SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Pressure to Conform Can Inspire Creativity
from Miller-McCune
Do you think of yourself as not particularly creative? Well, you might have more innovative ideas than you realize. To access them, you just need to feel some pressure to conform.
Admittedly, that sounds like an oxymoron; creative thinking and conformity are usually considered mutually exclusive. But newly published research finds a specific sort of arm twisting can help people who aren't terribly innovative increase their creative output.
The key is pressuring them to think independently, within the confines of a group project. In the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Jack Goncalo of Cornell University and Michelle Duguid of Washington University describe a study featuring 496 undergraduates. Participants began by filling out a 30-item survey designed to measure their perceived level of creativity.
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