Speaker 1: Welcome to the Human Potential Lab. In this special series
Speaker 1: of the Psychology Podcast, I will be doing sole episodes
Speaker 1: answering your burning questions about the mind, brain, human behavior,
Speaker 1: and human potential. Today, I will be talking about creativity
Speaker 1: and how it differs from intelligence. Creativity can come in
Speaker 1: many different forms. It can be expressed through artistic compositions,
Speaker 1: through ingenious solutions to problems, or even through the combination
Speaker 1: of seemingly paradoxical ideas. Over the years, there's been a
Speaker 1: large number of scientific studies which I've sought to measure creativity.
Speaker 1: Not only that, but researchers have been able to identify
Speaker 1: what predicts divergent thinking and its association with certain personality traits.
Speaker 1: Other fascinating areas of investigation include the link between mental
Speaker 1: illness and creativity and the neuroscience behind the creative process. Today,
Speaker 1: we will touch on all these exciting areas. So without
Speaker 1: further ado, I bring you today's episode of the Human
Speaker 1: Potential Lab. What is creativity? Is it shooting rockets into space?
Speaker 1: Is it challenging the teacher in the classroom? Is it
Speaker 1: playing a beautiful cello concerto? Is it this new hairdoo
Speaker 1: that I got is it all of these things or
Speaker 1: none of these things. Today we're going to do a
Speaker 1: deep dive into this question what is creativity and distinguish
Speaker 1: creativity from intelligence, which is a topic I covered last
Speaker 1: time in the Human Potential Lab series. Today, we're going
Speaker 1: to take multiple perspectives on this question. We're going to
Speaker 1: look at it from a long titunal over time perspective,
Speaker 1: We're going to look at it from a behavioral personality perspective.
Speaker 1: And we're also going to end talking about the neuroscience
Speaker 1: of creativity or the latest neuroscience of creativity, which is
Speaker 1: really exciting. Actually it's a whole new burgeoning field. But
Speaker 1: let's start our investigation today into the question of what
Speaker 1: is creativity by looking at one of my favorite studies
Speaker 1: of all time, conducted by the great creativity researcher E.
Speaker 1: Paul Torrance. Believe it or not, Prior to the fifties
Speaker 1: in psychology, there really wasn't much research on creativity. A
Speaker 1: lot of researchers just assumed that a high IQ would
Speaker 1: be equivalent to a creative life. But E. Paul Torrance
Speaker 1: came around, and some other psychologists around that time, such
Speaker 1: as Guildford came around and said, you know what, folks,
Speaker 1: I really think that creativity is a topic worthy of
Speaker 1: scientific investigation in the field of psychology all in its
Speaker 1: own right. It's not the same thing as high IQ,
Speaker 1: or at the very least, let's see if it is
Speaker 1: the same thing as high IQ. So what E. Paul
Speaker 1: Torrens did is he initiated a study in the fifties.
Speaker 1: He looked at a number of different elementary schools and
Speaker 1: he wanted to know how would creativity naturally arise throughout
Speaker 1: the course of the human life span? What are the
Speaker 1: major predictors oftivity across the humans light across the human
Speaker 1: life span? And what he did is he, for this
Speaker 1: purposes of studying and tracking people over time, he created
Speaker 1: a test of creativity which he called the Torreds Test
Speaker 1: of creativity, where he looked at a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways of being imaginative or thinking of or multiple possible
Speaker 1: solutions to a problem. He looked at instances for example,
Speaker 1: examples pertain to a given category like list round things
Speaker 1: as may round things as you can. He looked at
Speaker 1: alternative uses, so possible uses for a familiar obity, So
Speaker 1: how many uses are there for a newspaper. He also
Speaker 1: looked at consequences, so outcomes of hypothetical situations. What would
Speaker 1: happen if people were able to understand the language of animals?
Speaker 1: For instance, one really good divergent thinking item I really
Speaker 1: like is this example, what would happen if people could
Speaker 1: become invisible at will? This is some original responses to
Speaker 1: this question. You could see only beautiful people on the beaches,
Speaker 1: cops would wear infrared goggles, Papa rots, you would be
Speaker 1: more effective, you could escape a bad date, it would
Speaker 1: be harder to play hide and seek. And they also
Speaker 1: Torrents also developed some non verbal tests of divergent thinking,
Speaker 1: so not just verbal tests, but also maybe some people
Speaker 1: are more nonverbally inclined towards creativity or divertent thinking and
Speaker 1: come up with a lot of different geometrical patterns, you know,
Speaker 1: for instance. And the way that these tests are scored
Speaker 1: is that you tend to bring together a bunch of raiders,
Speaker 1: maybe three raiders, people that maybe they're fellow psychologists or
Speaker 1: people in the general public, and you have them rate
Speaker 1: on a scale of it could be one to five
Speaker 1: or one to seven, how creative. The responses are based
Speaker 1: on a number of different categories. So one category is fluency,
Speaker 1: how many just how many responses are there that are
Speaker 1: relevant to the question in hand? Originality, what's the frequency
Speaker 1: of your response compared to the rest of the sample.
