The Surprising Reason New Ideas Face Criticism And Rejection (M)

The world is full of new ideas, it is getting people to accept them that is the problem.

The world is full of new ideas, it is getting people to accept them that is the problem.


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This Personality Trait Makes Some People Look More Attractive

How less attractive men can make themselves stand out from the crowd.

How less attractive men can make themselves stand out from the crowd.

Plain-looking men can boost their attractiveness to women by being creative, research finds.

The same boost in attractiveness, strangely, does not apply to plain-looking women.

In fact, for less attractive women, creativity could actually be a dating handicap.

Dr Christopher Watkins, the study’s author, said:

“Creative women with less attractive faces seem to be perhaps penalised in some way.”

The boost for average-looking men, though, was substantial, said Dr Watkins:

“Creative guys with less attractive faces were almost identical in attractiveness to really good looking guys who were not as creative.”

Top of the pile, naturally, were men who were both good-looking and creative.

The importance of displaying creativity may be partly that imagination suggests intelligence.

Dr Watkins said:

“Women on average are a more selective sex when it comes to choosing romantic partners.

Creativity is thought to be a signal that an individual can invest time and effort into a particular task or can see things in novel ways that may be useful for survival.”

Unfortunately, those who are creative may not have a chance to show it in the modern, superficial world of online dating.

Dr Watkins said:

“Certain platforms that we have now for dating might not be favourable for assessing people on more complex attributes.”

Creativity is not just attractive in a dating context, but also in friendships, the study found.

Creativity looks good

Compare this study with another piece of attraction research testing whether personality can beat looks:

“Women say they prefer the personality traits of friendliness and respectfulness, but new research reveals it’s really all about looks.

When tested, women pick men who are physically attractive over those with better personality traits.

Younger women, in particular, pay little attention to whether men are trustworthy, respectful and honest — just whether they are fit.

[…]

The results revealed that personality made little difference when men were unattractive.

Perhaps, though, creativity can do the trick in place of being friendly and respectful.

The study was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science (Watkins, 2017).

The Frightening Effect Of Screen Time On The Human Imagination

Both reading and watching video change people’s imaginative powers.

Both reading and watching video change people’s imaginative powers.

Reading books stimulates the imagination better than watching videos, a study finds.

Indeed, watching stories and images on screen may serve to dull the imagination.

Like most other cognitive or physical functions, the imagination needs to be used to keep it working.

Although many have speculated that reading stimulates the imagination, while video dulls it, this is one of the first studies to find empirical evidence.

Reading vs screens

The study included over 200 people who were first presented with either film clips to watch or text to read.

Then they were asked to use their imagination to compare objects not related to the video or text.

The results showed that people’s ability to visualise was slower after they had watched a video than if they had been reading a text.

Dr Sebastian Suggate, the study’s first author, explained:

“We found that those who had been watching film clips had slightly impaired imagery for 25 seconds compared to those who had just been reading and that this did not change depending on whether they had seen fast-moving or slow-moving images on screen.

In reality, this is a very small time delay, but if you look at what this means over a longer period of time—days or years of consistently consuming images on screen—then we can see that this is actually a significant impact on the brain’s ability to mentally visualize and feel.”

TV kills the imagination

In a previous study, researchers had found much the same effect in children aged 3-9 years, but over the longer term.

Over 10 months of watching TV for between 1 and 4 hours per day, the children’s ability to visualise was reduced, suggesting it was negatively affecting their imagination.

Dr Suggate said:

“In order to produce images in the brain or mind, we rely on a number of sensory systems, and not just our ability to see.

It takes the experiences of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch to produce a response to the world around us, and our study in children suggests that passively consuming images for hours and over a long period of time without routinely stopping to do something else that tests our other sensory functions, or to simply pause their viewing to discuss what they had just seen on the television, dulls the imaginative capabilities.

In our study with adults, we see a similar effect in a short period of time, and by comparing it to reading, we can see that the brain needs to actively create mental imagery, and we appear to be able to do this better when the images have not already been given to us via film clips.”

A strong imagination is not just important for creativity, but for more mundane pursuits like planning everyday activities, relating to other people and the world around us.

Dr Suggate said:

“Some screen time is fine, but balancing this out with things like reading, interacting with other people, and exercising outdoors seems to be the best way to protect our imaginative capabilities.

