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| Anthony Freda Illustration |
Cornell University
The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don't even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm.
"How is it that people say they want creativity but in reality often reject it?" said Jack Goncalo, ILR School assistant professor of organizational behavior and co-author of research to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science. The paper reports on two 2010 experiments at the University of Pennsylvania involving more than 200 people.
The studies' findings include:
- Creative ideas are by definition novel, and novelty can trigger feelings of uncertainty that make most people uncomfortable.
- People dismiss creative ideas in favor of ideas that are purely practical -- tried and true.
- Objective evidence shoring up the validity of a creative proposal does not motivate people to accept it.
- Anti-creativity bias is so subtle that people are unaware of it, which can interfere with their ability to recognize a creative idea.
To uncover bias against creativity, the researchers used a subtle technique to measure unconscious bias -- the kind to which people may not want to admit, such as racism. Results revealed that while people explicitly claimed to desire creative ideas, they actually associated creative ideas with negative words such as "vomit," "poison" and "agony."
Goncalo said this bias caused subjects to reject ideas for new products that were novel and high quality.
"Our findings imply a deep irony," wrote the authors, who also included Jennifer Mueller of the University of Pennsylvania and Shimul Melwani of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Uncertainty drives the search for and generation of creative ideas, but "uncertainty also makes us less able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most," the researchers wrote. "Revealing the existence and nature of a bias against creativity can help explain why people might reject creative ideas and stifle scientific advancements, even in the face of strong intentions to the contrary. ... The field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identify how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity."
The study, "The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas," might validate the frustrations of creative people, Goncalo said.
Mary Catt is assistant director of communications at the ILR School.
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11 comments:
This is the result of a school and social system that promotes mediocrity and conformity over expression. The result, a dead society not worth partaking in less you sell your soul to the soulless.
Bullshit society.
Let it all fall.
people are jealous also, if they think they can personally directly benefit from it, they change their attitude in a hurry
The business world is created by psychopaths. That is the main reason people are biased against creative. Psychopaths have no emotions, no empathy, no remorse, no morals, no conscious. They are pedophiles and murders and rapists. They are our world leaders and dominate the business world.
Their brains function differently. If you believe in the concept of a soul, they do not have one. They lack the very things that define what it is to be human. They are essentially biological robots.
Creativity is against their 'programming'
IMHO, psychopaths are not human beings. They are the remnants of something. Empty on the inside. You might fall for their charm if you are weak minded, but it is all pathological lies and manipulative tricks. Always the same tricks.
Used to report to a psychopathic executive. Called him out on all his BS upon resigning. Unwise to burn bridges, I know. But it had to be said. He couldn't handle it. It was like the guy 'crashed' like a computer. That's what we are seriously dealing with
The government admires the squandering of oodles on the most inane research. I suspicion that Jack and Jen went up the hill to fetch a pail of lucre!
The simple truth is, that most of the "average" people are just that, average. Their ability and desire to analyze and their awareness of consequences of pragmatic thinking is on par with that of a turnip! Most people live from minute to minute. If you think about it, around 80% of the world population score average.
Consider this apt paraphrase of a true event: ... the night-time burglar had an unusual affection for a shoe that would light up when pressure was applied ... while trying to escape ....
Q.E.D. (Sorta)
The government just adores spending on inane projects. It appears that Jack and Jen went up the hill to fetch a pail of lucre.
The simple truth is, that most people live from minute to minute and that the "average" people are intellectually lazy and prefer the most obvious event sequence. Innovation implies a possible variation to anticipated expectations causing the necessity of a renewed evaluation and possible peril.
Then again, maybe they're just dumb!
What Have We Become...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-gitG32P_U
Sometimes, the 'monkey throwing poop' analogy fits better.
Where would mankind be with out his creative skill? probably freezing, dying of starvation in a dark damp cave with one figure up his nose the other up his _ _ _.
This is what years of arbitrated Groupthink psychology does to the intellectually lazy mass. Dumb down soulless human machine running around in circle, like dogs chasing after their tails.
It's pathetic.
I am a very creative person living in a statist world. It has knocked me down hard, but I obviously still live. Through my creativity and desire to express it and an adventurous spirit I have pioneered through life. Although knocked down hard, I would never trade my experiences in life, finding the eddy currents of society and amazing things never to be realized in "mainstream" society. I am getting up again and will continue to be creative, it is at the precipice of life, going into the unknown where life really begins. Take a chance and learn something, ignore the walking dead and create. It is the one thing that defines humans above all life forms and what the bible is referring to when God states that we are created in his image.
acid claus; psychopaths dismiss creative ideas so that they can steal them and take credit for them later. When they implement them they don't consider the negative outcomes though as they don't care about that.
They also think that everybody else is stupid apart from themselves and other psychopaths. We all have different skills and knowledge.
The reason people do not accept novel ideas is because they do not know the difference between something new and something bogus so they stick with what they know. Geniuses can't sell their great ideas any better than a snake oil salesman can sell his snake oil. Actually, the snake oil salesman probably sells more because people are gullible because of the outrageous claims that would accompany it. Jim D.
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