Creativity

One of the greatest of all human abilities is its capacity for creative innovation. The lab has examined creativity from a number of different perspectives. In a recent study, we have examined the relationship between creativity and mind wandering (Baird, Smallwood, Mrazek, Franklin, & Schooler, 2012). In this study, participants attempted to come up with alternative uses for common objects (a standard measure of creativity) and then, following various intervening tasks, attempted to generate yet more uses. We found that an activity that encourages mind-wandering, (i.e. a non-demanding task) led to more creative solutions on the second attempt than situations that did not allow for mind-wandering (i.e. no incubation interval or engaging in a demanding task). Strikingly, engaging in a non-demanding task was even better than doing nothing at all with respect to the benefit of the incubation period. Collectively these findings suggest that mind-wandering during non-demanding tasks may be a particularly fertile source of creative inspiration.

The relationship between mindfulness, mind wandering and creativity was further investigated in one of the labs most recent studies (Zedelius & Schooler, 2015). This study revealed that different styles of creative problem solving are facilitated by different modes of thinking. Mindfulness was related to analytic strategies for problem solving while mind wandering may result in greater creative problems solved through insight, or through a sudden “Aha!” moment.

Other areas of research on creativity have included: the impact of thinking out loud on disrupting creative insights (Schooler, Ohlson and Brooks, 1993; Schooler & Melcher, 1995); individual differences in creativity (Schooler & Melcher, 1995), the role of the right hemisphere in creative processes (Fiore & Schooler, 1997), and the relationship between insight processes and perception (Schooler & Melcher, 1995; Schooler, Fallshore, & Fiore 1994)

Related Questions

The Nature and Impact of Art

Our lab has extended research on creativity by exploring the impact of exposure to creative material. In an initial study, participants were shown either conventional or avant-garde film and then given a measure of conceptual expansiveness known to be correlated with creativity (Gross, Martini, & Schooler, 2022). We found that conventional thinkers showed more conceptual expansiveness following the conventional art film whereas unconventional thinkers showed greater conceptual expansiveness following the avant-garde film. Additional research, funded by a generous grant from the Templeton Religion Trust, investigated the impact of exposure to critically acclaimed short animation films on a variety of cognitive measures that can be characterized as involving openness to experience. We found that exposure to these films (compared to the control task of exposure to equally entertaining but less artful cute animal videos) led to a host of consequences including: increased creativity as measured by short story writing, increased conceptual expansiveness, increased curiosity, and increased intellectual humility.

Atypical Salience

Gross and Schooler (2024) recently published a novel theoretical account of creativity. The framework is based on the notion that creativity often relies on a hypersensitivity to information that typically goes unnoticed. It has long been speculated that creative individuals have a leaky attentional filter that allows information that others overlook. However, our model builds on this view by introducing a motivational element, neurologically grounded in the concept of incentive salience. Incentive salience refers to the process by which certain stimuli become more attention-worthy and motivationally-relevant. Drawing on an aberrant salience model of schizotypy that identifies characteristic differences in dopaminergic functioning in the midbrain regions of the Salience Network, we speculate that creative individuals similarly experience an over-attribution of incentive salience to atypical information. This causes atypical information not only to become available but also to become incentivized for additional processing; in turn, novel material is incorporated into the creative problem solving process. Empirical evidence for this view was recently published in a pair of studies (Gross, Elliott, & Schooler, 2024). Here, we demonstrated that creative individuals, relative to less creative individuals, show increased processing of material that others habituate to (evidenced using an oddball paradigm), and that they evidence variations in motivational processing associated with liking versus wanting of everyday rewards.

Insight

Closely related to the topic of creativity is the notion of insight, the sudden experience of aha that can accompany creative solutions. In one series of studies participants were given trivia questions such as “kangaroos keep growing until they die” (Laukkonen, Kaveladze, Tangen, & Schooler, 2020). In one condition the key words (e.g. “kangaroo” ) were presented outright and in another condition they were presented in anagram form (e.g. “oroagkan”) and participants had to unscramble it before assessing the statement. In addition, the aha experience associated with unscrambling the anagram was assessed. We found that statements were found to be truer if the target word was presented as an anagram and the participant successfully solved it themselves. Furthermore, this effect was mediated by the experience of “aha”. This striking finding reveals that the feeling of insight can enhance the perceived truthfulness of information, even when the insight is irrelevant to the content’s validity. A more recent study demonstrated a similar effect when individuals solved anagrams corresponding to world views, such as “Free will is an illusion”, where the term “illusion” was presented in anagram form (Laukkonen et al., 2022). This line of work led to the development of an important theoretical piece that introduces the notion of the “eureka heuristic” whereby the experience of “aha” serves as a clue to the accuracy of ideas (Laukkonen et al., 2022). As with many heuristics, relying on “aha”s in this manner can be helpful - leading people on average to be more accurate when they have aha experiences, and especially intense aha experiences. But it can also lead to errors when the aha from one source (solving anagram) is misattributed as being indicative of the validity of a statement.

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Selected Publications

Researchers

Jonathan Schooler

My lab’s research takes a “big picture” perspective in attempting to understand the nature of mental life, and in particular consciousness. Combining empirical, philosophical, and contemplative traditions, we address broad questions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries.

James Elliott

James Elliott, Ph.D, is a cognitive neuroscientist with a background in behavioral, EEG, and fMRI methodologies. He has a keen interest in exploring how traditional meditation techniques can be used to help inform a scientific understanding of consciousness.

Madeleine Gross

Madeleine studies the psychological basis of creative idea generation and insight. Using eye tracking technology, she also investigates how inter-individual differences in eye movement behavior may relate to dopamine-related cognition and personality traits, such as curiosity, schizotypy, and creativity.

Claire Zedelius

One line of Claire's research focuses on the role meta-awareness plays in the dynamic changes between states of mind wandering and focused attention. Another line examines the relationship between different types of mind wandering, creativity and curiosity.

Dharma Lewis

Dharma is a first-generation scholar born in Mexico City and raised in Los Angeles, who is passionate about empowering learners of all experiences and backgrounds. She is interested in harnessing the power of meta-cognition and mindfulness in pedagogical interventions. Outside of the lab, you can find her on the beach making playlists or doing aerial yoga wherever she can find some silks.