Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: we find ourselves in January, so they the Christmas has
Speaker 1: once again died down. We don't have to worry with
Speaker 1: that for another year. And we also don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about the War on Christmas for another year. Right,
Speaker 1: that's right? And what do you do in the absence
Speaker 1: of the War on Christmas in these January duel drums? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: this is actually the perfect time to concentrate on another
Speaker 1: ongoing war, and that's the war on creativity. And it's
Speaker 1: really it's a good time to talk about it because
Speaker 1: January is always it's a time of new beginnings. It's
Speaker 1: a time of you know, of new corporate goals and
Speaker 1: new personal goals, and a lot of times that incorporates
Speaker 1: a certain amount of creative thinking. I want to think
Speaker 1: more creatively, I want to be more creatively. I want
Speaker 1: my company to figure out new and inventive ways to
Speaker 1: go about our process. That's right. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the things we can pick from in our development goals
Speaker 1: will fall under a theme of I think it was
Speaker 1: like customer service innovation. All sorts of different categories, but
Speaker 1: innovation that's one of them. Creativity essentially, And this is
Speaker 1: a huge cottage industry in the marketplace, right, incorporations. Everybody
Speaker 1: wants and out of the box thinker, someone who can
Speaker 1: really come up with juicy new novel ideas. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: one year we even had like the whole company was
Speaker 1: like Creative Innovation Year, and we had like a fun
Speaker 1: room in the in the office with like being back
Speaker 1: chairs and all that stuff that nobody used. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: because badly we're busy being creative at our desk. Um.
Speaker 1: But it is one of those things that everyone thinks
Speaker 1: they want anyway. I mean, everybody likes the idea of
Speaker 1: being more creative, and everyone sees the fruits of it
Speaker 1: with if you really cherry pick your examples, well that's
Speaker 1: the problem. Everybody loves the after effects of creativity versus
Speaker 1: the oddball ideas, the things that people put out there,
Speaker 1: or even the sort of projects that people are working
Speaker 1: on that seem you know, too strange or uncomfortable in
Speaker 1: order to be accepted. Yeah, now we can. We can
Speaker 1: name numerous individuals who are great examples of Oh they were.
Speaker 1: They were ahead of their time. They were free thinkers,
Speaker 1: and look how it paid off. The two that you
Speaker 1: were mentioning were who Van Go and Jobs. You know,
Speaker 1: at the time maybe a little too obsessive. Some people
Speaker 1: might have thought, oh this is crazy, these ideas are
Speaker 1: coming out of left field. Um. You know, these are
Speaker 1: larger than life characters and they don't really drive with
Speaker 1: everything else that's going on. But but of course now
Speaker 1: and certainly after both their their deaths, they are held
Speaker 1: up as as figures. I mean, Van Go is a is,
Speaker 1: a is a legend of of the art world. Uh,
Speaker 1: Steve jobs is is just cemented as an icon of
Speaker 1: technological innovation. He is. But then you have some people who,
Speaker 1: again they might be the oddball out. Um, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about Troy Hart to Bias. He is a Canadian scrap
Speaker 1: metal dealer in nature enthusiasts who, after being attacked by
Speaker 1: a bear, became obsessed with constructing a series of increasingly
Speaker 1: elaborate bear proof suits designed to withstand any onslaught essentially
Speaker 1: power armor like this crazy sci fi power armor, in
Speaker 1: order for him to do battle with bears or hold
Speaker 1: his own in the Company of Bears, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, he thinks that there are applications beyond just
Speaker 1: trying to avoid being mauled by a grizzly. That he
Speaker 1: thinks that government agencies could actually use this in war
Speaker 1: warfare and whatnot. And he's been turned down again and again.
Speaker 1: One there's the idea, because he just doesn't have the credentials.
Speaker 1: And too it's because it's like this one guy who
Speaker 1: became obsessed with a bear suit, right right, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a documentary about him, Project Grizzly Who film produced by
Speaker 1: the National Film Board of Canada. I have not actually
Speaker 1: seen it. I really want to. I've seen the trailers
Speaker 1: for it, and it looks like an amazing journey into
Speaker 1: this individual's mind. If you want to check out the
Speaker 1: stuff he's into now, you can go to his website.