Speaker 1: So that's why it's good to get very large sample
Speaker 1: sizes so you can really look to see how original
Speaker 1: a particular participant is relative to the rest of the sample. Flexibility,
Speaker 1: so how many is categories, variety of categories of responses
Speaker 1: are there in the person's response. Are they going down
Speaker 1: the same pathway or are they changing and diversifying their categories?
Speaker 1: And then elaboration, what is the detail of their responses.
Speaker 1: Each of these four aspects of divergent thinking do tend
Speaker 1: to be correlated with each other, and sometimes creativity researchers
Speaker 1: look at a single total divergent thinking score, which is
Speaker 1: the summation of each of these components. But there may
Speaker 1: be other purposes where you want to look at each
Speaker 1: of these aspects separately from each other. So what did
Speaker 1: Epaul Torrance find? Torrents found at the twenty two year
Speaker 1: follow up, so they did it at the first major
Speaker 1: follow twenty two year follow up. They found that these
Speaker 1: divergent thinking questions were a better predictor of a lot
Speaker 1: of important life outcomes above and beyond IQ tests. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, researchers found a correlation of between divergent thinking
Speaker 1: items the number of high school creative achievements. Then they
Speaker 1: found a correlation between these divergent thinking items and the
Speaker 1: number of post high school creative achievements, number of creative
Speaker 1: style living achievements such as hobbies, or even I think
Speaker 1: what items was how many different kinds of socks do
Speaker 1: you have in your in your drawer or do you
Speaker 1: color your hair different colors? Things like that, quality of
Speaker 1: highest creative achievement ratings, and quality of future career images.
Speaker 1: So divergent thinking at the twenty two year fallve was
Speaker 1: correlate a lot of these things, and researchers found that
Speaker 1: it predicted creative achievements three times compared better three times
Speaker 1: better compared to IQ tests. So this was a really
Speaker 1: huge finding showing that IQ cannot be reduced or cannot
Speaker 1: be considered to nononomous with creative potential. It might be
Speaker 1: an important ingredient of creative potential, but it's not all
Speaker 1: there is to creative potential, and it may not even
Speaker 1: be the most important aspect of creative potential, although it
Speaker 1: may depend on the domain in question. Another important finding
Speaker 1: is cultural fairness. So whereas IQ tests tend to show
Speaker 1: on average differences between different racial and ethnic groups, they
Speaker 1: found that these divergent thinking tests showed few differences between
Speaker 1: African Americans and European Americans, and Native Americans, few differences
Speaker 1: between Hispanic Americans and European Americans on nonverbal assessments of
Speaker 1: divergent thinking, and few differences between Asian Americans and non
Speaker 1: Asian Americans on measures of verbal, mathematical, and artistic creativity.
Speaker 1: So there's a good case to be made for using
Speaker 1: divergent thinking tests if you're interested in cultural fairness, which
Speaker 1: I hope you are. But Torrence was not only interested
Speaker 1: in the extent to which his measures of divergent thinking
Speaker 1: correly with lifetime creave achievement. He was also interested in
Speaker 1: personal characteristics, and he came up with the whole list
Speaker 1: of characteristics he called the Beyonder characteristics, and he found
Speaker 1: that some of these beyonder characteristics did an even better
Speaker 1: job of predicting lifelong creativity compared to even his own
Speaker 1: divergent thinking tests. So some of the major factors or
Speaker 1: beyonder characteristics he found were important for lifelong creativity included
Speaker 1: a love of work, persistence, feeling a deep purpose in
Speaker 1: your life, having deep thinking, and really valuing deep thinking
Speaker 1: not the same thing necessarily as fast thinking, which is
Speaker 1: what you tend to find on IQ tests, having a
Speaker 1: great tolerance of mistakes, being openness to change, taking risks.
Speaker 1: And this one's really interesting, feeling comfortable is a minority
Speaker 1: of one. Tarrance talked to a lot of these elementary
Speaker 1: school kids and he asked them, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: the only one in the classroom who believes something, you
Speaker 1: know you're a minority of one, will you stick to
Speaker 1: it or will you change your mind based on whatever
Speaker 1: everyone else is saying? And he found that those who
Speaker 1: felt comfortable being a minority of one showed much higher
Speaker 1: levels of creativity throughout their lives than those who didn't.
