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Comment by cturhan | Hacker News Reader

Two titles on the front page. One says cheer up to be more creative and the other says feel sad. Interesting

I've been doing a lot of research on creativity lately and the consensus seems to be that any strong emotion can make a person feel more creative. Joy or depression, love or hate. It seems contradictory and people prefer clear messages, which is why I'd imagine that the authors of the respective pieces decided to present only one side or the other.

It makes sense to me at least. People are most creative when they are out of their comfort zone and seeing the world from a slightly different perspective. Whether that's being unusually happy or unusually sad, any emotional condition that changes point of view can lead to ideas that wouldn't normally occur.

"Strong emotions cause creativity" isn't the least bit contradictory... is it?

When I'm sad or depressed, I feel "stuck". All my side projects, all my fun hobbies, everything I normally get excited about goes on hold. Heck, I can't even function properly at my job. The feeling grips me and causes a dull headache. I feel alone and I can't shake it. Normally, I can be alone and pursue all my fun passion projects. Or be able to learn. Or perform my job like a man on drugs.

When sad, though. I'm a zombie. Nothing inspires creativity, nothing makes me excited. When I feel like that, I'm definitely not in my comfort zone. If you want help with your research, PM me and I'll be happy to share my experience with you.

Fark does that all the time, they'll have consecutive "X happened, stocks will go up" and "X happened, stocks will go down" headlines. It's not a bad way to highlight that the experts-of-the-day are divided, actually.

They're not mutually contradictory; perhaps feeling strong emotions, in general, gets people more creative?

Yeah. If you want to do things differently, you have to see things differently, and/or you have to want different things. And different emotional states achieve that. Or drugs. Or travel. Or anything, really, apart from "the same thing that happened yesterday". (Which is most people's default.)

There's one recommending boredom now too.

The titles aren't, but the actual articles are, as the other one said that being happy makes you creative, while being sad makes you less creative but more focused.

On the other hand, this article seems to agree with the focused part, so I think the difference is probably how they defined creativity, as in this one they asked artists to do it while in the other article I believe they looked at brain patterns.

This is becoming the Cosmos magazine of geeky people.

As the top few comments on the other submission note, that "cheer" headline isn't really supported by the article.

Could mean that we can regress out one's mood, they are unrelated variables. Your mood doesn't drive creativity.

Three! Don't forget boredom. Does feeling faintly amused also boost creativity?

For those from the future wondering we're referring to: http://i.imgur.com/WZXjPDo.png

I believe there was also a "boredom aids in creativity" article on here today. Which would coincide with sadness, as boredom and depression sometimes go hand in hand.

"To be more creative, stop reading totally unscientific articles about how to be more creative, and start doing stuff."

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