Speaker 1: That's www dot Inventor Troy, that's I n V E
Speaker 1: N T O R t r o y dot com
Speaker 1: and you can see that he is still really into
Speaker 1: crazy sci fi looking combat armor. Yeah, and what does
Speaker 1: this take. It takes innovation, it takes takes risks financially
Speaker 1: his own really um, but we end up laughing at
Speaker 1: it in the case of Troy, we end up saying
Speaker 1: that guy's a goofball, he's out of touch. He has
Speaker 1: these crazy inventive ideas, but none of them are landing anywhere.
Speaker 1: This is not the kind of person where most big
Speaker 1: corporations would say that's the brain we want setting in
Speaker 1: on our brain storming meetings. That's right, because you know,
Speaker 1: fifty years from now he might be celebrated. They might
Speaker 1: say he really like he had some very crazy ideas.
Speaker 1: And if you look back at Da Vinci and the
Speaker 1: fact that he made this, what was a wooden automaton
Speaker 1: that sat at his dining table, it's just one of
Speaker 1: his many thought experiments. You know that people sat at
Speaker 1: that dining table with him were like a little office rocker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is necessary. This, this kind of creativity, in
Speaker 1: this idea that you can throw yourself into the void
Speaker 1: and be comfortable with that. Just give this a little
Speaker 1: more background. Here's here just a few noted individuals celebrated
Speaker 1: geniuses who died penniless, who only after their death that
Speaker 1: really people come back and say that person was a genius.
Speaker 1: We should worship their example. We're talking about Nicola Tesla,
Speaker 1: Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Allan, Poe, Socrates, Oscar Wilde, Herman Melville,
Speaker 1: Stephen Foster, Johannes Guttenberg, and those are some pretty big
Speaker 1: names and the sciences and the arts and in philosophy,
Speaker 1: but world changers, world changers. But it was it was
Speaker 1: only an after effect. And certainly, I'm sure they know
Speaker 1: any number of these individuals had numerous contemporaries who did
Speaker 1: not have that kind of impact, and it certainly would
Speaker 1: be given more of the Project Grizzly view by corporations
Speaker 1: or or or even people within their own field. The
Speaker 1: reason for this is that we tend to as humans,
Speaker 1: gravitate towards the middle terrain. And we'll talk more about that.
Speaker 1: But creativity is big problem and why there's a war
Speaker 1: on it is that it contains a risk factor. This
Speaker 1: is really underlying the problem of why a lot of
Speaker 1: people can't get behind it or commit to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: creative types are risk takers. They tend to buck accepted
Speaker 1: and proven trends. They try new things, and they often
Speaker 1: ignore warnings uh from the more cautious among us, even
Speaker 1: after repeated failures. Uh. So you know, it's like the
Speaker 1: grizzly Man. People have been telling him for ages, Hey,
Speaker 1: let's stop making Maybe you should stop making arm and
Speaker 1: maybe this isn't working out, maybe you should try something
Speaker 1: a little more proven. He's not gonna do it. This
Speaker 1: is his thing, this is his dream, and he's following that,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna follow that into the grave, be it
Speaker 1: at the hands of a grizzly bear or a grizzly
Speaker 1: bear in armor. So so there's a there's a riskiness
Speaker 1: in in hitching a ride on these particular stars, right,
Speaker 1: because if you give someone a choice between a large,
Speaker 1: uncertain reward and a certain smaller award, they're always gonna
Speaker 1: go with something that's more of a sure thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: unless unless the situation is dire, then they're going to
Speaker 1: roll the dice. But Barry M. Star he actually wrote
Speaker 1: in uh. He wrote a great essay in the book
Speaker 1: called Creative Action and Organizations Ire Tower Visions in Real
Speaker 1: World Voices. He wrote that no one really wants creativity,
Speaker 1: especially corporations, because just what you describe, we're talking about
Speaker 1: someone who is deviating from the norm. They're vulnerable, they're obsessive,
Speaker 1: they're sharing information, they're bucking the system. And he says
