People are biased against creative ideas, studies find
news.cornell.edu
news.cornell.edu
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
– Niccolo Machiavelli
- Friedrich Nietzsche
--Paul Graham (yechhh... now I feel like some kind of kiss-ass... but this is something that I keep in mind every day...)
Most people operate in their day-to-day via procedures. They learn that to accomplish task X, they do A then B then C.
Creative ideas require a procedure-less thinking process (or at least one where the procedure is not all that important so long as X is accomplished).
Most of the time I've hit resistance to a creative idea is because it requires people to learn new procedures to implement the idea. "You mean to accomplish X I should do A then D then F? What's wrong with A, B then C?"
Even in the face of evidence that the new idea might be easier, or faster, or as a side-effect also accomplish task Y, people simply don't want to take the mental effort to learn the new process.
Creative thinking is just not highly valued among the vast majority of humanity and it's a very hard sell.
Also, I remember a study done a long time ago on primates on an island. They all had a very specific way of opening coconuts or whatever, that they taught their young and each other, it wasn't very effective. So the researchers taught one of the primates a new and better way of opening a coconut and released him back with the others. Even though they others could clearly see that his way of opening coconuts was better and easier, the group stuck with the ways of the old. Perhaps because they wanted to conform and not stand out. Little by little a large number of them started using the new method over time. And when a certain percentage of them were using the new method the others converted as well. Lesson: We do what we do because society tells us to.
> For example, subjects had a negative reaction to a running shoe equipped with nanotechnology that adjusted fabric thickness to cool the foot and reduce blisters.
As if no reasonable person could ever have a negative reaction to that? I hope this wasn't their only test.
Personally, I think most people are biased against creative ideas because most people are concrete thinkers (as opposed to abstract thinkers). Their motto in life is "better the evil you know". Now all you have to do is test people on whether they're abstract or concrete thinkers, then correlate that to how they react to new ideas. I think you will find most concrete thinkers will react negatively to creative ideas that haven't been tried before.
Article lost me here. Because its hard to judge an idea as 'novel and high quality' in prospect. They should have used an idea that's proven but unknown to the test subjects.Makes the study harder but you end up with more concrete proof.
NB: In many occasions laughing maybe the most appropriate option!
"What do you think of this new idea?"
- "I don't like that, it's not something I'd want. I think it would be pointless."
<lets them try a demo>
- "Wow, this is amazing!"
What about practical, creative ideas, aka. hacks and lifehacks? Most of the people I know dismiss any 'non-standard' solution unless you actually implement it, and then force them to accept it. If you tell your idea before actually realizing it, there's no way they'll let you.
Also reminds me of stories from "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - it seems that Feynman experienced this first-hand as a child, when trying to optimize some kitchen chores (one of the solutions is now sold in stores, and nobody objects it now...).
Now, on the flip side, some creative ideas are awesome, and would be great, but no one knows about them, and everyone is tired of suffering through the 99% that are fiascoes, so they resist them. It's a pity, but the response is a reasonable one. Thus both the barriers to, and the rewards of, a truly groundbreaking innovation are high, and the innovator is called upon to do a lot of painful, frustrating, tedious selling of the idea.
The first in the market educates, and all but a few say "I don't want that, that's useless". Then a competitor arrives, and now the idea is no longer as creative, it is now somewhat familiar, and a much smaller leap for people to grasp.
Myself I'm somewhat of a creative anomaly (I have psyhc tests that put me in the top 0.1% of people on the planet). When I start a new project I go through this flow very quickly, I start by being laughed at as a crazy man, far out ideas. I pull a few tricks out of my hat, and within 2-3 months I'm the go to man for entire business.
That said I shift jobs every 18 months or so as I get sick of fighting with people constantly. Being creative can draw the worst out of people you are working with, unintentionally you belittle them, or expose them as frauds or whatever, some people are just jealous, others lazy and just offload hard work your way. You end up polarised very quickly.
I now run my own business because of this (as opposed to contracting which I was doing for a long time), and the majority of my ex employers still come to me for advice, some 10 years later still phoning me up with questions or inviting out for lunch/beers etc... I even have open ended job offers sitting there if I ever want to come back.
But as this article says its hard being creative in a world that out right rejects it.
Thinking of yourself as part of the top 0.1% people on the planet may lead to an attitude that makes people feel belittled or antagonistic.
If you treat people like idiots or mindless sheep, of course they'll reject your ideas.
As a kid I was treated really bad by there children. Teased constantly as ebign a weirdo because I thought differently, physical attacks from kids as the awards kept piling in. I remember getting a maths award, had to get up on stage to receive it. On the way out of the auditorium I was punched in the side of the head and some other kid ripped up the paper certificate. It wasn't nice, I was scared of other kids and went very quiet/introverted and focused on escapism... which ironically probably made the creative as I spent all my time imagining, drawing, reading.
