Despite the fact that sarcasm is considered the most unpleasant form of wit, it requires considerable mental effort. French-American research Li Huanga, Francesca Ginob, Adam D. Galinsky. The highest form of intelligence: Sarcasm increases creativity for both expressers and recipients / Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes showed that participants in a sarcastic conversation activated abstract thinking and increased creativity.
An additional conclusion that scientists have come to: sarcasm provokes a conflict between not very close people, but this does not happen with those who have established trusting relationships. So you can safely troll friends — it's only for the benefit of your creative side.
Neuroticism (neuroticism) is not considered the most positive trait: it is characterized by emotional instability and anxiety. However, researchers from the UK and the USA note Adam M. Perkins, Danilo Arnone, Jonathan Smallwood, Dean Mobbs. Thinking too much: self-generated thought as the engine of neuroticism / Opinion that this personality trait is also strongly associated with creativity and imagination.
What is the point? Roughly speaking, in order to constantly invent threats, you need to have a good imagination.
Moshe Bar, professor who researched Vadim Axelrod, Geraint Rees, Michal Lavidor, and Moshe Bar. Increasing propensity to mind-wander with transcranial direct current stimulation / PNAS wandering mind (a state when a person is absorbed in his thoughts, not focused solely on the task or the environment), notes Daydreaming is NOT Just A Waste Of Time, Studies Finds / PsyBlog that such a condition involves many areas of the brain. And this is very useful for creativity.
Interestingly, the brain continues to successfully cope with routine tasks when "wandering". You know this well if you've washed dishes at least once.
In a sense, the opposite conclusion to the previous one was made by American scientists. According to the results of their research Darya L. Zabelina, Daniel O’Leary, Narun Pornpattananangkul, Robin Nusslock, Mark Beeman. Creativity and sensory gating indexed by the P50: Selective versus leaky sensory gating in divergent thinkers and creative achievers / Neuropsychologia , creative personalities are more easily distracted by extraneous signals. Marcel Proust comes to mind, who locked himself in a corked room and put on earplugs to work in silence.
Researchers note that hypersensitivity is useful to creators: with its help, they can feel the world more subtly. But at what cost!
Researchers of the collective mind claim Michael Muthukrishna and Joseph Henrich. Innovation in the collective brain / The Royal Society : innovation is not the product of talented units, but of many. In other words, innovations arise through communication and the exchange of ideas.
One of the authors of the study urges: if you want to be more creative, talk to people with whom you disagree.
It is not necessary to take these words literally. But if you are really willing to hear and listen to different opinions, you probably have a better chance of creating something breakthrough.
The less control you have over the creative process, the better the result. Approximately this conclusion was reached by scientists who monitored the work of the brain while drawing.
For your experiment Manish Saggar, Eve-Marie Quintin, Eliza Kienitz, Nicholas T. Bott, Zhaochun Sun, Wei-Chen Hong, Yin-hsuan Chien, Ning Liu, Robert F. Dougherty, Adam Royalty, Grace Hawthorne & Allan L. Reiss. Pictionary-based fMRI paradigm to study the neural correlates of spontaneous improvisation and figural creativity / Nature they asked the subjects to graphically explain different words. The most creative works turned out to be those who did not consciously influence the process.
"Activation of the executive control centers of the brain — areas that are responsible for planning, organizing and managing actions — is negatively associated with the creative implementation of the task," noted The Creativity Secret That Most People Don’t Know / PsyBlog researchers.
At the same time, the cerebellum, the area responsible for coordination of movements, suddenly began to play an important role in the process. That is, more creative results were obtained by those who were involved in the creation of the drawing, and did not think about it.