Speaker 1: the average person may become intrigued when the glorious of
Speaker 1: successful creativity are hailed by the media, but when presented
Speaker 1: with the bald truth that most scientists never come up
Speaker 1: with any earth shaking findings, most new businesses and in failure,
Speaker 1: and most whistleblowers get demoted or fired. It's not surprising
Speaker 1: that most people usually up for a safer, more normal
Speaker 1: life than that followed by the creative. And if you
Speaker 1: think about it, you know, you hear the corporations say
Speaker 1: we want creativity, we want innovation. Well, that doesn't really
Speaker 1: fit in the model of a lot of corporations because
Speaker 1: uncertainty is that the basis here of creativity. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of a dirty word, you know, incorporations. You wanna
Speaker 1: you wanna have every nook and cranny of a corporation
Speaker 1: sanitized of uncertainty, because that is when the presence of
Speaker 1: it could usher in unforeseen costs and turn up revelations
Speaker 1: that might not square with that corporation's culture. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: we've talked before about about movies and about trying new
Speaker 1: things in Hollywood, and then's you know, the old adds
Speaker 1: that Hollywood rather roll out the same thing every year
Speaker 1: than try something new and but but then you have
Speaker 1: to remind yourself that the production of any big budget film,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's a that's a corporation, that's a
Speaker 1: that's an event that involved lots of money, lots of
Speaker 1: people's jobs. Uh some dudes. Yacht may even be on
Speaker 1: the on the line, and all companies of that size.
Speaker 1: It's essentially the same with an oil company. Whereas an
Speaker 1: oil company gonna drill, are they gonna drill where they
Speaker 1: know the oil is? Are they gonna drill where there
Speaker 1: might be oil? And again, we it's just like with
Speaker 1: the noted individuals, the creative outliers that we we look
Speaker 1: back to him, they go, oh, that person was a genius.
Speaker 1: That was a genius. That guy was ahead of his time,
Speaker 1: that woman was ahead of her time. It's it's similar
Speaker 1: with movies. You look at some of the films that
Speaker 1: went on to be cult classics who went on to
Speaker 1: be highly influential on other um filmmakers, and they were
Speaker 1: flops at the time. Big Lebowski, Big Trouble, A Little China,
Speaker 1: Two of my favorite films Clue, Office Space, Fight Club,
Speaker 1: Citizen Kane. Those are all films that when they came out.
Speaker 1: People really didn't know what to make of and they
Speaker 1: didn't make that big of an effect, and they certainly
Speaker 1: didn't make enough money to justify their their existence. It's
Speaker 1: only afterwards that people gravitated towards them and they made
Speaker 1: money and they made a name for themselves. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: because they were outside of the realm of what you know,
Speaker 1: the usual sort of Hollywood products. Stamp out, uh was
Speaker 1: a part of right, it was outside of that structure.
Speaker 1: And so where that structure is certainty. Right, and again
Speaker 1: talking about uncertainty and risk as being the enemy of creativity,
Speaker 1: now that's not necessarily a bad thing because you think
Speaker 1: about it this way. Are are Magdala's the part of
Speaker 1: the brain that processes fear. They are ramped up in
Speaker 1: situations of uncertainty. All right, this is sort of hardwired
Speaker 1: inness to say, oh, we're not really sure, we're risk adverse.
Speaker 1: We all want to survive. Now, this seems a little
Speaker 1: silly on a Hollywood platform where they're just producing movies,
Speaker 1: but still those people are tied to money, and money
Speaker 1: is seen as survival in our society. Right. So Jack Nitchi,
Speaker 1: a u W. Madison Professor of psychiatry found the uncertainty
Speaker 1: intensifies a person's perception of a bad experience, at least
Speaker 1: in the case of disturbing photos. Um Nitchi showed participants
Speaker 1: and found that the emotional centers and the brain responded
Speaker 1: much more strongly to the material if the person didn't
Speaker 1: know what was coming. So again, we're talking about disturbing photos.
