The Power of Creativity

Bob Whitby: Hello and welcome to Short Talks From the Hill, a podcast from the University of Arkansas. I’m Bob Whitby, a science writer at the university. Today we’re talking to assistant professor of psychology Darya Zabelina about her work studying creativity, focus and attention.

So you study creativity, imagination and focus, and other issues of the mind. How is it possible to quantify things that seem to be so subjective?

Darya Zabelina: How to measure creativity… There are several different sort of approaches, depending on what we mean by creativity. For example, there are laboratory tests to study creativity, such as divergent thinking tests, and that is just simply asking participants to generate some creative or novel uses for a common object, such as a brick. That’s a very sort of common example. So people are given a particular amount of time, and they’re asked to generate a certain, you know, a number of responses that they can do with the brick. You know, like use it as a doorstop or something. People also use it as to plant, like a planter. So, and then we just count the number of responses that people generated within that given time, usually it’s about two or three minutes, it’s very quick. Or we can also score for what’s called the originality, and that is how novel or creative each idea is compared to… either within the sample, to all the other responses within the sample, or to some standardized norms that exist for some of these divergent thinking tests.

BW: You recently published a paper on the effects of caffeine and creativity that got a lot of attention because a lot of people drink coffee. What were your findings?

DZ: Yes that was a fun study. We found that caffeine, a small dose of caffeine, 200 milligrams, which equals to about one strong cup of coffee, facilitated people’s problem solving, that is, usually when there’s one correct solution to a particular problem. An example would be you’re trying to find a solution, you have something that you’re working on and you know there’s only one correct solution, you need to sit down and focus, caffeine seems to help with that. However, it had absolutely no effect on creative thinking as we think of it. It had no effect on idea generation or on originality of responses on what I just described at the original thinking test.

BW: So it helps you focus better, but it doesn’t make you a more creative person?

DZ: Not in the study, we did not find that.

BW: So in your lab, the Mechanisms of Cognition and Attention Lab, you study creativity using an EEG machine. So is it possible to see creativity?

DZ: It’s not necessarily possible to see creativity, but we can look at brain states that are sort of associated with creative thinking, when people are thinking and being particularly creative. We can see what sort of brain states are associated with that type of thinking and generally in our lab and many other labs there’s replicating findings that alpha band brain activity is linked with creative thinking. Alpha activity happens usually when we’re relaxed, not focused. We’re not focusing our attention when we’re relaxed, when we can, most likely we have like our eyes closed and daydreaming, our mind wandering. So those types of states seem to be especially conducive for creative thinking.

BW: Knowing what you do about creativity, is it possible to improve your own creativity or learn to be more creative?

DZ: Yes, definitely. So if being relaxed is linked with creative states, then finding ways that help you get to that state might increase your creative thinking. So even going to for a walk has been shown to help people to get to those states because it, you know, it gets you to sort of disengage, maybe, from what you’ve been working on and sort of mind wander a little bit. So states of mind-wandering, relaxing… you know, there’s that idea that the best ideas come in the shower, well there seems to be something to that, actually.

BW: Interesting. OK, and what is the link between creativity and imagination?

DZ: So, the way I like to think about it is imagination is a precursor to creativity. So we need to be able to imagine something before we create it. Sometimes in the literature, they can be used somewhat interchangeably, but generally we need to imagine something before we can create it. So can you think of imagination as picturing something in your mind then that the way you think of it, sure. There’s visual imagination, but the imagination can also involve other senses. It doesn’t have to be, although most commonly we think of imagination as a visual picture or a mental picture in the mind’s eye. But we can have other sensory imagination like tactile imagination, you know, where you can like imagine someone touching your hand for example, or gustatory imagination, where you just like imagine a taste of lemon, you know, it’s right there.

BW: What are the benefits of being a more creative person?

DZ: One of the most common findings is that creativity is linked with open-mindedness, so people who are more creative, they are more open to other people’s perspectives, they’re more empathic. They might be more empathic because they are more likely to imagine what it’s like to be another person, so in current times that might be especially relevant.

BW: Let’s talk a little bit about attention and focus. Is it possible to improve your attention and focus? Is that something that’s innate, or do you develop that as a skill?

DZ: Oh yeah, you can certainly develop it. I think some people are just like with creativity, attention or any other, you know, personality traits people might be predisposed to, say, more focused attention or to be more kind of broad attention, right.  But there are certainly ways of moving it around. For example, mindfulness training is very useful to help with focused attention. But you know, we also find that there are benefits to more… what we call leaky attention, and that is being able to actually pick up on things that other people might not be able to pick up. So we have several studies based on several different types of methodology, like behavioral methods, EEG and even some FMRI findings where we see that creativity is actually linked with, you know, more what we call leaky attention, again being more sensitive, being… sort of being able to pick up on things other people might not notice, and we call it, we say it’s a double-edged sword because, yes, it might be people with more leaky attention might be more distracted, like if you’re at a coffee shop and there are a lot of people around you, it’s really hard to focus. On the other hand, with that type of attention you might be, again, being able to notice some things other people might not notice, not just external environment but also an internal sort of environment, right. You might be a little more sensitive to some ideas or to some types of thinking that are just a little outside the box.

BW: You recently did a study on imagination, anxiety and the COVID epidemic. What were your findings?

DZ: Yeah, we found that people who spend more time imagining… so now we’re not necessarily looking at the quality of their imagination, or like the vividness of their imagination, but just quantity, how much time they spend imagining things… was linked to more anxiety in general, and it was also linked to more anxiety now compared to… during COVID compared to before COVID. So people who spend more time in their head, basically imagining different scenarios, their anxiety has increased from the before it, compared to now, and that was exacerbated by them feeling lonely. So people who spend more time imagining and feeling lonely, they’re the ones who experience the largest increases in anxiety.

BW: That’s very interesting, and that’s coming up?

DZ: Yes we’re about to submit it.

BW: Thanks for taking the time, I appreciate it.

DZ:  Yes, thank you.

Matt McGowan: Music for Short Talks From the Hill was written and performed by local musician Ben Harris. For more information and additional podcasts, visit Research Frontiers, the home of research news at the University of Arkansas.