Ep.27. Are we really as imaginative as we think?

"The role of graded category structure in imaginative thought" by Thomas B. Ward, Merryl J. Patterson, Cynthia M. Sifonis, Rebecca A. Dodds, and Katherine N. Saunders This article investigates the concept of "structured imagination," which refers to the tendency for novel ideas to be influenced by pre-existing knowledge. The authors conduct multiple experiments across different categories (animals, tools, fruit) to demonstrate that the most easily retrieved exemplars within a category are the ones most likely to be used as starting points for creative generation, even when participants are encouraged to be creative. This effect, they argue, is driven by the cognitive demands of generating novel ideas, suggesting that individuals may not have sufficient cognitive resources to adequately monitor and reject readily available, but potentially inappropriate, information.

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