Speaker 1: This is an extreme scenario, but I think that it
Speaker 1: makes the case that in some ways we are overreacting
Speaker 1: to uncertainty because we're hardwired to do that. Yeah, Because ultimately,
Speaker 1: if you take things down to a primal you know,
Speaker 1: life amid the saber tooth tigers example, you want certainty
Speaker 1: in your life as much as you can possibly hoard
Speaker 1: as much as you can possibly grab onto. You want
Speaker 1: the certainty of food, and you want to avoid the
Speaker 1: uncertainty of of a starvation or death at the hands
Speaker 1: of some apex predator out there. And even uh, you know,
Speaker 1: even in some of the small choices in life. As
Speaker 1: much as we we try to think that we're creative
Speaker 1: and we think, oh, you know, I love a highly
Speaker 1: creative work. I love the uncertainty of a of a
Speaker 1: really good book or a really good movie. How how
Speaker 1: much uncertainty are we really comfortable with? Like if I
Speaker 1: were to hand you a book right now and say
Speaker 1: you should read this, I'm not gonna tell you what
Speaker 1: it's called or what it's about, but devote you know
Speaker 1: X and u X hours of your life to reading
Speaker 1: it and just see what happens. You would be hesitant
Speaker 1: to to take that challenge, I would imagine, and so
Speaker 1: would I. I would know about the risk and reward ratio.
Speaker 1: I would say to myself, not really certain here what
Speaker 1: the outcome is going to be there for I will
Speaker 1: default to the norm, which is to push it aside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the big things that we turned
Speaker 1: to the internet for so much is to the vet
Speaker 1: stuff that's coming to us. So even if it is
Speaker 1: a new film that might be dealing with the new idea,
Speaker 1: we want to know who's behind it, who wrote it,
Speaker 1: who's directing it, who start in it, what's their track
Speaker 1: record with success in the past, what do noted critics
Speaker 1: think of it, what do our friends think of it?
Speaker 1: So we in a way, we we still want to
Speaker 1: remove as much uncertainty from our consumption of creative products
Speaker 1: as possible. You know, I was just thinking about the
Speaker 1: normal ty biased episode that we did about how people
Speaker 1: will underreact in a traumatic situation because they want there
Speaker 1: to be that certainty, that the reality that they know.
Speaker 1: Because at the end of the day, the sort of
Speaker 1: patterned reality that we encounter over and over again, this
Speaker 1: idea of normalcy takes a less of a cognitive load
Speaker 1: on us then novel thoughts and uncertainty. So from a
Speaker 1: survival perspective, you want to go with the thing that's
Speaker 1: sort of known, albeit a little bit wrote and possibly boring.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the tragedies is that some of
Speaker 1: the most memorable experiences of our lives, assuming they're not
Speaker 1: negative and kill us or our injurius or traumatize us,
Speaker 1: are often situations that involve a lot of uncertainty. End
Speaker 1: up going on this adventure, right, And the rare opportunities
Speaker 1: that we do read something or view a film or
Speaker 1: consume some piece of of media without any preconceived notions,
Speaker 1: with with next to zero um in terms of anticipation, like,
Speaker 1: some of those can be the most rewarding experiences because
Speaker 1: you're just flying completely blind into the unknown. But if
Speaker 1: given the choice, it's our our natural evolved instinct to
Speaker 1: avoid those kinds of encounters. That's why every once in
Speaker 1: a while you should submit to the crazy makers in
Speaker 1: your life. You know, the people who tried to push
Speaker 1: you into new experiences. Come out to this club, come
Speaker 1: see this play. Yeah, just do it because you could
Speaker 1: get the reward there. All right, let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we get back, I'm gonna talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about this biased against creativity and some studies
Speaker 1: that confirm that it exists. Alright, we're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about creativity and how no matter how much we cling
Speaker 1: to it personally, no matter how much corporations and employers
Speaker 1: will will celebrate creativity in the workplace or make a
Speaker 1: show of it, ultimately we're all a little suspicious of
Speaker 1: the topic to begin with. Yes, there is a paper
Speaker 1: called the Bias against Creativity, Why people desire but reject
Speaker 1: creative ideas and these This paper is by researchers from Cornell,
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Carolina, and
Speaker 1: they say, essentially, creative ideas make people uncomfortable. Now, this
Speaker 1: paper is based on two studies from the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: which involves more than two participants. Yeah, and two experiments.
