Creativity researchers Paul Silvia, James Kaufman, Roni
Reiter-Palmon, and Benjamin Wigert put together a recent study that indicates a
correlation between creative thinkers and dishonesty. The participants in the
study with reportedly lower levels of honesty and humility were able to boast
more creative accomplishments. Furthermore, a study constructed by Francesca Gino
and Dan Ariely tested whether or not creativity directly causes an
increase in dishonesty, by creating a trial that prompts creative test takers
to lie about their responses in order to make more money. The participants
being evaluated were told that by selecting a certain response, they would make
more money, even though that response was clearly incorrect. As expected, the
test-takers made the less ethical decision, causing Gino and Ariely to attest
that creativity was a better predictor of dishonesty than intelligence.
University of Pennsylvania Assistant Professor Jennifer
Mueller wrote an academic paper entitled “Recognizing creative leadership: Can
creative idea expression negatively relate to perceptions of leadership
potential?” The paper outlines that creative people are viewed by others as
having less leadership potential than their non-creative counterparts, unless
they have the added value of engaging charisma. Mueller explains the findings
by reasoning that, while people see creative types as visionary, they also see
them as wildcards, less likely to adopt conformity. People associate rigid
thinking and conformity with accomplishing goals, which is a necessary strength
of a leader. While the study does not address whether or not creative people
actually lack leadership potential, it makes explicit that their peers may
think of them as weaker candidates for such a position.
In a study published to the academic journal The
Proceedings of the Royal Society, The University of Newcastle upon Tyne and
the Open University in the U.K. indicated a link between creativity and sexual
promiscuity. In the study, 425 creative
types such as working artists and poets reported having twice as
many sexual partners than their unimaginative peers. The participants in the
study were given a questionnaire that not only addressed the participant’s
inclination towards creative activities, but also a section that inquired as to
their sexual history. They were also asked a series of questions helping to
identify a presence of schizophrenia, as mental illness and promiscuity are
also thought to be linked. The study not only reflected that creative types had
more sexual partners in all, but that their sexual activity with multiple
partners was most prominent during times of creative fertility.
St. Lawrence University’s Dr. Alan Searleman presented a study
to the American Psychological Association’s annual conference showing that
left-handed people have a better vocabulary and are more intelligent, leading
them to pursue more creative occupations. The study’s findings only displayed
such results for “true” left-handers, or people who use the left side of their
body for all things, unlike some left-handed people who talk on the phone on
the right side of their ear or cut with their right hand. The study commanded
1,200 people to answer a series of questions concerning activities that they
engaged in with their left hands, followed by a series of problem-solving
questions and vocabulary tests. The true left-handers scored one-third more
highly on vocabulary tests and twice as high on problem-solving tasks than
others involved in the study. Searleman reasons that this may account for the
large amount of the left-handed population that partakes in music, art, and
writing.
In a study published to the Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, researchers showed that creative types are more likely
to possess low levels of latent inhibition, which is a person or animal’s
unconscious ability to filter out stimuli that experience has shown are
irrelevant to its needs. While some scientists have associated this phenomenon
with psychosis, others have argued that low latent inhibition may be good when
combined with high intelligence and the ability to multitask. It has been shown
that latent inhibition is lost entirely in the early stages of schizophrenia,
so some consider creative types to be more disposed to madness. Indeed, more
than 20 studies have
indicated the prominence of depression and other mood disorders in creative
types, according to Johns Hopkins University professor of psychiatry Kay
Redfield Jamison. Ruminating, reflective people may become more creative,
depressed, or both.
A study published in Personality and Individual
Differences attempted to bring light to the fact that some people
recall virtually none of their dreams, while others recall them often and in
vivid detail. When testing 193 college students over both personality traits
and dream recall over the span of 14 weeks, the students with personality
traits more commonly associated with creativity remembered more of their dreams
and in better detail. Some of these traits include daydreaming and imagination.
The researchers reason that these creatives, which define their world by
imaginative means during the day, will be just as imaginative while sleeping.
Such people may have less of a distinction between waking hours and dreaming,
experiencing both realms with an aptitude towards the vivid and unusual.
Interestingly, factors such as sleep quality and length of sleep did not appear
to have much resonance on the ability to recall dreams.
According to the Daily Mail, German researchers
have found in a study that a messy desk increases the propensity toward
creative problem solving. In fact, whether the chaos emerges in the form of a
messy desk or messy storefront, the studies indicated that people were able to
think more clearly amidst disarray. The untidy environment prompted them to
want to simplify the tasks at hand, boosting employees’ ability to solve
problems in a creative, efficient way. The study also showed that conservatives
were most affected by the study, given that they are less comfortable with
disorganization than liberals. As a result of their uneasiness with the chaotic
situation, they will attempt to simplify other aspects of the working
environment in order to maintain a sense of structure.
Educational
psychologist Kyung Hee Kim participated in a question and answer session for Britannicaaddressing
the widespread, creative decline in America. Kim attributes the downfall of
creative whims to the large populous of children in America who have abandoned
creatively engaging activities for sterile technology and hours of mind-numbing
television. She argues that while video games may take place in fantasy
environments, they do not foster actual creativity because there are a set
number of solutions within the game, and children are playing them at a prime
time for creative development. Stern parenting may also contribute to the
problem, by depriving children of the opportunity for self-discovery when
parents overbook their schedules or forbid them to partake in certain
activities. Likewise, by over-diagnosis of ADHD, modern children are being
prescribed drugs like Adderall that hinder creativity and repress daydreaming
in exchange for superior focus