Speaker 1: But out of all the beyonder characteristics he looked at,
Speaker 1: there was one that kept that stood out as really
Speaker 1: really important for creativity and creative thinking. And it's not
Speaker 1: on this list because I'm trying to be dramatic, but
Speaker 1: drum roll, please, da da da da da e Paul
Speaker 1: Torrens found that the extent to which kids fell in
Speaker 1: love with a future image of themselves was really one
Speaker 1: of the best predictors of life along creativity, compared to
Speaker 1: even his diversion thinking tests and these other beyonder characteristics.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite quotes from Torrents comes from a
Speaker 1: paper where he's summarizing his life's work and he says
Speaker 1: life's most energizing and exciting moments occur in those split
Speaker 1: seconds when our struggling and searching are suddenly trained, transformed
Speaker 1: into the dazzling aura of the profoundly new an image
Speaker 1: of the future. One of the most powerful well springs
Speaker 1: of creative energy, outstanding accomplishment, and self fulfillment, seems to
Speaker 1: be falling in love with something, your dream, your image
Speaker 1: of the future. Torrance came up with a whole manifesto
Speaker 1: for children later in his life, which I really love.
Speaker 1: Here is the Torrants Manifesto for children. Don't be afraid
Speaker 1: to fall in love with something and pursue it with intensity. Know, understand,
Speaker 1: take pride in practice, develop, exploit and enjoy your greatest strengths.
Speaker 1: Learn to free yourself from the expectations of others and
Speaker 1: walk away from the games they impose on you. Is
Speaker 1: this one was really near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people know my own personal
Speaker 1: story of being in special ed with a learning an
Speaker 1: auditory learning disability when I was a kid and deciding
Speaker 1: in ninth grade I wasn't going to play the game
Speaker 1: of the school anymore. I was going to walk away
Speaker 1: from special ahead and see what I was capable of
Speaker 1: on my own terms. And it turned out to be
Speaker 1: one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.
Speaker 1: Free yourself to play your own game. So that's why
Speaker 1: I did. I freed myself to play your own game.
Speaker 1: And I encourage each of you, as creative beings, to
Speaker 1: free yourself to play your own game and start to
Speaker 1: make your own rules about how you want to live
Speaker 1: your life. Find a teacher or a mentor who will
Speaker 1: help you so. Seek out inspiring examples of people, learn
Speaker 1: the skills of interdependence. Don't waste your time trying to
Speaker 1: be well rounded. Really master something and do what you
Speaker 1: love and can do well. So I really like this
Speaker 1: Foundational Creativity study. I think it highlights a lot of
Speaker 1: aspects of creativity that are really important to highlight. But
Speaker 1: what does modern day science show about the science of creativity?
Speaker 1: How does it confirm or disconfirm Epaul Torrance's seminal study.
Speaker 1: So let's now take a deep dive into understanding the
Speaker 1: creative personality. My own entry way into understanding the creative
Speaker 1: personality was in my cognitive dissertation, where I became really
Speaker 1: interested in the personality trait openness to experience. There are
Speaker 1: many ways that we differ from each other in this
Speaker 1: world in terms of personality. Could be introversion, extraversion, conscientiousness,
Speaker 1: or how disorganized are you, neuroticism, how neurotic are you?
Speaker 1: Or emotionally stable are you? Or how agreeable are you?
Speaker 1: Or how disagreeable are you? But one of the major
Speaker 1: dimensions of personality that seems to be most correlated with
Speaker 1: creativities openness to experience. Openness to experience is curious about
Speaker 1: many different things. Is inventive, finds clever ways to do things,
Speaker 1: Believe in the importance of art, likes philosophical discussions, love
Speaker 1: to reflect on things, often get lost in thought, often
Speaker 1: daydream like poetry, get deeply immersed in music, or need
Speaker 1: a creative outlet. My research has shown that openness to
Speaker 1: experience is correlated with creative achievement across the lifespan. And
Speaker 1: we looked at crave achievement using the CAAQ test that Carson,
Speaker 1: Peterson and Higgins developed in two thousand and five. We
Speaker 1: looked at the visual arts, music, dance, architecture, creative writing, humor, inventions,
Speaker 1: scientific discovery, theater, film, and culinary arts, and we found
Speaker 1: out of all the other dimensions of personality, openness to
Speaker 1: experience was the best predictor of creative achievement in one's life.
Speaker 1: It was even a better predictor than IQ. However, there's
Speaker 1: some nuance here that I like to talk about. I
Speaker 1: always love talking about the nuance. IQ was a better
Speaker 1: predictor of cretive achievement in the sciences compared to crave
Speaker 1: achievement in the arts. So these correlations average over different
Speaker 1: forms of creative achievement. And also you may notice here
Speaker 1: a correlation zero with neuroticism. That's interesting because there's this
Speaker 1: myth of the neurotic genius, and we found that there
Speaker 1: really isn't a correlation. There also agreeableness there, we didn't
Speaker 1: find a correlation. And this is interesting considering we want
Speaker 1: to think that people who are most creative are doing
Speaker 1: it for the good of humanity, but that's clearly not
Speaker 1: the case if you look throughout the course of human history.
