innovation' in an institutional context, he isn't a good example of it; but characters like him are clearly relevant to how the broader institutional context interacts with 'creative' or 'innovative' people.

Re:Creativity often equates to "Different"

[Walterk]

Replying instead of moderating..

Things like the medieval opinion that the world is flat

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.