Some people are more creative than others. Some people are naturally left-brained, and others naturally right-brained. Some people are good at science and math; others are better at art and literature. Those are two different ways of thinking employed by two different kinds of people. Either you’re creative or you’re not.
That’s often how people think of creativity. It’s a gift, like the ability to sing well or dunk a basketball. But as scientists have explored where original thought comes from and what it takes to foster innovation, the picture has started to look more complex. It’s also started to look increasingly important. Developed economies now outsource production to places where labor is relatively cheap so that they can focus on research and innovation. iPhones are made in China but the important, valuable work takes place in California. That’s where the software is written and tested, the designs produced and the prototypes generated. A 2015 study by Ernst and Young found that creative industries including entertainment, advertising, architecture, and gaming, generated $2,250 billion a year worldwide. The industries were responsible for 3 percent of global GDP and employed some 29.5 million people. In 2019, a report issued by UNCTAD, the United Nations trade body, found that the global trade in creative goods expanded at a rate of more than 7 percent even as global trade as a whole slowed.
And those studies only explored the trade in creative industries themselves. They didn’t measure the value of creative innovation inside companies that allows businesses to move ahead of their competitors with original functions or better marketing campaigns. Businesses that want to compete have to be innovative. They need creativity—and they need science to tell them where to find and build that creativity.
Creativity researchers are looking at two areas. The first is behavioral. Psychologists are testing the creativity of volunteers under a range of conditions. They hope that those tests will help them—and businesses—to understand when people are at their most creative and what they can do to encourage that creativity.
To come to those conclusions though, they first need to define creativity, to formulate a way to measure creativity, and to produce tests that can generate that creativity.
Convergent Thinking Versus Divergent Thinking
Researchers divide creative thinking into two types. Convergent thinking is a way of looking for the single best solution to a problem by bringing together ideas and information from multiple sources. Because it always looks for the one right answer, convergent thinking is the type most usually assessed in IQ tests or in school exams.
Convergent thinking requires knowledge and logic, and the ability to process information, prioritize it, and understand it. An automotive company looking for a way to improve fuel efficiency might rely on convergent thinking to understand the current state of research into electric cells, material science, and aerodynamics in order to produce a vehicle that generates the maximum efficiency from the currently available technology.
Convergent thinking is creative because those who perform it best can find in the data answers that other people miss. The rocket scientists at SpaceX, for example, started with the same rocket technology as NASA and Lockheed Martin. But they were able to see in that technology the opportunity to create rockets that could be reused. By beating their competitors, they showed that they had the best solution to the question of launching objects into orbit.
While convergent thinking looks for the one best solution to a question, divergent thinking produces multiple solutions to a question. It’s the kind of thinking that takes place in brainstorming, and it depends on the ability to draw connections between apparently unrelated ideas, to see things in unique ways, and to build unexpected combinations. The value of convergent thinking isn’t the ability to hit on the one best answer but to produce ideas that no one else would have considered.
So if SpaceX were to ask itself how to use current technology to reach orbits as cheaply and efficiently as possible, convergent thinking would hit on the use of re-usable rockets. It’s an idea that’s been around for a while but only SpaceX’s scientists saw a way to make it happen. Divergent thinking would come up with the idea of lowering the cost even further by attaching wings to the rockets and flying them back to their floating landing pads.
When psychology researchers test creativity under different conditions, they give their subjects what are now standard tests for divergent thinking, for convergent thinking, or for both. One standard test for divergent thinking, for example, ask volunteers to list as many possible uses that they can think of for an everyday object such as a brick or a paperclip. The test measures the number of uses the volunteer produces; their originality; their flexibility (the range of usage types the ideas cover); and their elaboration (the detail in the answers.)
Tests for convergent thinking are often riddles such as:
A man has married 20 women in a small town. All of the women are still alive and none of them are divorced. The man has broken no laws. Who is the man?
The answer (spoiler alert) is the priest. There is only one correct answer. Test subjects who answer the most questions correctly are said to show high rates of convergent thinking.
Psychologists also use the Remote Associates Test. Volunteers receive three apparently unrelated words and are asked to think of a fourth word that connects them all.
For example, the word that connects:
Table — Elbow — Court
is “tennis.”
Again, the question has one correct answer so volunteers who perform well in these tests are exhibiting high levels of one kind of creativity. They’re able to search through the information in their head and make the connections that lead to the best answer.
Some tests are able to call on both divergent and convergent thinking. One commonly used test is the Candle Problem, which was first created by psychologist Karl Duncker in 1945. Test subjects are told that they have a book of matches, a box of thumbtacks, and a candle.They’re then asked how they would fix the candle to the wall so that it doesn’t drip wax onto the floor.