Speaker 1: And also we found a basically a zero correlation with conscientiousness,
Speaker 1: which some people may be very confused by because it
Speaker 1: seems like obviously putting in a lot of hard work
Speaker 1: is going to help you with your creativity. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of nuance, a lot of nuance here when
Speaker 1: we really double click on the correlation with conscientious aspect
Speaker 1: of personality, because each of these forms of personality have subcomponents,
Speaker 1: and conscientiousness has multiple subcomponents, or grit has multiple subcomponents,
Speaker 1: such as how much industrious how such as how industrious
Speaker 1: are you? How much can you persevere despite obstacles? And
Speaker 1: we found that that aspect of conscientiousness was correlated positively
Speaker 1: with lifelong creativity. But other aspects of conscientiousness, such as
Speaker 1: orderliness or how much do you are you? How consistent
Speaker 1: are you and your goals, weren't as relevant to lifelong
Speaker 1: creativity as possible. And that's probably because creativity involves jumping
Speaker 1: around and doing a lot of trial and error and
Speaker 1: not necessarily being consistent but being variable. So that's we
Speaker 1: found that we thought that was very interesting. And then lastly,
Speaker 1: if you look here, we found a correlation with extra version,
Speaker 1: a very small positive correlation with extraversion. This research is
Speaker 1: again some summing over various different types of creativity, but
Speaker 1: when you actually double click on this, you find that
Speaker 1: there are some forms of creativity we looked at, such
Speaker 1: as creative writing, that are more correlated with introversion, whereas
Speaker 1: there are some forms of creativity such as such as
Speaker 1: the performing arts, that are that is correlated with extraversion.
Speaker 1: But when you average over all different forms of creativity,
Speaker 1: these are the findings. And most importantly I want to
Speaker 1: highlight here that regardless of the form of creativity, openness
Speaker 1: to experience was positively correlated. But openness to experience as
Speaker 1: a broad domain has different facets as well, such as
Speaker 1: intellectual curiosity and an openness to experience, to actually our
Speaker 1: rich emotional tapestry and to our new experiences. And we
Speaker 1: found that within that openness to experience demean it, intellectual
Speaker 1: curiosity was a stronger predictor of creative achievement in the sciences,
Speaker 1: whereas openness to aesthetics and emotions and to imagination was
Speaker 1: more strongly correlated with creative achievement in the arts, but
Speaker 1: never less, openness to experience was the best predictor across
Speaker 1: creativity across the board. And this research on openness to
Speaker 1: experience is I believe is consistent with some earlier research
Speaker 1: on creativity, such as the Big IPAR Study of Creativity iParty.
Speaker 1: IPAR stands for the Institute for Personality Assessment and Research,
Speaker 1: which was initiated in the fifties where researchers what they
Speaker 1: did is they brought some of the most creative people
Speaker 1: of the time to a renovated fraternity house at Berkeley
Speaker 1: University of Berkeley, and they looked to see, well, what
Speaker 1: are the most creative people like? In a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: this is the exact opposite study of the epul Torn study.
Speaker 1: Whereas the epul Torn study looked at elementary school children
Speaker 1: and try to follow them up to see what are
Speaker 1: the greatest predictors of creativity throughout the lifespan, Frank Barron
Speaker 1: and his colleagues looked at already existing creative adults and
Speaker 1: to see what is it that they have? What are
Speaker 1: successful people like? So what did Frank barn find? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, Frank Barron found that creative people are
Speaker 1: less likely to conform, such as in the Ashes famous
Speaker 1: experimental procedure. In the famous Ash study, you have people
Speaker 1: look in a psychology study at a line, and you
Speaker 1: go around the room. You look at two lines, and
Speaker 1: one line is obviously bigger than the other, and the
Speaker 1: psychologist asks, are these lines the same? Or is one
Speaker 1: line bigger than the other, And they go around the
Speaker 1: room and they ask everyone to give their opinion, and
Speaker 1: they have the participant go last. Unknown to the participant,
Speaker 1: they've paid other people to be actors in the study
Speaker 1: and say that the lines are different even though they
Speaker 1: might be obviously the same, or to say that the
Speaker 1: lines are the same even though the lines are obviously different.
