2/10/18

Creativity and the Brain

 

We have lots of ideas of what creativity is – like the ability to paint a pretty picture or write a poem or design an experiment.  But folks who want to study creativity in the lab need what’s called an operational definition, something unambiguous that they can then measure under controlled conditions. That’s a lot harder to do, and I’ve seen some unhelpful ones, like the sorting paint chip method that then asks the scientist to figure out which piles of colors are creative and which piles aren’t. Oy.

Of late, one popular definition of creativity has been the ability to come up with new and useful ideas, like how to make dinner based only on what’s in the fridge.  The important terms here are “new” and “useful”.  Keep that in mind.

An essay in a recent edition of The Conversation describes research at Harvard that uses this definition of creativity to study what’s happening in the brain when someone’s being creative. The scientists put volunteers in a brain scanning machine and then asked them to come up with novel and useful ways to use things like gum wrappers or socks.

Think about it for a minute. What’s a creative way to use socks?  What new and cool thing can you do with gum wrappers. Go ahead. Give it a try. I can wait.

Do you have some ideas?  So did the volunteers.  Using socks to warm your feet isn’t “novel”.  But using them to filter water is.  (And may I say, ewwwww. Hope they’re clean.) Or you could use socks to dust furniture. Or as potholders. My husband suggests using wadded up gum wrappers to pack small fragile items, like tiny glass sculptures. Or arrange different colored ones to make a pretty mosaic. And so on.

 

At the same time the volunteers were thinking up these ideas, the researchers were scanning their brains and looking for what areas were active. And what they found was really interesting.

Three brain areas seemed to be utilized when people are trying to be creative: the default network (usually active when we’re daydreaming or when our minds are just wandering), the executive function system (which focuses us on completing a task), and the salience network (that seems to be involved in switching back and forth between the other two). It’s like we come up with an idea (default) and then decide whether it’s a good one or a new one (executive function).

Normally, these areas don’t work at the same time. But when highly creative people are thinking up new ways to use socks or gum wrappers, all three activate.

But what does that have to do with REAL creativity, the traditional kind, like creating art?  A lot, actually. Further studies showed the same networks are at work in creative acts as varied as writing poetry, composing music, and creating visual arts. The brains of these people are also activating these three areas.  Perhaps the brains of creative people are wired differently than the rest of us. Or maybe creativity is created.  That's a question yet to be answered.

There’s also a dark side to creativity. Sometimes, people who believe they are creative feel that they are then entitled to break the rules.  Benign case in point: Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. 

In 1968 Spencer Silver, a scientist at 3M, was working on developing a strong and durable adhesive for building aircraft. At one point, he created a very weak adhesive. While it lacked the necessary strength, it had the remarkable qualities of leaving no residue and being reusable. Nonetheless, 3M deemed the product useless, put it aside, and forgot about it. 

Years later, Art Fry, a chemical engineer at 3M and church choir member, was frustrated about losing his place in his hymnal. Fry, who’d been aware of Silver’s invention, had an idea: he coated some paper with Silver’s failed adhesive, marked the hymnal pages with the pieces of paper, and then removed the paper after the church service without damaging the pages. 

Seeing potential value in the product, Fry reintroduced it to his superiors. They panned the idea, and ordered that he cease working on the project. Nonetheless, Fry defied those orders and continued with the project. He built a machine to produce the Post-it notes, distributing the prototypes to 3M’s secretaries, who loved them. Fry ignored his managers’ requests, used company property without permission, and bypassed the established protocols of the company – all to pursue his idea. 

3M eventually saw the product’s value and manufactured it. Post-it notes became wildly successful and profitable: Fry had taken what was considered a useless product and applied it in a unique and useful way. But the story of the Post-it note demonstrates both the positive and the dark sides of creativity. On the one hand, a creative idea resulted in value and profit; on the other, an individual was willing to be intentionally dishonest in order to execute his idea.   

 Something to keep in mind...

Art Fry

1/29/18

Fire and Fury – a Review

I finally slogged through to the end of this book.  It took forever, as I found it sleazy and grotesque and slimy. As I have mentioned elsewhere, each session with the text left me needing a shower to clean off the muck.

On the other hand, much of it was seductive fun. Or would have been if the author, Michael Wolff, had been more interested in facts than fun.  By his sloppy practices and willingness to simply repeat what that crew of liars in the White House told him, it’s really hard to discern what might have been real and what was spin, either by Wolff or the various warring factions in the West Wing. Here’s an example. I’d like to know if it’s actually true:

“Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim…Some thought him dyslexic; certainly his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn’t read because he just didn’t have to…He was post-literate – total television.”