I have boxes of awards, I think I've won some sort of award every year of my life without trying. This year I won an advertising award. I've never worked in advertising, I just got approached as I was running an online news team. I suggested an idea, prototyped, it sold, industry choked on how left field it was, and now I have an award for being the top advertising creative person of 2010.
I'm quite an extrovert these days as I got past most of that sort of stuff... but its still there. University changed me heaps, when all of a sudden all the girls liked me. I got my confidence back, became somewhat of a people person and cavalier amongst the ladies.
Most people who know me outside of work wouldn't even consider me as employable. The crap I went through as a kid has stayed with me, I never like to expose any true abilities I have unless I have to.
Most as people know me as a comedian, drunken musician, and an artist. Very few people could guessed I have been a contracting and designing major infrastructure projects for governments, telecommunications projects. I have no formal training in computing at all. All I know I picked up as a child, and through short term contract work. My tertiary training is in conceptual artwork and minoring in music production. To look at me you'd probably call me a stereotypical hipster. Stretched ear lobes, tattoos, and a suit at a board meeting with directors of multinational corporations is a bizarre mix ;)
I didn't know I was in the 0.1% until recently, went more or less my whole career just trying to be average Joe blogs who had good ideas and got promoted quickly. To be honest most of the time I would show my manager something (or suggest it), and then they would force me into a situation where I would have to take me idea to the business, sell what ever it is, and defend it from criticism etc... I would usually try and get out of it if I could but often people don't quite understand the concept enough they don't feel comfortable making the sell.
It was only working on a project and management decided to do a team building day. They brought in psychologists to do pshycho-analysis so we could see each others benefits and flaws, and they where blown away by my results and offered me to participate in some other tests they had (as I turned out to be an anomaly and they don't often just stumble across prime research people).
From your description, it sounds like this was a more validating experience than awards. Why do you think that is?
They displayed the results and I wasn't normal, intact my results seemed like they might be completely wrong. At the time I was working for a large courier company, in an IT department, improving delivery tracking systems. To get someone off the scale in metrics not generally found in an IT department is an anomaly. Maybe if it was a group of artists I may have just been elevated and overlooked, but I guess the context was important for making me stand out.
I don't know what the tests where. I just took an afternoon off and went down to there offices and did the tests they presented. Its was on a computer and lots of behavioural questions and IQ type puzzles. I thin I did around 5 tests that after noon. They rang me back a week or so later and went throughout eh results with me, and then emailed me a series of figures and graphs.
Are they accurate I dunno? but the last set of figures which they went through had that creativity figure. But to tell a story of accuracy I'll tell yo a story about my friend who is in Mensa.
He worked out that the mensa test he was given was time based. So he paid his fee, answered the first few questions, then skipped all the rest and finished the exam in a few minutes. When all the weighting was put together he had scored extremely high on the IQ scale by doing this.
Is he a genius? I dunno. If its a genius move to outsmart mensa then yes. But he didn't really sit the test, he intact just spotted a flaw and abused it.
As for awards and validation. I think I've associated awards with the potential for negative thing to happen later. In my last position when I won the advertising award, a new pressure to be the best this year suddenly appeared... after all I was now recognised as the best in the industry... My daily work became more difficult because expectations are imposed on me that I didn't want or need. Hell running a news team + site is enough hard work without being expected to be an advertising maverick as well.
So its usually other people either that notice things I've done or put me forward, I never nominate myself. I hate awards.
I just want work and solve problems. I get pleasure from taking something that doesn't exist, thinking it through, and making it a reality. My house is full of useless inventions, toys, prototypes. I can't help myself. People often note on my inability to relax, I relax by indulging myself in ideas, which to others is the opposite of relaxing.
Seeing the results from those tests made me realise a lot of the problems I had been experiencing where probable never going to go away. Lets be honest (entrenched) IT is one of the least creative industries out there. Its generally very goal/problem focused, that often only has one or two possible outcomes. It gave me the motivation to pack up my 6 figure salary and walk out the door. Currently I'm going week to week scraping money together for food, but I haven't been happier. Got a few products close to launch, so the trial by fire is about to begin. Exciting times ... just need to stay off hacker news and reddit LOL
Anyway, good luck with the self-validation and back away from those awards.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dunning%E2%80...
Really good ideas often don't seem like much even to the person who's having them. They're fragile. It takes tolerance and suspension of judgment to allow them to survive even for half a second. This is a form of listening, one that goes hand in hand with the ability to listen to others, which makes sense since creativity is also a kind of other.
I grant you that the Coyote is lovable, though. For one thing he never seems to get angry.
I don't think it should matter where an idea comes from. I read an article from Fred Wilson that mentioned (in a good way) how surprised a CEO was to find so many good ideas coming from customer service reps (who have the most direct experience with customers). I won't assume you ignored interns, but I think stereotyping by position is a good recipe for overlooking opportunities, just to save yourself some mental fatigue.
That was around the time I started thinking about finding somewhere else to work.