Speaker 1: And the question is how likely are you to conform
Speaker 1: to everyone else's opinion when the reality is as obvious
Speaker 1: as can be? And he Paul Toorns found that creative
Speaker 1: adults were much less likely to conform in this particular
Speaker 1: experimental procedure. So when the lines were obviously different, participants
Speaker 1: the creative people were like, look, folks, they're different. You
Speaker 1: all are crazy over here, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: why you're all saying the same. They're obviously different. Another
Speaker 1: interesting finding is that he found that creative people scored
Speaker 1: very very high in measures of mental sanity or mental health,
Speaker 1: and they also scored higher than average on measures of
Speaker 1: mental insanity than the general population. So he found that
Speaker 1: creative adults would score a little bit elevated on lots
Speaker 1: of measures of mental illness, but they also had what
Speaker 1: he called ego strength, the ability to have that and
Speaker 1: at the same time come up with rational, useful, creative
Speaker 1: products the world. So, summarizing his studies, Frank Barron said, thus,
Speaker 1: the creative genius may be at once naive and knowledgeable,
Speaker 1: being at home equally to primitive symbolism and to rigorous logic.
Speaker 1: He is both more primitive and more cultured, more destructive
Speaker 1: and more constructive, occasionally crazier, and yet adamantly saner than
Speaker 1: the average person. This is very much in line with
Speaker 1: Mihai chickset Mehi's research on creative people, who also found
Speaker 1: there wasn't this rigid structure of personality, as he said,
Speaker 1: what dictates their behavior is not a rigid inner structure,
Speaker 1: but the demands of the interaction between them and the
Speaker 1: domain in which they are working. In my view, all
Speaker 1: of these findings relate to the work we've done on
Speaker 1: openness to experience. And if I had to define the
Speaker 1: creative person in a single word, in a single phrase,
Speaker 1: I would say, creative people have messy minds, and I
Speaker 1: mean this in a positive way. I think we need
Speaker 1: to embrace and appreciate the messy minds in our society
Speaker 1: more because I think these messy minds are going to
Speaker 1: have a higher likelihood of having creative ideas in this world.
Speaker 1: As Mihai Chick sent me, High found, creative people really
Speaker 1: do mix and match seemingly contradictory things in the service
Speaker 1: of their creativity. So, for instance, and I've come up
Speaker 1: with some of these paradoxes, creative people seem to be
Speaker 1: mindful daydreamers. They seem to have a lot of mindfulness
Speaker 1: and the ability to intensely concentrate, but also have the
Speaker 1: capacity to daydream when needed. Creative people are imaginatively gritty,
Speaker 1: So they aren't just gritty and just head down and
Speaker 1: solve and reach their goals. But they're gritty and are
Speaker 1: able to be flexible in imagining new possibilities and new paths.
Speaker 1: They know one to grit and no one to quit.
Speaker 1: Creative people can be passionately introverted. What I mean by
Speaker 1: this is that they may be socially introverted or may
Speaker 1: seem very introverted, but when you get them talking about
Speaker 1: the thing they love, they are so passionate about it,
Speaker 1: so very domain general extraversion, perhaps openly sensitive. So creative
Speaker 1: people can be very sensitive souls, but also can have
Speaker 1: a very deep openness and vulnerability in what they talk about,
Speaker 1: so they're not afraid of being sensitive and putting it
Speaker 1: into their work. Playfully serious, creative people can come across
Speaker 1: as very serious at times but also very playful at times.
Speaker 1: They're able to go back and forth, and even when
Speaker 1: they're being serious, they can still keep a sort of
Speaker 1: absurdity about what they're doing. Creative people are logically intuitive,
Speaker 1: so they can mix and match logic with intuition. They
Speaker 1: can draw on their intuition, but then they can use
Speaker 1: their rational mind to see test whether or not that
Speaker 1: intuition is correct. They can be vulnerably resilient, so they
Speaker 1: can be really resilient and persevering and reaching their goals
Speaker 1: while at the same time being very vulnerable to the
Speaker 1: things that are happening to them. Again, can go along
Speaker 1: with their high sensitivity while still be resilient at the
Speaker 1: same time. And lastly, they can be rebellious experts. What
Speaker 1: I mean by rebellious experts, Well, creative people can be
Speaker 1: very expert at something and really master something, but they
Speaker 1: also can can buck the trend. They can challenge the
Speaker 1: status quo and be rebellious in what they've learned. So
Speaker 1: I think all these things can character can characterize creative people,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of this comes down to
Speaker 1: the personality trait openness to experience, or that ability to
Speaker 1: go back and forth between different modes of thought. I
Speaker 1: think that that's a very common thing among creative people,
Speaker 1: is their ability to have that flexibility and combine seemingly
Speaker 1: incompatible traits or characteristics, but then integrating them and bringing
Speaker 1: them into a greater whole than maybe people were aware of.
