MOTIVATION

Motivation refers to a desire to do something, from getting up in the morning to feed the cat to staying up at night to study physics. Intrinsic motives include curiosity, interest and enjoyment in a particular task. Extrinsic motives include reward or recognition apart from the task itself. Amabile, Hill, Hennessey & Tighe (1994) show that intrinsic motivation correlates positively with creativity, whereas extrinsic motivation correlates negatively with creativity. An explanation for the negative correlation is that people try too hard when offered a reward (Sutherland, 1992). This kind of stress prevents flexibility of thinking. People will keep doing whatever is uppermost in their mind. This is also called the availability error. Amabile et al. suggest that a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation may be favorable however. People with a mix of both tend to do well at complex problem-solving. “Passion” is often used to describe this attitude. An optimal state of intrinsic motivation is also called flow, in which one is totally immersed in an activity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

Table 4 offers a brief summary of the factors that contribute to talent: HEREDITY Have unconventional, intelligent parents (IQ >=120).

ENVIRONMENT Surround yourself with creative individuals with similar interests. Play.

PERSONALITY Take time apart to think and investigate. Never take things for granted.

INTELLIGENCE Pick a task your mental ability can barely handle. Then work extremely hard.

EXPERIENCE Practice deliberately for 9 years.

KNOWLEDGE Read, listen, observe, debate, fantasize, question. Keep asking silly questions.

MOTIVATION Make a living out of the things you like doing (! what your dad likes doing).

Table 4. Summary of the complex of factors that contribute to talent.

4.3 Intuition and insight

Intuition refers to an a priori understanding without the need for conscious thought: a hunch or hypothesis that we believe to be true. Many eminent creators have reported following a hunch of some sort (Runco & Sakamoto, 1999).

In Ancient Greece, Pythagoras and his students had a hunch about numbers and proportions (at least that is how the story goes, but let us indulge for a moment). The Pythagoreans’ most beloved shape, the pentagram or five-pointed star, was a glimpse at the infinite. At the center of the star is a pentagon or five-sided polygon. Connecting the corners of the pentagon generates a new pentagram, and so on. The lines of each pentagram are governed by a beautiful proportion: the golden ratio, a division so that the ratio of the small part to the large part is the same as the ratio of the large part to the whole. It was perfect. It could be observed in nature over and over. Surely, if harmonic proportions governed numbers, shapes and nature alike, then did they not govern the construction of the entire universe?

But intuition is a systematic source of error in human judgment (Bowers, Regehr, Balthazard & Parker, 1990), misguided by cognitive heuristics such as representativeness and availability (“all cats have tails”). The golden ratio is an irrational number: ! = 1.618033987... It is not a proportion of nice, whole numbers. It is not 3/2, and not quite 5/3, and not entirely 8/5, and neither is it exactly 13/8. To the ratio-obsessed Pythagoreans, this wasn’t perfect at all! We can only wonder about their disappointment. To top it off, the golden ratio does not appear “over and over” in nature. It appears occasionally, since it is the factor of a logarithmic spiral. Some natural phenomena such as shells, hurricanes or galaxies approximate logarithmic spirals (Livio, 2003). Intuition is a poor method for prediction. However, it is an important faculty for discovering new ideas: an unonscious process that slowly converges into a conscious idea (Bowers et al., 1990). At first, a hunch is vague. An embryonically good idea that requires further development and testing (Forceville, C., personal communication, 2012). At the same time it feels promising already. But how can it feel promising if it is as yet undeveloped? In the mind, many (conflicting) unconscious processes are at work simultaneously. Some of these generate useless combinations (Boden, 2003),

while others are gradually becoming more coherent in pattern, meaning and structure. These emerge as a promising hunch which can eventually develop into a flash of insight. In comic books, this moment of breakthrough is signaled with a light bulb over the character’s head.

PRIMING

The transition from unconscious intuition ! _{conscious insight is believed to involve a period of}

incubation, during which one does not consciously think about the task, but where the mind continues to work on it below the level of consciousness (Nickerson, 1999). This is different from multitasking, which really is a conscious (and costly) task-switch. The transition is long-term, automatic, unconscious. One of the mechanisms involved is called priming: increased sensitivity to particular stimuli as a result of recent experience such as playing, driving a car, reading a book, watching a movie or having a dream. If we offer the word “cat” and then ask you to name two pets, there is a good chance you will say “cat” and “dog”. This is because “cat” is now saliently available in your mind, and “dog” is closely related to it. This is not so different from the hierarchical fair competition we discussed in chapter 1. A stream of primed stimuli to challenge, reinforce or hinder the formation of ideas. This implies that creativity can be enhanced by seeking positive stimuli (e.g., interesting books, movies, games) which appears to be supported by experimental studies (Mednick, 1964, Gruszka & Necka, 2002, Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005). That said, we can now turn to the question how new ideas emerge out of unconscious processing.

4.4 A concept search space

Let us consider the mind as a search space: a roadmap of concepts with paths in between (e.g., highways, streets and trails), connecting the concepts that are related to each other. How many concepts are represented in the search space (i.e., how far the map spans) depends on knowledge and experience. How each concept relates to other concepts depends on education, environment and personality. If we think about a cat, we might recall related concepts such as dog and mouse. These are easier to reach from cat than toaster. If you once owned a cat, thinking about your cat could also recall memories of a toaster: cat ! my cat ! 6 a.m. meowing ! breakfast ! toast, and so on. Because we cannot examine our own mind as a whole, neither can we “see” the search space as a whole. But we can wander along its paths, consciously or unconsciously. Each concept activates new associative paths to follow, by circumstance, similarity or mediation (Mednick, 1962, Balota & Lorch, 1986). Some paths may lead us to explore a part we didn’t even know was there. Some paths may be too long, too old or too unreliable to investigate right now. Some will lead to a dead end or run in circles.

As more paths are traversed – as more related concepts get involved – the idea grows. Short paths to nearby concepts yield commonly available associations. For example: cats chase mice. Mundane ideas come to mind first, and then with effort more novel ideas (Osborn, 1963). For example: a hungry cat makes a good alarm clock. Distant or atypical relations yield Big-C creative ideas (Schilling, 2005) but come slower (Jung-Beeman et al., 2004). More relations in a larger search space enable more creative ideas.