If you’ve read Tuesday’s post about dog poop, you may say it was childish. Would you also say it was creative? According to a study from North Dakota State University, the two might go hand in hand.
Darya L. Zabelina and Michael D. Robinson conducted a study featuring 76 undergraduates who were told to imagine that all their classes had been canceled for one day. The students were asked to picture that free day and write about what they would do. They had the entire day to themselves and were allowed to chose anything they would like to do.
However, half of the participants were told to imagine that they were 7-years-old. They had to forget their current age and write from the mindset of a child. How would their 7-year-old self spend that free day?
The researchers took the accounts from all the students and ran them through the Torrance Test of Creativity (TTCT). Their results showed that those students who were imagining themselves as children scored responses that were far more original on the TTCT. The results were particularly strong for introverted individuals, who are generally less spontaneous.
Zabelina and Robinson concluded that the mindset of children, “is one in which a task is seen in terms of opportunities for play and exploration. The mindset of adults, on the other hand, is likely to involve trying to find the ‘correct’ conventional solution to a presented task or problem.”
They are not suggesting we get rid of our adult mindset. This mature way of thinking lends itself to decision making. But that doesn’t mean it always inspires creativity.
If you need to be creative, you might not want to spend all your day thinking like a task oriented, conventional (aka boring old) grown up. Luckily for us, we are all able to flip the switch and turn on our childlike mindset.
“Mindsets are flexible,” concluded Zabelina and Robinson.
Thinking of oneself as a young child for some period of time may facilitate creative performance, particularly in terms of the originality of one’s responses.”
So next time we aren’t feeling particularly creative, we need to ask ourselves: What would my 7-year-old self think about this?
Photo credit: Wikipedia