Speaker 1: That's what's one of the great functions of creative people
Speaker 1: in our society. They can give us new meanings for
Speaker 1: seemingly contradictory aspects of the human experience. So now I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the neuroscience of creativity or the
Speaker 1: latest neuroscience of creativity, and then link it back to
Speaker 1: what we know about all this other research we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, I want to focus first on a brain
Speaker 1: network that's a rather recent discovery in the neuroscience of creativity,
Speaker 1: and that's what scientists call the default mode brain network. So,
Speaker 1: up until about thirty years ago or so, neuroscientists treated
Speaker 1: everything that the participant did in the fMRI machine that
Speaker 1: wasn't relevant to the task they were asking them to do.
Speaker 1: They treated that as noise. So, for instance, if the
Speaker 1: cognouroscientists was like, we want you to do this task
Speaker 1: where we want you to process this visual spatial stimuli
Speaker 1: and then we'll scan your brain while doing it, all
Speaker 1: the thoughts that were happening that were not related to
Speaker 1: the specific instructions of the participant were considered noise, not relevant,
Speaker 1: and not important to study. Well, a bunch of rogue
Speaker 1: cognitive neuroscientists came around and said, you know what, maybe
Speaker 1: the thing that kind of cognition that happens at rest
Speaker 1: is really important. You know, like maybe our deep daydreams
Speaker 1: and our automatic spontaneous daydreams and visions of the future
Speaker 1: are important. So neuroscientists started studying what happens, started studying
Speaker 1: these cognitions that happen at rest in the fMRI machine,
Speaker 1: and they called the brain network the defaulible network, but
Speaker 1: I like to call the imagination network. There's something beautiful
Speaker 1: about the architecture of the brain. When you look out
Speaker 1: throughout the course of human evolution, it seems like a
Speaker 1: lot of the brain areas in the met surface of
Speaker 1: the brain. So if you were to slice the brain open.
Speaker 1: Don't try this at home, but if you were a
Speaker 1: slice the brain open and look at the inside of
Speaker 1: the brain, particularly the areas of the prefontal cortex in
Speaker 1: the medial surface, you would find that these brain areas
Speaker 1: are most active when we are imagining our future, when
Speaker 1: we're daydreaming. Let's look at all the different cognitive processes
Speaker 1: that have been associated with the imagination network in recent years.
Speaker 1: We find that the imagination network is associated with mind wandering, daydreaming,
Speaker 1: imagining and planning the future, self awareness, reflective compassion, reasoning
Speaker 1: about moral dilemmas, reading fiction, retrieving deeply personal memories, evaluating
Speaker 1: the social and emotional implications of another persons situation. You know,
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, perspective taking is a leap
Speaker 1: of imagination. I assume that you can't literally read the
Speaker 1: minds of others. But in order to read the minds
Speaker 1: of others, you really have to imagine what someone is
Speaker 1: thinking and feeling. And in order to do that, you
Speaker 1: tie it to your own personal memories and link it
Speaker 1: to what you've experienced to be able to make that
Speaker 1: connection to what someone else is experiencing. The imagination network
Speaker 1: has been associated with monitoring one's emotional state. It's been
Speaker 1: associated with reflective consideration of a meaning of experiences. The
Speaker 1: meaning making seems to be this brain network seems to
Speaker 1: be essential for the construction of the meaning of our
Speaker 1: experiences and also mentally stimulating the perspective of another person.
Speaker 1: As I already briefly mentioned. So one essential brain network
Speaker 1: for creativity is the imagination brain network. Another essential network
Speaker 1: for the neuroscience of creativity is the executive control network.
Speaker 1: So the executive control network is more on the lateral
Speaker 1: surface of the brain, whereas the imagination network is more
Speaker 1: on the medial or inside surface of the brain, especially
Speaker 1: the prefontal cortex. So when we look at brain activations
Speaker 1: of the prefontal cortex on the outer surface of the brain,
Speaker 1: and it's it's particularly its relationship and its connections to
Speaker 1: the parietal lobe, certain aspects of the parietal lobe on
Speaker 1: the lateral surface. You tend to find that these activations
Speaker 1: happen when you're trying to integrate lots of other information intentionally,
Speaker 1: You're trying to hold a number of things in your
Speaker 1: working memory at once. You try to inhibit things, you
Speaker 1: try to inhibit ideas, and when you try to be
Speaker 1: flexible in your attention. But a lot of this is
Speaker 1: really related to conscious focusing and top down control of
Speaker 1: your attention. So this is an important aspect of creative thinking.
Speaker 1: And then thirdly, the third major brain network that is
Speaker 1: associated that I want to highlight today that is associated
Speaker 1: that is associated with creativity is the salience network. I
Speaker 1: think the network is the most underrated brain network when
Speaker 1: it comes to creativity and understanding the neuroscience of creativity.
