Category: Creativity

Creativity is not the exclusive domain of youth.

There are two peaks for creativity across the lifespan.

One occurs — as you might imagine — in the mid-20s and a second comes later, in the mid-50s.

At least, these are the ages at which people are most likely to do the work that bags them a Nobel Prize.

Professor Bruce Weinberg, the study’s first author, said:

“Many people believe that creativity is exclusively associated with youth, but it really depends on what kind of creativity you’re talking about.”

The conclusions come from an analysis of Nobel Prize winners in Economics over the years, although Professor Weinberg thinks the results apply to creativity generally.

‘Conceptual’ innovators tended to do their best work in their 20s, the results revealed.

Experimentalists, though, were more likely to get the Nobel Prize for work done in their 50s.

Professor Weinberg said:

“Whether you hit your creative peak early or late in your career depends on whether you have a conceptual or experimental approach.”

The probable reason is that being new to a field helps conceptualists, because they are not yet bogged down with accepted views.

Experimentalists, though, need time to accumulate their findings, digging slowly, layer after layer, until they unearth the mother lode.

The same is likely true for other areas of creativity outside the sciences.

Breakthrough ideas are more likely to come from the young, but older people have more time to perfect their art.

Creative peak

Other studies have compared different disciplines to look for creative peaks.

These have generally found that scientific creativity peaks in people’s mid-30s to early 40s.

Professor Weinberg said:

“These studies attribute differences in creative peaks to the nature of the scientific fields themselves, not to the scientists doing the work.

Our research suggests than when you’re most creative is less a product of the scientific field that you’re in and is more about how you approach the work you do.”

The study was published in the journal De Economist (Weinberg & Galenson, 2019).

It may be why hotbeds of humour include places like hospitals, police stations and the military.

People who are unconsciously thinking about death are funnier.

The reason is that being funny helps people to defend themselves against anxiety.

Perhaps this is why hotbeds of humour include places were death is closer than usual, such as hospitals, police stations and the military.

The study involved 117 people split into different groups.

One group were made to think about death unconsciously by having the word ‘death’ flashed up on a screen so quickly they could not consciously perceive it.

All the groups were then given New Yorker cartoons to caption.

In comparison to various other groups, those unconsciously thinking about death were funnier.

However, those who wrote about death before the captioning — and so were thinking about it consciously — came up with more dud captions.

Here is the theory behind the study:

“Terror Management Theory posits that human awareness (whether conscious or unconscious) of the
inevitability of death can lead to potentially paralyzing anxiety.

To manage or preempt this anxiety, individuals may turn to cultural and psychological defenses that ostensibly offer symbolic ways to transcend death.

Humor production may be particularly relevant to staving off death anxiety…

…humor has also been identified as a psychologically useful coping mechanism that enables individuals to remain resilient in the face of aversive life circumstances.”

In other words, not only do we make jokes to deflect from our anxiety about death, we actually make better jokes when thinking about death.

Related

• Sarcasm can promote creative thinking.
• People who use humour to laugh at themselves are happier.

The study was published in the International Journal of Humor Research (Long et al., 2013).