Speaker 1: They manipulated uncertainty during different models, and the results of
Speaker 1: both experiments demonstrated the existence of negative bias against creativity
Speaker 1: when participants experienced uncertainty. And furthermore, they found that the
Speaker 1: bias against creativity interfered with participants ability to recognize the
Speaker 1: creative idea to begin with. So the results the results
Speaker 1: reveal a concealed barrier that creative actors may face, they say,
Speaker 1: as as they attempt to gain acceptance for their incredible, crazy,
Speaker 1: awesome ideas. Right, because what you're talking about is the
Speaker 1: demand for more of that cognitive load on the brain.
Speaker 1: And then you have the uncertainty factor, and then this
Speaker 1: is so interesting to me that it could actually interfere
Speaker 1: with the person's ability to perceive that as a creative idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as it almost as if you know, I can't see
Speaker 1: I've got, you know, hysterical blindness to this idea because
Speaker 1: I'm so overloaded. Yeah, And again, coming back to the
Speaker 1: films and fiction, you so often see like a highly
Speaker 1: creative film that is following an accepted plot path, you know,
Speaker 1: like like none of the plot points or the character
Speaker 1: notes are really going to be that surprising, but it's
Speaker 1: the wrapping that they're in. So even something that is
Speaker 1: on the surface highly creative and highly original is is
Speaker 1: structured in a way that it's very accessible and very uh,
Speaker 1: non frightening. Now, in a nutshell, the paper is saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: the corporations need to take note of this, and if
Speaker 1: they truly want innovation and creativity in the workplace, then
Speaker 1: they need to create a more supportive framework for creativity
Speaker 1: rather than just saying, hey, I want a bunch of
Speaker 1: creative ideas. Because again, if you think about how a
Speaker 1: corporation is set up, um, it tends to default to
Speaker 1: these these sort of norms in the language you hear
Speaker 1: corporate speak all the time, and the way that people
Speaker 1: dress right, um, bucking the system and and being you know,
Speaker 1: sort of going off on your own is frowned upon.
Speaker 1: Now unless you're looking at a business like Google, which
Speaker 1: you know they there's a whole mandate for just go
Speaker 1: off and do something that you're interested in, because the
Speaker 1: idea is that later on they can take that person's
Speaker 1: novel thinking or or crazy making in the workplace and
Speaker 1: get something out of it later, even if it doesn't
Speaker 1: fit into what's actually going on at that very moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but for most of us, there's there's at least some
Speaker 1: sort of if there's not an actual dress code in place,
Speaker 1: and there's an implied dress code there, you know, unless
Speaker 1: it's you know, freaky Friday or Halloween or whatever kind
Speaker 1: of day you might have. Yeah, it's that you have
Speaker 1: to wear pants rule in our office, which which totally
Speaker 1: messes with my creative vibe. Okay, So we recently moved
Speaker 1: to a new location and we are sharing a space
Speaker 1: with one part of the business that is involved with sales,
Speaker 1: and then the other part of the business is editorial us. Right,
Speaker 1: and we have two different sides of this office space.
