Creativity is crushed out of you

Deep Dish

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A NASA study found 98% of pre-schoolers are "creative geniuses." This drops to 12% by high school and 2% for adults.

https://creativityworkshop.com/articles/creative-geniuses

I strongly don’t believe this is a biological hardening of brain plasticity.

Creativity is crushed out of you by society.

"The reason why teachers secretly find creative students annoyingly obnoxious is simply because they disrupt the lesson more often. Research shows that according to teachers, creative students are more likely to interrupt the lesson with questions. They behave more impulsively and call the rules in the classroom into question.

In another study, teachers were asked to describe their favorite and least favorite students. The favorite students were quiet, reliable, well-mannered, and sincere (typical traits not associated with creativity). The least favorite students were progressive, determined, and impulsive (typical traits associated with creativity). As such, the least favorite students were those who liked to try to do what others, including the teacher, deemed impossible.

It is fascinating how we have a profound desire that education should provide a place for creative students with 21st century skills. While at the same time, we tend to reject the behavior and ideas of these students. This paradox is also referred to as the ‘bias against creativity."


https://innovationorigins.com/en/why-teachers-cant-stand-creative-students/

"Research conducted by organizational psychologists at Cornell University found that this implicit creativity bias causes us to take a negative view of creative ideas and projects, relative to those that are more practical. The study, conducted by psychologist Jennifer Mueller and colleagues, showed that the creativity bias interfered with participants’ ability to recognize an original idea. This bias indicates a fascinating paradox at the heart of our common attitudes toward creativity: At the same time that we desire creativity, we also fear it. This widespread bias then acts as a “concealed barrier” that innovators must be prepared to confront when attempting to gain acceptance for novel ideas.

The Cornell psychologists noted that regardless of how open-minded people are in general, they *still* seek to reduce uncertainty in their lives. Most people prefer what is safe and conventional, and may unconsciously shy away from creative ideas because they are new, novel, and potentially uncomfortable. However, because the bias is not overt, we’re typically unable to recognize it in ourselves. The study found that while most people say they feel positively toward creativity, when asked to judge the desirability of various ideas, they overwhelmingly reveal an implicit bias toward the practical over the novel.

The researchers note a deep irony here: It is often uncertainty that stimulates the search for and generation of creative ideas, but it is also our fear of uncertainty that renders us less able to recognize creative ideas.

It’s usually only *after* an idea has gained acceptance and recognition that we applaud the idea and its creator. According to Berkeley business professor Barry Staw, an expert on creativity and organization innovation, when it comes to creativity, we tend to “celebrate the victor.” When a creative work earns the approval of cultural gatekeepers and is integrated into the mainstream, *then* we applaud the ingenuity of its creator
."

https://behavioralscientist.org/the-bias-against-creativity/
 

Bokanovsky

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A NASA study found 98% of pre-schoolers are "creative geniuses." This drops to 12% by high school and 2% for adults.

https://creativityworkshop.com/articles/creative-geniuses

I strongly don’t believe this is a biological hardening of brain plasticity.

Creativity is crushed out of you by society.
It's portably a combination of both factors. Look at famous bands, for example. Their best work always comes form their early years. The Rolling Stones have been around for over six decades. They still perform sold out shows and yet all of their famous songs were written in the 60's. That's because artistic creativity peaks by the time the artist is in his mid-20's.
 

BackInTheGame78

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Well you can't really have a classroom environment that's effectively a free for all where kids just do whatever, whenever and say it's because they are "creative".

It would drive the teachers nuts, the kids wouldn't learn anything and it would basically be pointless.
 

BillyPilgrim

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It's portably a combination of both factors. Look at famous bands, for example. Their best work always comes form their early years. The Rolling Stones have been around for over six decades. They still perform sold out shows and yet all of their famous songs were written in the 60's. That's because artistic creativity peaks by the time the artist is in his mid-20's.
This seems to be a phenomenon somewhat limited to music imo. You don't see writers, novelists and actors lost their creativity to the same extent most musicians do. All that free pu$$y can lead to complacency, but actors don't seem to have the issue to the same degree.
 

Deep Dish

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It's portably a combination of both factors. Look at famous bands, for example. Their best work always comes form their early years. The Rolling Stones have been around for over six decades. They still perform sold out shows and yet all of their famous songs were written in the 60's. That's because artistic creativity peaks by the time the artist is in his mid-20's.
Creativity, among artists, but also including inventions and Noble Prize winners, peaks between the ages of 35-40. Therefore, I don't see the brain as an explanatory factor for the precipitous drop of highly creative children and teenagers, although certainly for the decline of creativity output in old age.