That said, I found some insights that were backed up by events that played themselves out in public. The steady turnover in top personnel, for example, seems reflective of chaos behind the scenes. The lack of any legislative or political experience by those jockeying for power as reported by Wolff (with apologies to real reporters) manifested itself in poorly written and poorly thought out executive orders.  Here Wolff and I agree, though: Trump himself is to be held responsible for much of this because he doesn’t know what he’s doing but thinks he’s really great at it.

For me, the most interesting notion concerns Putin. If, as Wolff and others have said, Trump never really expected to win the election, why go to any particular trouble to collude with the Russians? The meeting between them and Don Jr. was stupid, and the result of inexperience and general ineptness.  As was the meeting on the plane in which Trump and the gang wrote up a fictitious explanation that the Don Jr. meeting was just about adoptions.  And of course, firing Comey.

As Wolff sensibly notes (and as we remember from Kenneth Starr and the Clintons), once you get one of these folks on your tail, they’ll find something. And THAT, he suggests (and I believe), is what scares the White House.  Not Russia, but all those other Trump dealings and business shenanigans and so on.  Mueller brought on expert investigators in those areas.  That’ll be what possibly brings this whole thing down.

“And, indeed, the worry in the White House was not about collusion – which seemed implausible if not farcical – but what, if the unraveling began, would likely lead to the messy Trump (and Kushner) business dealings. On this subject every member of the senior staff shrugged helplessly, covering eyes, ears, and mouth.
“This was the peculiar and haunting consensus – not that Trump was guilty of all that he was accused of, but that he was guilty of so much else. It was all too possible that the hardly plausible would lead to the totally credible.”

From Wolff’s lips to god’s ears.

A side note about journalism by real journalists.  Main stream reporters are held to high standards. When they have a source who wishes to remain anonymous, all the big papers and other main stream media sources, from the left wing New York Times to the right wing Wall Street Journal and all the other good media require at least TWO independent sources before they go to press. And as they note, just because the source is nameless in the story, the editors and reporters know who they are: they’re not anonymous to the newsroom. Main stream media still sometimes get it wrong, but they do their best to get it right. Wolff?  Repeats gossip and even gets simple stuff wrong.  That’s frustrating. 

I’m waiting for the real story by someone who’s done the homework.  Until then, I’m done with Mr. Wolff.

11/25/17

Leonard’s Losers

Back when I was in graduate school, one of my favorite radio shows was Leonard’s Losers.

Leonard Postero treated his fans each week to his prediction of the outcomes of college football games coming up that Saturday.  However, unlike other sports pundits, Leonard picked the losers, not the winners.  This had resonance to me because I was constantly losing in the football pools that circulated around the psych department each week. Sadly, Leonard was broadcast on Saturday mornings, days after the pools closed.  I still enjoyed it though.  Here’s a taste of his down home prognostications:

In honor of Leonard, who died in 2001, I want to write about my prediction for the Alabama special election coming up next month.  Here’s what I think is at play:

Need for Cognition

Need for cognition is the notion that some of us like to give our brains a workout every now and then.  It means we’re willing to put some effort into thinking.

Typically, we don’t do this all the time. Too much work.  That means the need to engage our brains is balanced against a reluctance to waste brain power, a reluctance called the Cognitive Miser. How much effort, after all, do you want to spend on deciding on the old reliable Oscar Mayer bacon or the supermarket brand selling for 25 cents less? The Cognitive Miser would say, “Not much effort. Pick something and move on.”

The Alabama special election presents a special case. Ordinarily, voters in this deep red state would automatically pick the Republican candidate.  Job done; get back to the bacon.  But this time, things are different.  The Republican, Roy Moore, appears to be deeply flawed.  However, his opponent, Doug Jones, is a Democrat, and unacceptable by definition. Will the voters tell the Cognitive Miser to back off while they give some real thought to the election?  I think not, because when it comes to politics, conservatives are more likely to engage in that short term, intuitive thinking (“Pick the Republican already.”) than liberals are.

Loyalty

Conservatives are much more loyal to their tribe or group than liberals are. According to political psychologist Chris Mooney,

“Belonging to a group provides epistemic closure—a much desired sense of certainty, because you adopt that group’s views and membership in it provides you with a sense of stability and belonging.”             Psychology Today 

Here, their group is the GOP, which also suggests that Alabamans will cast their ballots for the Republican

So my fearless prognostication is that voters in the Heart of Dixie will hold their noses and send Judge Roy Moore to the US Senate. 

Leonard's Losers?  The American people.

Edited to add:  Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore by about 22,000 votes - around 1.5%. Obviously, my ability to predict the voting behavior of Alabamans is just about as good as my ability to predict the outcome of football games!