Speaker 1: Did you know I recently found out that the sales
Speaker 1: department calls us the dark Side. Well, that's interesting because
Speaker 1: it reminds me very much of that episode we did
Speaker 1: about the tidally locked worlds. Yes, and I mentioned an
Speaker 1: old sci fi novel about a world where half the
Speaker 1: world is in dark and as half the world is
Speaker 1: in light and on the light side they're ruled by science,
Speaker 1: and the dark side they're ruled by magic. So maybe
Speaker 1: we're like that they're the science with the magic. Well,
Speaker 1: I think initially they called us that because we are
Speaker 1: all apparently sensitive to light, and so we don't have
Speaker 1: any overhead lighting on our side. But you know, this
Speaker 1: weird aversion to harsh artificial light. But we also dressed
Speaker 1: maybe a little nutty, because we don't have to go
Speaker 1: out on sales calls. I will venture to say that
Speaker 1: the break room talk is bizarre just because of the
Speaker 1: amount of topics we're covering. So I kind of I
Speaker 1: sort of love that they have decided to call us
Speaker 1: the dark side. I'll accept it, embrace that. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, that was a bit of a diversion. Let's
Speaker 1: get back to this idea of creativity and particularly among children,
Speaker 1: because we talked about this before. Children are great at
Speaker 1: dealing with un certainty and making all sorts of new
Speaker 1: associations between things. Yeah, and they are often a great
Speaker 1: place to go for your creative thought. I mean, they'll
Speaker 1: come up with this crazy ideas like I've mentioned. I
Speaker 1: mentioned before going to Uncle Grahampa's the uh, the children's
Speaker 1: puppet show UH that they do here in Atlanta, where
Speaker 1: they let the children shout out ideas for the improv
Speaker 1: puppeteers to then use and at one point to a
Speaker 1: puppeteer said hey, all right, we need a name for
Speaker 1: the princess. What would the princess's name be? And one
Speaker 1: little girl shouted out Batman the girl which is which
Speaker 1: was just hilarious at the time and and just not
Speaker 1: the kind of idea you would expect an adult to
Speaker 1: come up with. Or likewise, there's I think it's called
Speaker 1: Axe Cop. There's like a whole like web series turned
Speaker 1: cartoon series where the ideas originated with this little girl
Speaker 1: and then her her father took the ideas and they
Speaker 1: were you know, it was like goofy stuff, like here's
Speaker 1: a cop and he's on the beat, but for some
Speaker 1: reason he runs around with an axe instead of that
Speaker 1: I've done. So on the surface of things, you would think,
Speaker 1: all right, well, children are just a font if creativity.
Speaker 1: They're just these you know, just wonderful, crazy abstract thoughts,
Speaker 1: just just just bubbling out of the ground. But a
Speaker 1: two thousand ten study, uh, gives us a little more
Speaker 1: information to go on and shows that creativity at les
Speaker 1: American children is actually down in recent years. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna roll out from these stats here. Sorry about giving
Speaker 1: you the sads, but we're talking about three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: creativity tests going back to the nineteen seventies. Young He Kim,
Speaker 1: a creative a creativity researcher at the College of William
Speaker 1: and Mary, found creativity has decreased among American children, and
Speaker 1: since children have become less able to produce unique and
Speaker 1: unusual ideas, they're also less humorous, less imaginative, and less
Speaker 1: able to elaborate on ideas, according to Kim, and the
Speaker 1: researchers point to a tightly bound education environment like those
Speaker 1: such as No Child Left Behind, an Act of Congress
Speaker 1: pass in two thousand and one that requires schools to
Speaker 1: administer annual standardized tests as a way to assess whether
Speaker 1: they are meeting state educ catian standards. Now, this inadvertently
Speaker 1: hamstrings what and how educators teach and in the scenarios,
Speaker 1: typically teachers don't get to learn to spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time exploring unexpected ideas, so kids as a result,
Speaker 1: they begin to fall in line with the material that
Speaker 1: they're teaching in a very stringent way and anticipating what
Speaker 1: the teacher wants to hear, as opposed to really taking
Speaker 1: that idea and showing it around in their mind and
Speaker 1: um and exercising their critical thinking abilities. Yeah, they end
Speaker 1: up teaching the tests. They end up teaching the expected
Speaker 1: rather than celebrated the unexpected and the unknown. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and as we've touched on before with creativity, this isn't
Speaker 1: just a situation of all they're going to produce less
Speaker 1: English majors and failed musicians. No, creativity is a is
Speaker 1: an essential part of not only artistic endeavor, but scientific endeavor. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's something that empowers just about any field. Um.
Speaker 1: And one of these children may go into or dream
Speaker 1: of going into when they reach adulthood. It's one of
Speaker 1: the cornerstone indicators that predicts future success for a child.
Speaker 1: So you look at this data and you'll say, okay,
Speaker 1: well SAT scores are rising in these couple of decades,
Speaker 1: but the scores on divergent thinking are tanking. And that
Speaker 1: divergent thinking is what makes or breaks the ability of
Speaker 1: a child to really think about a topic. Not just
Speaker 1: with creativity, but but bring us sort of full three
Speaker 1: sixty understanding to it. Yeah, save the tooth, tiger and
Speaker 1: the bushes not a standardized test. The sciences, the arts
Speaker 1: not standardized tests. So I mean it makes sense. It's sad,
Speaker 1: but it makes sense. And again that the two study
Speaker 1: is not just a study, but a study of studies
Speaker 1: of the thousand different creativity tests going back to the seventies,
Speaker 1: So again she was pulling from a vast well of data.
