Thirty years ago Professor Stanley Milgram descended with students into the New York subway to ask people to give up their seats with no explanation. Requests were split across genders and age-groups and carried out by a number of different experimenters. The results were surprising. 68% got up willingly when they were asked.
Has anything changed in the last thirty years? Were we perhaps more obedient, or more polite in those mythical 'olden days'? In the best traditions of un-scientific media re-enactments, a New York Times and a London Independent journo put their best faces on to bother strangers. And it seems that we have become even more obedient and polite. The Indy's - no doubt lovely young lady - scored an impressive 14 out of 15 complying to her request.
> From The Independent and The New York Times (requires free registration)
The science of creativity
As Pablo Picasso once pointed out, all children are creative; the challenge is to remain creative into adulthood.
Unfortunately public education systems around the world seem designed to crush creativity in favour of rote learning and test passing. As the years pass a fear of being wrong takes over from our natural creative tendencies.
Unlike mathematics, languages or the humanities, we are rarely taught about creativity, despite its importance to our lives. Yet the information is out there, waiting to be used.
If you would like to be more creative at work and at home—and that has to be most of us—the insights in this ebook will be useful.
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