Outwardly, we praise creativity. Inwardly, we hate it

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A fascinating analysis of how we laud creativity in public — and frown upon it in private.

This is so incredibly true in corporate structure, but also in society in general. Interestingly, our inclinations to join established structures — such as religion — make us more averse to creativity. We see it as threatening to order and consistency and the way "things should be."

"... The emerging science of implicit bias has revealed that what people say about creativity isn’t necessarily how they feel about it. Research has found that we actually harbor an aversion to creators and creativity; subconsciously, we see creativity as noxious and disruptive ..."

While I seek out creative ideas regularly, I'd be lying if I haven't also felt this way about new ideas or "solutions" that seem outside the box. As a tiny example, I thought Airpods were the stupidest thing when they first came out. Many in society also thought they'd be a failure. Now I love them and see them everywhere.

A key psychological takeaway from this piece:

"Creativity means change, without the certainty of desirable results. ... “We have an implicit belief the status quo is safe."

As we all know, that's not true. Change is inevitable and so too is the creativity that comes with it.

Marco Rodriguez

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4 years ago
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  I read this piece yesterday and was blown away by it. It's so true, even for people that work in creative fields that are constantly faced with new, innovative ideas.
  
  As you mentioned, we see this is business all the time. "Ideas" are dangerous and disruptive. They change the comfortable little world that I've mastered. "Ideas" might expose me as a fraud or as incompetent. "Ideas" could eliminate my value.
  
  The author mentioned how middle managers, in particular, hate new ideas because their entire function is to meet the metrics and performance of an existing system. They are therefore encouraged to maintain the system that they're accustomed to.
  
  Powerful stuff to recognize the ironies our subconscious mind fights for.
  
  “Our findings imply a deep irony,” the authors noted in the 2012 paper. “Prior research shows that uncertainty spurs the search for and generation of creative ideas, yet our findings reveal that uncertainty also makes us less able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most.”
  
  bobburch
  
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  4 years ago
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    Humans have an incredible ability to undercut themselves and make life more challenging. Of course, this backward thinking is coming from the ambition of self-preservation.
    
    At a certain level, we're all just little animals that are acting instinctually to protect ourselves.
    
    patmcmanus
    
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    4 years ago
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Not surprising. This has a lot to do with the adoption curve, less than 3% of people are going to truly understand the significance of something novel at first. 97% are gonna hate it and say it's dumb.

Time and perseverance seem to be the only remedies.

zstvns

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4 years ago
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict this psych study won't replicate. People love these breathy NYT articles about psych studies that confirm their biases about middle managers and how everyone secretly hates their creativity.

chr15m

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4 years ago
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  Most psych studies don't replicate, and for that reason are complete bogus. NYT isn't going to miss an opportunity to put out a story, though, that they though their readers will read. They are the same audience who is big into the belief of science, but they are less willing to accept that science changes and we need to change with it.
  
  indietoinfinity
  
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  4 years ago
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Shitty post. A link which leads to a nytimes website for logged in users only? Are you a bot?

Mikron

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4 years ago
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