Are we biased against creativity?

[pscot]

“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.

Staw says most people are risk-averse. He refers to them as satisfiers. “As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,” he says. Satisfiers avoid stirring things up, even if it means forsaking the truth or rejecting a good idea.

Even people who say they are looking for creativity react negatively to creative ideas, as demonstrated in a 2011 study from the University of Pennsylvania. Uncertainty is an inherent part of new ideas, and it’s also something that most people would do almost anything to avoid. People’s partiality toward certainty biases them against creative ideas and can interfere with their ability to even recognize creative ideas....

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/12/creativity_is_rejected_teachers_and_bosses_don_t_value_out_of_the_box_thinking.html

[ZombieHorde]

1. Kick. nt

[Mnemosyne]

2. K&R for more visibility. nt

[kristopher]

3. Short answer - yes. nt

[chknltl]

4. I believe so, one partial reason:

Manic/Depressive, (aka bi-polar), types often have as a symptom something called "delusions of grandeur" during their manic phase. I suspect more often than not, their notions are dismissed because their friends and relatives think less of them because they see them as quirky or 'nuts'. From what I am reading, a great many of those we see as highly creative are secretly manic/depressives and what we get to see is their manic-phase propelling their creativity.

Using myself as an example, my wealthy brother asked me to bring him any money making notions I may have. I brought him a few over the years. He poo-pooed each of them and I eventually got to watch my ideas become mainstream with someone undoubtedly gaining wealth from the notion.

Being clinically diagnosed as manic depressive, this is a very frustrating to say the least. Right now I am sitting and watching as yet another notion I thought of a few years back is aggressively being researched and will likely see development and market within a few years.

It would not surprise me to learn that most of our creative types, Ben Franklin; Charlie Chaplin; Franklin Roosevelt; Henry Ford and etc. all had a component of manic/depression to their character. I suspect that there are quite a few more manic/depressive people out there than what one might think, all with varying levels of creativity-all with corresponding levels of frustration.

[Awknid]

8. Very very interesting post.

I have had so many great ideas be produced by others I never showed them to 7 to 10 years after I had them. We actually talked about this phenomenon in art/design school. We used to laugh and say the ideas are floating around in the ethers. Depends on who gets to land these ideas if they are ever made manifest or not. It's frustrating to have these ideas and not get them produced, but if you think of them as belonging to everyone and you getting to pull them down now and then, it makes it easier. I hope that made sense.

Good luck with your ideas. Work harder on the presentation of them to your brother. He probably just does not understand them well enough to appreciate them.

[chknltl]

9. I wished I could have been in that class for that discussion.

I would also have had fun with the notion of ideas floating around out there 'bonking random chaps on the noggin in hopes of springing to life'. Had I been in that class I would have added this tangent: Instead of saying "I developed this idea" I should now say "This idea developed me". With that in mind and regarding this latest idea I have: "Attention latest idea, I'm in, take me along for the ride, where to next?"

In a strange way, I like it, it's a mini-paradigm shift and who doesn't like a good mini-paradigm shift?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

10. Chknlitl: Make him sign an enforceable contract to give you part of the proceeds.

You must demand a financial reward as part of giving him the idea.
Talk to an intellectual property lawyer about this.

[Blue_Tires]

5. Who was it who once said: "The creative people are children who survived?"

I always like that quote...

[pscot]

6. It probably works the other way

Conformity improves group survival as long as conditions remain stable.

[Fumesucker]

7. "Nothing endures but change" -Heraclitus of Ephesus

[Uncle Joe]

11. This thread needs a theme song.

Thanks for the thread, pscot.