Speaker 1: Now it gets even worse. It turns out that kids
Speaker 1: creative students maybe discriminated against in the classroom. There's a
Speaker 1: paper called creativity Asset or Burden in the Classroom, and
Speaker 1: there are two studies that were conducted to examine teachers
Speaker 1: perceptions of creative students. Study one was based on earlier
Speaker 1: works that identified personality characteristics associated with creativity, so that
Speaker 1: created the baseline. The prototypicality of these characteristics as they
Speaker 1: applied to creative children was rated by college students. Elementary
Speaker 1: school teachers were then asked to rate their favorite and
Speaker 1: least favorite students based on these characteristics. So what happened
Speaker 1: is that the teacher actually ended up favoring kids who
Speaker 1: were pleasers or satisfiers and more readily followed directions and
Speaker 1: did what they were told, which kind of makes sense
Speaker 1: when we talk about this environment in which you have
Speaker 1: very stringent requirements. Yeah, and just I mean also just
Speaker 1: the reality of being a teacher. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: have a big background as a teacher. I only taught
Speaker 1: for a very short period of time high school English.
Speaker 1: I was not I was not really all that trained.
Speaker 1: I was just kind of a warm body they could
Speaker 1: put in when a teacher left. But but and you know,
Speaker 1: with that brief experience, I can see you know you
Speaker 1: want you don't want the kids that are behavior problem.
Speaker 1: You want the kids that are gonna do what you
Speaker 1: you say, and and by other rules and perform well.
Speaker 1: And as much as you might hate to admit it,
Speaker 1: you don't want kids that are gonna clog up the
Speaker 1: gear work of the classroom with too many questions. I
Speaker 1: guess yeah, But it's so sad because it's you know,
Speaker 1: those are the times when the child is really trying
Speaker 1: to grasp the topic by going outside of what you
Speaker 1: would normally perceive as the Okay, here's the answer, um,
Speaker 1: Because everybody knows that in a situation outside of the
Speaker 1: classroom too. You could be in an office situation and
Speaker 1: someone to ask invariably we'll ask that question that kind
Speaker 1: of makes everybody have a headache. But the reason is
Speaker 1: because they are truly thinking about it and trying to
Speaker 1: wrap their brains around it. So there should be that
Speaker 1: space for students. But instead, if a student knows that
Speaker 1: they are being discriminated against, they might avoid creative thoughts
Speaker 1: to better fit in and not feel socially ostracized. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking about, uh, this this idea of students
Speaker 1: in classrooms who are sometimes given empty praise. It's called
Speaker 1: the praise paradox. And there's this idea that if you
Speaker 1: give a kid empty praise, they perceive it is that
Speaker 1: they're not doing well. And so even that just these
Speaker 1: like little nuanced things that teach, these interactions to the
Speaker 1: teachers and students really make or break how that that
Speaker 1: student is going to respond intellectually. Yeah, I mean, looking
Speaker 1: back on elementary school for myself, I mean that the
Speaker 1: classes that I was most into were the ones where
Speaker 1: we discussed stuff where there was like an open forum
Speaker 1: at least at the end of class, where you could
Speaker 1: just ask questions in order or discuss the the history
Speaker 1: you were you were talking about, the story you were reading.
Speaker 1: It certainly wasn't math class, but but yeah, science classes,
Speaker 1: social studies, uh, literature. I can remember specific classes where
Speaker 1: there was that situation where you felt like those who
Speaker 1: were hungry for knowledge. We're going to be fit right
Speaker 1: and you know, obviously I'm not in it right now.
