Sticky Tradition Impedes Selection of Creative Ideas
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Creativity is a driving force for human development and has fascinated scholars for centuries. Surprisingly little is known about the cognitive underpinnings of putting creative ideas into action, however. To shed light on this part of the creative process,we tracked how hand movements unfolded when choosing between either a traditional or a creative use of a given object. Participants could freely decide between both options (Experiment 1, N = 51 adults) or were prompted to select a specific use (Experiment 2, N = 51 adults). Temporal as well as spatial measures of action unfolding revealed behavior to be strongly biased toward traditional options when choosing an available, more creative option eventually. Creative behavior thus comprises two obstacles: not only coming up with new ideas, but also overcoming a lasting bias toward using old ones.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Journal of Experimental Psychology: General |
ISSN | 0096-3445 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
Some of the data and ideas appearing in this article have been previously presented at the 22nd meeting of the European Society of Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP) in Lille, France; at the 65th Conference of Experimental Psychologists (TeaP) in Trier, Germany; and at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society (Psychonomics) in Boston, United States. Roland Pfister received funding from the Heisenberg Programme of the German Research Foundation (PF853/10-1). The authors declare no conflict of interest. Preregistrations, raw data, materials, and analysis syntax are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF repository: https://osf.io/mwyp7).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 American Psychological Association
- cognitive control, creativity, innovation, motion-tracking, response dynamics
Research areas
ID: 382001887