Innovation. Creativity.  Thinking out of the box.  Everyone is talking about it. But, what should we be doing to promote it.  (Talk is cheap, action counts.)  Years ago, there was a journal called Industrial Research, which was laden with cartoons.  One of my favorite was of a research lab, where a janitor on a stepstool repeatedly replaced the light bulbs of the creative types walking down the hallway (for those whose bulbs had dimmed).  This association between great ideas and light bulbs was recently put to the test.  Drs. Slepian, Weisbuch, Rutchick, Newman, and Ambady last year (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) last year described the improvements in problem solving  that shining a light bulb actually provided.

The researchers employed 73 college students, seated at computer screens.  Words flashed across their screens- 10 words that connote insight, 10 other words, and 20 non-words.  The subjects had to respond whether the material was a word or a non-word- quickly and accurately.  The test area was also populated with  either an unshaded 25W light bulb or a fluorescent lamp.  Those who were in the light bulb lit rooms responded quicker to the words associated with insight (than the other 30 choices and  those subjects surrounded by fluorescents). The subjects were then provided spatial, math, and verbal problems, with the same light scenarios – but now the illumination was turned on during the test (not before the test began).  Problems were solved faster and/or more often once the incandescent bulb was burning.

When repeated with shaded and unshaded incandescent bulbs, the bare light bulb provided superior results. This demonstrated that the light bulb was the trigger.  It provided a “priming effect” (light bulbs connote creativity impressions) to greater insights.

Even with the presence of such priming effects, most of us tend to look at new problems in exactly the same way we’ve looked at other problems.  Fresh looks don’t really happen.  (It’s what separates the most creative types from the rest of the pack.) As such, we may not discern new concepts or insight from our analysis. Our minds are hypothesis driven and tend to rely upon our preconceptions.

As a means to induce new perceptive strategies, Drs. Chi and Snyder (University of Sydney, Center for the Mind) provided (or said they did) electrical stimulation. The target area of the brain was the anterior temporal lobes.  The leftmost lobe addresses existing concepts and their representations (where preconceived notions emanate); the rightmost lobe is associated with insight.  The stimulation was transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive technique that can increase or decrease cortical excitability and spontaneous neuronal firing in the stimulated region depending on current polarity.  (This is very different from the deep brain stimulation discussed recently; these electrodes are not surgically implanted, but attached to the scalp.) They presented their study of 67 adult (18 to 38 y, 7 eventually excluded, all right-handed) subjects in the journal PLoS ONE.

20% of those who thought they received stimulation (the right anterior lobe was activated and the leftmost lobe was inhibited), demonstrated the ability to solve problems in the allotted time.  If they did receive stimulation, 60% achieved success.  If the opposite lobes were stimulated or inhibited, the results matched those that did not receive stimulation.

Whatever it takes- we need to harness our creativity to solve society’s problems.  Perhaps, we should replace those energy-saving squiglies with incandescent bulbs or use electrical stimulation.  Our problems are pressing.  And, we need really new processes and products (not ones labeled as such, but truly new innovations).

Share this: