Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Appearances
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
Creative individuals at times can be extroverted, other times very introverted. They can be playful, but also very serious about their work, can seem naive and see things with fresh eyes, but also be very focused in their work.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
Oftentimes, just the fact that we don't think of ourselves as creative is going to prevent us from ever attempting it.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
Scientists call those people Big C creators. Big C as big, influential, creativity, eminent creators. But they are not the only ones. Creativity exists on a continuum for what we call mini-C, creativity in the process of learning.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
Little c in everyday interactions and activities. Like gifting your friend a unique present. And Pro-C, that is professional creativity in our work contexts.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
I concluded that I was not creative, but I also noticed somebody else, a best friend of mine, who was creative, and I wanted whatever she had. I wanted to understand how is she able to do things that I did not think that I could do at the time. In retrospect, I think I was able to do it, but that I was not willing to make that choice.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
Scientists have lots of different tools to study creativity. So if we think of creativity in its most basic form of coming up with original and appropriate or effective ideas, scientists have developed tests, oftentimes called tests of creative thinking or tests of divergent thinking.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
And an example of this test, probably the most frequently asked question, is how do we use a simple everyday object in new and different ways? So how can you use a brick? The instruction simply asks for as many answers as you can think of. And then we can look at how many different ideas can you come up with. And then we can look at the originality of those ideas.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
When we are first asked the question, our mind goes to the most obvious answer. Well, we could build something with it. But then, as you exhaust those more obvious answers, you get into the area of originality. There you can come up with things that are really interesting. So you can grind a brick and make pigments from it. You can use it for a miniature mural. And you can go on now with...
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
One method we can use is called experience sampling method. And what that means is that we want to see what people's experience is at different times on working on their creative project.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
Technically, how we do it these days, we use our smartphones and their apps that send notifications at random times during the day to complete a series of questions, depending on the research question and what we are interested in studying. And at the end of the process, we have the final product that we can then evaluate for how creative it was.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
And it's a judgment on a scale of, well, this is not creative at all to this is very creative. And there is a continuum there. And when we have a group of people who are experts in some way, so if they are judging pieces of art, they are artists or art critics or art professors, for example, we find that people tend to agree. when we see creativity, we recognize it.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
even independently looking at it. Of course, there are limits to this technique, but it is very, to me, quite surprisingly robust.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
Different emotions have these different connections between thinking and feeling. And if we know the connections about thinking and feeling, we can use it to our advantage.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
So imagine you are happy. Okay. you are happy and you can now be playful, you can be silly. And in these emotional states, you are better able to think in ways that are original, that are going beyond what is obvious, that are unconventional. But if you are in a more subdued or even grumpy mood... Now you're better able at critical thinking.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
The candle test is very, very hard. So when researchers administer a candle test, they bring a person into a room and they see a desk. On the desk are several objects. A candle, there is a book of matches, and a box of thumbtacks. The task that the person has is to affix this candle to the wall so that the wax does not drip on the table.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
But there is a trick, actually a very simple trick, that completely flips the number of people who are successful at solving this problem. Instead of 20% success rate, a simple change in instructions is resulting in 80% success rate in solving the problem.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
The change is not to present these materials as the box of thumbtacks, but saying a box and thumbtacks. If you say box of thumbtacks, people perceive it as a unit. They do not see there is a box and there are thumbtacks. If you say box and thumbtacks, now you have removed that unit. unit and broken it into two separate pieces.
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
Lots of people get stuck at some point during their creative process and And I actually hit the wall when writing a chapter about creative blocks, which is rather funny. I had a creative block about writing about creative block. Fitting. So what I did is I printed out my draft chapter that was not working and cut, physically cut with scissors, units of meaning, right?
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
And then started arranging them. And at one point they fit into place, like a puzzle fitting into place. I think it is important to start with the moment where we give ourselves a break. What happens when we are experiencing a creative block is something very emotional. What would you say in this situation if a friend was experiencing it?
Short Wave
Science Can Make You More Creative!
And another way of broadening our thinking is working on reconstructing the problem. Saying, let me examine the problem in a different way. Maybe there is an aspect of it I haven't looked at yet. And then if we have a mindset of we can do something about it, we can grow in our ability, we can develop it, different kind of decisions happen.