The question tests functional fixedness, the ability to find abnormal uses for everyday objects—a kind of divergent thinking. But it also only has one answer, which makes it convergent. (The answer is to empty the box of tacks, use the tacks to pin the box to the wall, then stand the candle in the box.)
Those tests give psychologists tools that they can use to test creativity. They can place volunteers in different situations, test their divergent and convergent thinking under those conditions using puzzles and questions, then compare the results to a control group.
What they’ve found is that a wide range of behaviors and conditions can generate additional creativity. Researchers have discovered higher creativity scores in people who had just completed REM sleep, who check their social media accounts for an average of five minutes every hour, and who had just finished something fun, like eating cake or going for a run. They’ve also discovered that messy desks and workplaces are not a sign of a creative mind but that formal dress produces abstract thinking, while sarcasm inspires creativity, although it also brings conflict when used between people who don’t entirely trust each other.
Managers hoping to foster creativity in their teams need to give their staff psychological safety, combine authoritarianism with benevolence, and bring string to brainstorming sessions.
In other words, although few of these experiments have been repeated, there do seem to be a plethora of behaviors and conditions that can increase creative thinking in the workplace.
But what’s actually happening in the brain when people are being creative? Here too, science has some answers.
The Brain Science of Creativity
While psychologists now have some pretty robust tools that they can use to test creativity under different conditions, neuroscientists are left with some fairly crude instruments to examine what exactly is happening inside the brain when people are engaging in creative work. They also have some pretty rough models, of which the most common is the idea of right and left-brained thinking. The left hemisphere of the brain is often described as analytical, practical, organized, and logical, while the right half of the brain is creative, emotional, passionate, and poetic.
Neuroscientists now largely dismiss that model as simplistic and inaccurate. Instead, they talk about three networks linking different parts of the brain.
The Executive Attention Network links the outer regions of the prefrontal cortex with the back of the parietal lobe, and provides focus. It’s active during periods of deep concentration.
The Imagination Network lights up areas of the brain deep inside the prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobe while also communicating with parts of the parietal cortex. It draws on memory and experience to construct mental simulations about the future or the experiences of others.
The Salience Network uses the dorsal anterior cingulate cortices and anterior insular parts of the brain to monitor both thoughts and external events. It then routes information to whichever of the other two networks is best placed to use it.
Creativity occurs in the interplay between those networks. The Imagination Network allows the formation of unique associations while the Executive Attention Network analyses the solutions presented by the imagination, and selects them for their applicability to a question.
In 2012, Siyuan Liu and Allen Braun, neuroscientists at the US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders in Bethesda, Maryland, recruited twelve rappers and placed them in an fMRI machine to see that switching in action. The rappers first read a set of lyrics that they had memorized before the experiment. They were then asked to freestyle a rap, improvising a song on the fly. During both tests, the fMRI machine scanned activity in their brains.
According to Nature, the results, published in Scientific Reports, echoed a previous study on jazz musicians. During their periods of improvisation, both the rappers and the jazz players showed reduced activity in part of the frontal lobes associated with the Executive Attention Network and increased activity in parts of the brain associated with the Imagination Network.
“We think what we see is a relaxation of ‘executive functions’ to allow more natural de-focused attention and uncensored processes to occur that might be the hallmark of creativity,” Braun told Nature.
The findings might also explain why composers feel that notes just come to them effortlessly. With the closure of those parts of the brain that control focus, the creative connections take place in those parts of the brain that lack conscious awareness.
The results, though, aren’t definitive. Other researchers have reported the activation of parts of the Executive Network in other creative tests. The discrepancy might be explained by the nature of the creative tasks being assessed. Some creative tasks might demand more focus than others, and some people may manage creative tasks in different ways.
Nature Versus Nurture
That suggests that some people may be born more creative than others. If some people are born with a more active Imagination Network, or if their brain chemistry allows them to switch more efficiently between the Imagination Network and the Executive Attention Network, they may have an advantage at completing tasks that require either convergent or divergent thinking.
But the brain is elastic. Synaptic connections are constructed and removed as a result of experience. Creativity, therefore, can be built through practice. The Imagination Network depends on information gathered in the past. A composer who has listened to a lot of music will have a greater understanding of the possibilities on offer when they come to choose their next jazz harmony or select their next rap line. They’ll have a bigger library to call on in the Imagination Network. The divergent thinking of an art director who has watched lots of commercials and has a deep understanding of the product will be broader and produce a wider range of results than someone with little experience in advertising.
In the end, science tells us that there are conditions that favor both convergent and divergent thinking. So enjoy brainstorming sessions. Throw out ideas without fear of ridicule or shame. Sleep before you need to look for ideas, and work in an environment with plenty of greenery and natural light. Creativity tests have shown that all of those conditions help to foster innovative thinking.
But also build the connections in your brain networks through practice, through consuming ideas, and by talking about ideas with others. Science says that all of those activities will give you a creative mind.
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