Speaker 1: You you're not in it right now. So we don't
Speaker 1: know the absolute environment. We can only talk in generalities
Speaker 1: that are painted in some of these studies. But here's
Speaker 1: the bright side of being an oddball and in asking
Speaker 1: those questions and creating at least. I guess you could
Speaker 1: call it an intellectual problem. Um, if you fly your
Speaker 1: freak flag, it could be a good thing. There's a
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelfth study by JOHNS Hopkins University business
Speaker 1: professor Sharon Kim, and she found that social rejection can
Speaker 1: inspire imaginative thinking, particularly in individuals with a strong sense
Speaker 1: of their own independence. I can I can definitely relate
Speaker 1: to that, and having had virtually no friends throughout junior
Speaker 1: high like that was the time of a lot of
Speaker 1: creative development for me, I think, well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: the paper is basically saying that this rejection effect can
Speaker 1: liberate creative people from the need to fit in, and
Speaker 1: then then they can go and pursue their interests. Like
Speaker 1: I remember specifically thinking it's like, all right, it kind
Speaker 1: of sucks when I'm at school, and my whole social environment,
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, my family is great, I
Speaker 1: don't have any friends at school, so I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: read as many like Stephen King and J. R. Tolkien
Speaker 1: books as possible, and and I just retreated into those.
Speaker 1: So are just retreated into uh, into fiction and into
Speaker 1: you know, creative thought. Yeah, I know, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a sort of aha moment where it's like, I'm never
Speaker 1: gonna be able to please these people. Therefore, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go be my freaky self and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: fun because this weekend I'm going to self hypnotize folks. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess one of the tragedies too, though,
Speaker 1: is that we were talking, we talked about the teenage brain,
Speaker 1: and I feel like we're I often will think back
Speaker 1: on my my my Maize in high school and junior
Speaker 1: high and I think, if I had to relive that
Speaker 1: all again, it's some sort of weird sci fi scenario happened,
Speaker 1: and I found myself with my current mind in my
Speaker 1: junior high uh, existence, like what would I do differently?
Speaker 1: And it's really a false situation to try to imagine.
Speaker 1: Because our hormones are coming out a totally different cocktail
Speaker 1: at that point, and our brains are hardwired to want
Speaker 1: these people to like us. Uh. So there's there's a
Speaker 1: big hurdle there in being the you know, the the
Speaker 1: just forget all you people, uh, freak flag flying creative individual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you have the other problem that underscores at all
Speaker 1: is that that social rejection, the pain of it. And
Speaker 1: we talked about this in the teenage brain that feels
Speaker 1: like actual pain. It is so ramped up in the
Speaker 1: amygdala at that age that you can't ignore. It's like
Speaker 1: a siren going off. So it takes a very strong
Speaker 1: constitution to get past that point to say it's okay
Speaker 1: that I'm working outside of the norm and you know this,
Speaker 1: it's liberating and I can now go and do the
Speaker 1: thing that makes me happiest and that I'm really passionate about.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, there you have it. Uh, just a
Speaker 1: little more insight into creativity itself, and especially into the
Speaker 1: war and creativity, if you will, the stone cold fact
Speaker 1: that as awesome as creativity is, as important as creativity
Speaker 1: is in all these various sub fields from the arts
Speaker 1: of the sciences, we have a built in aversion to
Speaker 1: it and uh, and it makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: from just an evolutionary standpoint. Yeah, and some of you
Speaker 1: may be relieved to find this information out. If you've
Speaker 1: ever been throwing out some ideas and you feel like
Speaker 1: people aren't listening to them, just know that, you know,
Speaker 1: it may be that their their thought forces are so
Speaker 1: clouded by the cognitive load of it that they truly
Speaker 1: cannot understand what you're talking about or see it. Because
Speaker 1: it does there's this element of uncertainty. So there's there's
Speaker 1: a worth in understanding that perspective and maybe being able
Speaker 1: to repackage it. Yeah, all right, If you want to
Speaker 1: check out all the creative stuff that we're up to,
Speaker 1: various episodes, to all the podcast episodes, all the blog post,
Speaker 1: all the videos, you can find them a stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind dot com that's our mothership, our homepage
Speaker 1: that's constantly update who all sorts of cool content. And
Speaker 1: you also find links there to our various social media
Speaker 1: as such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Google Plus, SoundCloud, you
Speaker 1: name it, find us on the one that you use,
Speaker 1: and then you can follow us. Indeed, and if you
Speaker 1: would like to send us an email, you can do
Speaker 1: so at below the mind at Discovery dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
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