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Your support means so much to me, to the whole team now more than ever, because you are the reason that NPR shows are freely available to everyone. And we are proud to do this work for you and with you. Thanks so much. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hi, Shortwavers. Burleigh McCoy filling the host chair today. And I'd like you to meet psychologist Zorana Iftchevich-Pringle.
When Zorana was an undergraduate, she was searching for a thesis topic. To spark ideas, she was reading everything she could get her hands on, and she stumbled across work from the 1960s, during the space age, about creativity. She read that creative people often have personality traits that don't seem to go together.
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.
In the two decades Zorana's been studying creativity, she's realized that even though creative people are unique, it's not because they're born with it. But that idea that some people are creative and some people aren't, what scientists call a fixed mindset, can stop creativity in its tracks.
Oftentimes, just the fact that we don't think of ourselves as creative is going to prevent us from ever attempting it. But this idea is pervasive. We can sometimes think it's only the Einsteins or Beyonces of the world who are creative. Scientists call those people Big C creators. Big C as big, influential, creativity, eminent creators. And they're not.
But they are not the only ones. Creativity exists on a continuum for what we call mini-C, creativity in the process of learning. One example of mini-C might be your unique way of learning times tables. 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. Like designing new software, writing a novel, or making a science podcast. So even if you aren't big C-level like Beyonce, you and anyone can always start by opting in to being creative. ♪
Which Zorana learned the hard way after years of limiting herself. 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. That has changed, and it culminated into a very creative thing, a book called The Creativity Choice, about how creative people can stick with an idea. ♪
So today on the show, the science of creativity. We talk about how psychologists study it and the choices people make to grow their creativity. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
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Edward Jones, member SIPC. This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices, like full-service wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on Thinkorswim. Visit Schwab.com to learn more.
This message comes from NPR sponsor State Farm. If you're a small business owner, it's your life. State Farm agents are small business owners too, so they can help you choose personalized policies. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Talk to your local agent today. Okay, Zorana, so now let's talk about how you go about studying and measuring something so vague and mysterious as creativity. How do scientists study it?
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,
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. 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 answers that are going to be rare. So this is the brick test. That's one way scientists can study creativity. What if they want to ask more complicated questions? What are some of those complicated questions and then how would scientists go about measuring that? 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. 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. 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, even independently looking at it.
Of course, there are limits to this technique, but it is very, to me, quite surprisingly robust. Interesting. And one of the ways you write that people can build their creative skills is by being aware of their emotions and working with them to problem solve and even regulate those emotions. So how does building your emotional intelligence muscles feed into creativity?
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. Okay. Can you give me an example of that, using an emotion to our advantage? So imagine you are happy. You are happy and you can now be playful. You can be silly, happy.
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. So the flip side of creativity is creative blocks.
To illustrate this, can you tell me about the candle test? 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. Okay, so spoiler alert, if you want to try this, don't keep listening right now. 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. What's the change? 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 and broken it into two separate pieces. Okay. And so in your book, you say this is an example of reconstructing the problem. You give the example of your book, of how you got stuck and how you got unstuck.
What was that like, one? And what do you think other people could learn from that example? Lots of people get stuck at some point during their creative process. 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 physically cut with scissors units of meaning and then started arranging them. And at one point they fit into place like a puzzle fitting into place. Okay.
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?
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.
Zorana, thank you so much for talking to me today about creativity. Thank you. Zorana's book, The Creativity Choice, The Science of Making Decisions to Turn Ideas into Actions, is out now. And short wavers, thank you for listening. Make sure you never miss an episode by following us on your favorite podcast platform. It really helps our show. And if you have a science question, send us an email at shortwave at npr.org.
This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson, edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Tyler Jones. The audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez. Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Burleigh McCoy. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
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