Conformity and creativity
By Douglas EbyIn his PsyBlog post Why Group Norms Kill Creativity, Jeremy Dean (a researcher at University College London) notes that “Groups only rarely foment great ideas because people in them are powerfully shaped by group norms: the unwritten rules which describe how individuals in a group ‘are’ and how they ‘ought’ to behave.
“Norms influence what people believe is right and wrong just as surely as real laws, but with none of the permanence or transparency of written regulations.
He continues, “The purpose of norms is to provide a stable and predictable social world, to regulate our behaviour with each other. In many respects norms have a beneficial effect, bolstering society’s foundations and keeping it from falling into chaos.
“On the other hand stability and predictability are enemies of the creative process.
“When groups are asked to think creatively the reason they frequently fail is because implicit norms constrain them in the most explicit ways.
“This is clearly demonstrated in a recent study carried out by Adarves-Yorno et al. (2006). They asked two groups of participants to create posters and subtly gave each group a norm about either using more words on the poster or more images.
“Afterwards when they judged each others’ work, participants equated creativity with following the group norm; the ‘words’ group rated posters with more words as more creative and the ‘images’ group rated posters with more images as more creative. The unwritten rules of the group, therefore, determined what its members considered creative. In effect groups had redefined creativity as conformity.”
Pushing beyond those group norm constraints can enhance creativity
Management expert Tom Peters notes in his article The Entrepreneurial Spirit that “weird” can be good, “if we don’t judge others through our lens… Being weird increases creativity if we allow it to flourish.”
And Psychologist Robert Ornstein, PhD (author of The Psychology of Consciousness) has pointed out, “If you spend too much time being like everybody else, you decrease your chances of coming up with something different.”
More related quotes in my post Being eccentric and creative and productive – non-conformity and your creative potential.
“Gifted kids tend to hide their intelligence, as well as their talents, for a very simple reason: Conformity.” Claudia, 16
That quote is from the book When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers: How to Meet Their Social and Emotional Needs – quoted in my post Gifted Kids: Nerds endure and create even without support.
In his post Do You Have the Weirdo Syndrome?, “incorrigible polymath” Charlie (Productive Flourishing site) quotes Judy Garland: “Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.”
He continues: “One of the things that comes up over and over again in my conversations with a lot of the cool, creative people that I meet is what I’m calling the Weirdo Syndrome. The Weirdo Syndrome is the love/hate relationship some people people can get from their own uniqueness.”
Also see multiple posts on Eccentricity.