It is important that we do protect it because it has a big impact, particularly on young children as their brains develop, and the concern is that we want to avoid having generations of people who struggle to see themselves in other people’s shoes and imagine alternative ways of addressing both big and small challenges.

Many social and environmental problems provide good examples of this; in many ways, we need to be able to imagine what our world was and what it will be like if we don’t do things differently.”

Related

The study was published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts (Suggate et al., 2023).

Why Depression Makes Everyday Decisions Difficult (M)

The research may help explain why people who are depressed say they find it difficult to make ordinary, everyday decisions.

The research may help explain why people who are depressed say they find it difficult to make ordinary, everyday decisions.


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How To Dream Your Way To Enhanced Creativity (M)

The brain is able to make more wide-ranging connections in a sleeping or semi-sleeping state, technically known as hypnagogia.

The brain is able to make more wide-ranging connections in a sleeping or semi-sleeping state, technically known as hypnagogia.


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8 Proven Ways To Supercharge Your Creativity

Get creative by seeing with child-like eyes, spotting your most creative ideas and escaping from conventional thinking.

Get creative by seeing with child-like eyes, spotting your most creative ideas and escaping from conventional thinking.

Creativity is not just for ‘creative types’ like artists — everyone needs it.

The ordinary routines of daily life are enlivened by new ideas.

How we eat, travel, exercise, socialising, work and even simply think are all enhanced by the unconventional.

Naturally, everyone can be creative: we can all innovate given time, freedom, autonomy, experience to draw on, perhaps a role model to emulate and the motivation to get on with it.

So, below are 8 psychology studies from the members-only section of PsyBlog on the psychology of creativity.

(If you are not already, find out how to become a PsyBlog member here.)

  1. How Conventional Thinkers Can Be More Creative
  2. The Benefit Of Seeing With Child-Like Eyes
  3. Why We Have So Many Ideas While Walking Or Showering
  4. Neurotic People Have This Surprising Mental Advantage In Creativity
  5. This Word Game Reveals A Really Creative Mind
  6. The Wonderful Emotion That Helps Drive Creativity
  7. How To Avoid Getting Stuck In A Rut
  8. How To Spot Your Best Ideas

→ Read on: Creativity: 14 Ways To Find Inspiration And Originality

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Benefits Of Being A Loner: It Has Psychological Advantages

Being a loner for the right reason has benefits, psychology finds — it depends on the reasons for social withdrawal.

Being a loner for the right reason has benefits, psychology finds — it depends on the reasons for social withdrawal.

Spending time alone is linked to increased creativity among some people, research finds.

Not all forms of social withdrawal are unhealthy, it seems.

However, it depends on the reason for the withdrawal.

Social withdrawal related to anxiety and fear is linked to negative outcomes, but social withdrawal without this feature is linked to creativity.

Dr  Julie Bowker, the study’s first author, said:

“Motivation matters.

We have to understand why someone is withdrawing to understand the associated risks and benefits.

When people think about the costs associated with social withdrawal, often times they adopt a developmental perspective.

During childhood and adolescence, the idea is that if you’re removing yourself too much from your peers, then you’re missing out on positive interactions like receiving social support, developing social skills and other benefits of interacting with your peers.

This may be why there has been such an emphasis on the negative effects of avoiding and withdrawing from peers.”

Benefits of being a loner

Now psychologists are beginning to better understand the different motivations for social withdrawal and the benefits of being a loner.

Some are loners out of anxiety, but others are loners because they enjoy spending time alone.

Like the American writer, Henry David Thoreau, who retreated to a cabin in the woods to write his most famous book, Walden.

Dr  Bowker said:

“Although unsociable youth spend more time alone than with others, we know that they spend some time with peers.

They are not antisocial.

They don’t initiate interaction, but also don’t appear to turn down social invitations from peers.

Therefore, they may get just enough peer interaction so that when they are alone, they are able to enjoy that solitude.

They’re able to think creatively and develop new ideas — like an artist in a studio or the academic in his or her office.”

For the study, 295 young adults reported their motivations for social withdrawal and being a loner.

Dr  Bowker said:

“Over the years, unsociability has been characterized as a relatively benign form of social withdrawal.

But, with the new findings linking it to creativity, we think unsociability may be better characterized as a potentially beneficial form of social withdrawal.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Bowker et al., 2017).