by Zoë Pollock
Jonah Lehrer explains why with the help of a recent paper, “The Dark Side of Creativity.” Students were asked to describe their dream job:
The students were randomly assigned to either a positive or negative feedback condition, in which their speech was greeted with smiles and vertical nods (positive) or frowns and horizontal shakes (negative). After the speech was over, the subjects were given glue, paper and colored felt and told to make a collage using the materials. Professional artists then evaluated each collage according to various metrics of creativity. Not surprisingly, the feedback impacted the mood of the subjects: Those who received smiles during their speeches reported feeling better than before, while frowns had the opposite effect. What’s interesting is what happened next: Subjects in the negative feedback condition created much prettier collages. … I’m afraid the novelist J.M. Coetzee was at least partially right: “Always move towards pain when making art.”
(Video: a dark take on creativity, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared from This Is It on Vimeo.)
The Dish 