Creativity: how it works and why it’s declining

It’s ironic that just as science is beginning to discover how creativity works, it is (in the US at least) in the midst of a marked decline. A Newsweek article reports that while IQ has been steadily rising, generation by generation, creativity began to decline steeply after 1990.

It’s a fascinating article (that I’m only half-way through), but in case one day you ever need to remind yourself what creativity was, here’s how it used to work:

When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions.

Having glimpsed such a connection, the left brain must quickly lock in on it before it escapes. The attention system must radically reverse gears, going from defocused attention to extremely focused attention. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the “aha!” moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it’s come up with.

Now the brain must evaluate the idea it just generated. Is it worth pursuing? Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.

Read the full article…

Perhaps this is linked, but other research shows that giving children in families computers (in order to “bridge the digital divide”) actually reduces the kids’ grades. They end up playing computer games and getting distracted.