Speaker 1: What is the salient's brain network, Well, this tends to
Speaker 1: include areas of the brain like the dorsal interior singular
Speaker 1: courtesies the dACC for short, and the anterior insula or
Speaker 1: the AI. And what the salience network does for us
Speaker 1: it seems to be one of the functions of it
Speaker 1: is at a subconscious level. It seems to tag information
Speaker 1: as relevant or irrelevant to a higher level goal and
Speaker 1: then pass that information like a baton, you know, in
Speaker 1: a race, pass it on to either our executive attention
Speaker 1: network to get to work on it, or to our
Speaker 1: imagination network to continue daydreaming about it. This is related
Speaker 1: to a concept that I am very that is very
Speaker 1: near and dear to my heart and was a central
Speaker 1: part of my PhD dissertation, which is called latent inhibition.
Speaker 1: So those with a very high latent latent inhibition tend
Speaker 1: to be very good inhibiting things automatically that seem to
Speaker 1: be irrelevant to one's goals. They don't even entertain the
Speaker 1: possibility that things might might be relevant if it's not
Speaker 1: obviously relevant. Those with very low or reduced leadent inhibition
Speaker 1: tend to let everything come into the stream of consciousness
Speaker 1: and if you're in a reduced inhibition has been correlated
Speaker 1: with schizophrenia and psychosis and with some mental disorders, but
Speaker 1: it has also been correlated with increased creativity. So we
Speaker 1: don't want to throw the baby out with the bath
Speaker 1: water here. Creativity, the link between creativity and mental illness
Speaker 1: is a very nuanced and interesting one. It seems like
Speaker 1: those who maybe have a certain elevated traits on certain
Speaker 1: measures of mental illness, in combination with their ability to
Speaker 1: have executive attentional control and reflection and the ability today
Speaker 1: dream to have that flexibility tend to be the most
Speaker 1: creative people of them all. And this leaks to the
Speaker 1: Frank barn study. This links to their work on openness
Speaker 1: to experience, the work of Mihi Chick sent me High,
Speaker 1: and being able to mix and match different seemingly contradictory
Speaker 1: modes of existence for creativity. So all these things we see,
Speaker 1: we start to see at all these different levels of
Speaker 1: analysis that all these things are coming together to paint
Speaker 1: the picture of the creative mind and the creative human.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you some research we've conducted on the
Speaker 1: on these three brain networks and how they interact and
Speaker 1: play a role in creativity. So one paper in the
Speaker 1: journal Nature Scientific Reports, which in this study was led
Speaker 1: by Roger Ebt, So huge shout out to Roger Beatty
Speaker 1: for pioneering these studies and for allowing me to be
Speaker 1: a part of the right along for the ride in
Speaker 1: this research. What we did is we wanted to look
Speaker 1: at how the default or the imagination brain network and
Speaker 1: the executive attention network couple together to support idea production.
Speaker 1: One finding which is really important to illustrate here is
Speaker 1: that creativity is not left brain or right brain, but
Speaker 1: it's whole brain. You know, when you actually zoom out
Speaker 1: and look at the whole creative process or look at
Speaker 1: the creative thinking process, you tend to find it activates
Speaker 1: all these different brain networks. A network analysis is much
Speaker 1: more useful when looking at creative thinking than the old
Speaker 1: school sort of left brain right brain dichotomy. So here
Speaker 1: this is just a Nerdier graph called graph theory analysis.
Speaker 1: And efficiency of how these different brain networks are communicating
Speaker 1: with each other is positively correlated with divergent thinking ability,
Speaker 1: So that's a really important finding as well to illustrate
Speaker 1: divergent thinking involves this flexibility and going back and forth
Speaker 1: between all these different brain networks. But we also found
Speaker 1: that the time course of creativity is really important. So
Speaker 1: in the initial stage of creative thinking, it's important to perhaps,
Speaker 1: as we found, reduce functioning of the executive attention network
Speaker 1: just a little bit so you don't have such you
Speaker 1: don't have too much top down control, and you can
Speaker 1: let the ideas flow. You can let things, the ideas
Speaker 1: move back and forth in your imagination brain network, and
Speaker 1: you can imagine a future image of yourself or future
Speaker 1: or future ideas of future possibilities. But then as the
Speaker 1: time course of the creative thinking process continues, you may
Speaker 1: want to turn up the activation of your executive attention
Speaker 1: network so that you can you can really start to
Speaker 1: make sure that the ideas you've generated are practical and useful.
Speaker 1: So knowing which brain networks to activate at which times
Speaker 1: of the creative process seems to be more important than
Speaker 1: just linking one creative network to the whole creative process.
