There are many stories about the creative mind. Your thoughts are as wondrous and magical as the curtain rises in the theatre. Science has long known more about perceived magic. An international research group has now investigated in several countries what myths still persist about the subject of creativity.
Mathias Benedek from the University of Graz and his team recruited nearly 1,300 adults from Germany, Austria, China and the US on the online platform. Test subjects were presented with 30 statements about creativity, for example “creative thinking occurs primarily in the right hemisphere”, mixed with other statements, for example from brain research, as well as their own questions about.
“On average, every other person found the creativity myths to be true,” Benedek and colleagues report. like her in the trade magazine »Personality and Individual Difference« writes, four out of five respondents agreed with the false statement that brainstorming in groups generates more ideas when everyone thinks for themselves. Nearly two-thirds thought children were more creative than adults, and nearly as many mistakenly believed that most people could not tell abstract art from abstract children’s drawings. In each case, more than half also believed that the right hemisphere in particular is responsible for creative thinking.
Respondents found it less difficult to deal with facts: For example, 97 percent correctly believed that a break helps to come up with new ideas. But only one in two knew that the first idea is often not the best and that top creative achievements are usually preceded by ten years of work.