Here are some graphs. Found some more, but I could only upload three graphs, but you get the point.

When_you_will_most_likely_hit_your_creative_peak__according_to_science_-_The_Washington_Post.jpg
Age_and_Scientific_Genius_pdf-1.jpg
645901574a445973b0a741ce__Age and Great Invention_ by Benjamin Jones.png
 

Deep Dish

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Actually, one more graph:

CreativeproductivityATL.png
 

BaronOfHair

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A NASA study found 98% of pre-schoolers are "creative geniuses." This drops to 12% by high school and 2% for adults.

https://creativityworkshop.com/articles/creative-geniuses

I strongly don’t believe this is a biological hardening of brain plasticity.

Creativity is crushed out of you by society.

"The reason why teachers secretly find creative students annoyingly obnoxious is simply because they disrupt the lesson more often. Research shows that according to teachers, creative students are more likely to interrupt the lesson with questions. They behave more impulsively and call the rules in the classroom into question.

In another study, teachers were asked to describe their favorite and least favorite students. The favorite students were quiet, reliable, well-mannered, and sincere (typical traits not associated with creativity). The least favorite students were progressive, determined, and impulsive (typical traits associated with creativity). As such, the least favorite students were those who liked to try to do what others, including the teacher, deemed impossible.

It is fascinating how we have a profound desire that education should provide a place for creative students with 21st century skills. While at the same time, we tend to reject the behavior and ideas of these students. This paradox is also referred to as the ‘bias against creativity."


https://innovationorigins.com/en/why-teachers-cant-stand-creative-students/

"Research conducted by organizational psychologists at Cornell University found that this implicit creativity bias causes us to take a negative view of creative ideas and projects, relative to those that are more practical. The study, conducted by psychologist Jennifer Mueller and colleagues, showed that the creativity bias interfered with participants’ ability to recognize an original idea. This bias indicates a fascinating paradox at the heart of our common attitudes toward creativity: At the same time that we desire creativity, we also fear it. This widespread bias then acts as a “concealed barrier” that innovators must be prepared to confront when attempting to gain acceptance for novel ideas.

The Cornell psychologists noted that regardless of how open-minded people are in general, they *still* seek to reduce uncertainty in their lives. Most people prefer what is safe and conventional, and may unconsciously shy away from creative ideas because they are new, novel, and potentially uncomfortable. However, because the bias is not overt, we’re typically unable to recognize it in ourselves. The study found that while most people say they feel positively toward creativity, when asked to judge the desirability of various ideas, they overwhelmingly reveal an implicit bias toward the practical over the novel.

The researchers note a deep irony here: It is often uncertainty that stimulates the search for and generation of creative ideas, but it is also our fear of uncertainty that renders us less able to recognize creative ideas.

It’s usually only *after* an idea has gained acceptance and recognition that we applaud the idea and its creator. According to Berkeley business professor Barry Staw, an expert on creativity and organization innovation, when it comes to creativity, we tend to “celebrate the victor.” When a creative work earns the approval of cultural gatekeepers and is integrated into the mainstream, *then* we applaud the ingenuity of its creator
."

https://behavioralscientist.org/the-bias-against-creativity/
Why the hell is NASA fiddling around with a subject like this, instead of finding more effective ways of transporting us to galaxies beyond our own?
 

Deep Dish

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Why the hell is NASA fiddling around with a subject like this, instead of finding more effective ways of transporting us to galaxies beyond our own?
Creativity is important to engineering. The study was done in 1968 during the Space Race. NASA was interested in developing a test to measure the creative potential of NASA scientists and engineers.
 

Deep Dish

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Are we surprised but what are we going to do about it?
Things which can be done:

Do things a messy room with low light. Science studies show both lighting and your environment affects creative thinking.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/10/messy-desk
https://psmag.com/economics/dim-lighting-sparks-creativity-60437

Take an improv comedy workshop. You will learn about the principle of "Yes And" (agree & amplify). This teaches you to build up ideas instead of rejecting ideas.

Learn to build things. Creativity and problem-solving skills go hand-in-hand.

Small amounts of marijuana. It boosts dopamine and dopamine is associated with pattern recognition. It improves hyper-priming which is finding connections between distantly-related ideas. Alternatively, for those who don't want full marijuana, CBD also works.

https://zebracbd.com/blogs/cbd-education/cbd-for-creativity
 
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