Speaker 1: So that's an exciting new area of the neuroscience of
Speaker 1: creativity is looking at the time scale of creative thinking
Speaker 1: and looking at the interaction and efficiency of multiple brain networks. However,
Speaker 1: something I want to emphasize here is that importance of
Speaker 1: at certain times deactivating your executive attentional control over the
Speaker 1: creative process. And this finding here is consistent with the
Speaker 1: great research Charles Lim and his colleagues have done on
Speaker 1: creative jazz and improvisation on creative rappers. They've actually put
Speaker 1: rappers and creative jazz improvisers in the fMRI machine and
Speaker 1: have them do their thing when they're improvising versus when
Speaker 1: they're they have they're just doing something that's pre planned,
Speaker 1: and they find that when they're improvising, they tend to
Speaker 1: reduce their cognitive functioning of that executive attention network enough
Speaker 1: that they can get really deeply in touch with their
Speaker 1: imagination network, the rich imagination network, and kind of get
Speaker 1: in that flow state. It seems like that flow state
Speaker 1: is absolutely essential for creativity, especially in the earliest stages
Speaker 1: of the creative process, or the stages in which you
Speaker 1: want to improvise or come up with lots of different
Speaker 1: possible solutions to a problem. And then other researchers have
Speaker 1: carried on that great work by Charles Limm and have
Speaker 1: found very similar findings among poets, among artists. So there
Speaker 1: seems to be a great confluence of research here from
Speaker 1: many different perspectives. It starts to get us closer at
Speaker 1: looking at the science of the creative mind. It seems
Speaker 1: like creativity involves both novelty and usefulness. If all you
Speaker 1: have is novelty, you may get to the point of
Speaker 1: being put in a mental institution. You know, and I
Speaker 1: say that, you know, I say that with all due
Speaker 1: care and concern that we call people crazy too soon
Speaker 1: in our society just because they have a reduced laden
Speaker 1: inhibition and everyone else in society has too high a
Speaker 1: laden inhibition. But we need to respect and acknowledge, especially
Speaker 1: in the school children. Especially among school children. I think
Speaker 1: the kids who challenge us, the kids who say, you
Speaker 1: know what, I think, actually this over here, well it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem relevant. It might actually connect the dots in
Speaker 1: a way that's a lot more creative, and allow them
Speaker 1: to then take that idea without calling them crazy. But
Speaker 1: then allow them and teach them the skills of executive attention,
Speaker 1: to allow them to further apply their attention and their
Speaker 1: rational facilities to decide whether or it's practical. But if
Speaker 1: you have too much practical utility without the originality, I
Speaker 1: also see that as problematic for creativity. I also see
Speaker 1: that as not conducive to creativity. If you have too
Speaker 1: much practicalness, you may miss out on potentially original ideas.
Speaker 1: So as I like to joke around, if you have
Speaker 1: too much originality without the practicalness, you can get something
Speaker 1: looking like this. I actually paid for this picture because
Speaker 1: I thought it was a good illustration of maybe too
Speaker 1: much originality without the practicalness, or if you have too
Speaker 1: much originality without the practicalness, you may get this hairdoo.
Speaker 1: Although if you like this hairdoo, please do leave a
Speaker 1: comment in the comments and let me know. So creativity
Speaker 1: involves both originality and usefulness, or the capacity to come
Speaker 1: up with original ideas and to create new meanings for
Speaker 1: society and to interpret things that may seem irrelevant in
Speaker 1: ways that actually give us new meanings in our society.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great function of artists and scientists
Speaker 1: to discover new truths that none of us ever would
Speaker 1: have discovered before, but also combine that with relevance and
Speaker 1: practicality so that we know what the we can make
Speaker 1: sense of it. You know, you can come up with
Speaker 1: a new meaning all you want in your own head,
Speaker 1: but if no one else understands why that new meaning
Speaker 1: matters at all, you know you are prone to be
Speaker 1: labeled as crazy rather than creative. But I think the
Speaker 1: line between crazy and creative is a very fine line,
Speaker 1: and we need to in our society be much more
Speaker 1: open to new ideas is to move society forward. So
Speaker 1: I hope that this little primer on the latest science
Speaker 1: of creativity as well as the old science of creativity,
Speaker 1: and how all these things all this research, the original
Speaker 1: research on creativity that was conducted in the fifties, sixties,
Speaker 1: and seventies and eighties, and the modern science, how it
Speaker 1: all sort of paints this picture of the creative person.
Speaker 1: And I hope also it helps stimulate us to think
Speaker 1: of new ways of supporting and encouraging creative people in
Speaker 1: our society. So I hope you found this episode of
Speaker 1: the Human Potential Lab helpful, and as always, please leave
Speaker 1: comments in the comments section on the website or on
Speaker 1: the YouTube channel. Thank you, and until next time, peace out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 1: at the psychologypodcast dot com on our YouTube page the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some
Speaker 1: episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want
Speaker 1: to check that out. Thanks for being such a great
Speaker 1: supporter of the show, and tune in next time for
Speaker 1: more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.