The Devil’s Bargain of Creativity
New research has found that behind the blessing of creativity may lie the curse of faulty memory. Psychologists have found a connection between increased creative thinking abilities and false memory errors due to a common flexible and constructive memory system.
Creativity requires two main types of thinking: divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to come up with new ideas by exploring many possible solutions to a problem. Researchers often test this with an “alternative uses task” where you are given a common object—such as a brick or a rope—and asked to generate as many different uses as possible. The higher the quantity and/or the more unique the responses, the better your divergent thinking abilities. Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is the ability to problem-solve by finding common ground between disparate elements. Psychologists often asses this with a “remote associates task”, where you are given three seemingly unrelated words, (e.g.: dust, cereal, fish) and asked to generate a solution word that links the three together (e.g.: bowl).
Both divergent and convergent thinking rely on flexibility when making mental connections. This flexibility allows us to fill in the missing links between information. Similarly, processes behind our memory also rely on flexibility to fill in gaps in our recall and recognition of what we’ve seen or experienced. But is this ability that allows us to be creative, also what causes us to misremember the past by filling in missing pieces that never existed?
To investigate this question, researchers gave to people a series of memory and creativity tests. First, they used the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm to test people’s tendency to misremember information. In this procedure, participants were given lists of related words (e.g.: sweet, honey, candy, etc.) that all have a related target word in common, but is not shown (e.g.: sugar). Later, participants were first asked to write all the words they recalled seeing and then asked to identify which words they recognized from a list that included a mix of the original words, related target words, and new words. The related target words are often falsely remembered due to the brain’s tendency to maximize efficiency and group patterns of information. After the memory tests, participants completed an alternative uses task to measure divergent thinking and a series of remote associates tasks to measure convergent thinking.
Interestingly, people who scored higher on the convergent thinking test were more likely to falsely recognize target words that were never shown. People who gave more responses on the divergent thinking test were also more likely to falsely recall target words. (There was no relationship between memory errors and the originality of divergent thinking responses). These findings suggest the same mental flexibility that causes us to fill in missing gaps in our memory and cause us to misremember the past, may also underlie one of our greatest gifts, our imagination and the ability to creatively connect new ideas.
Further Reading
Thakral, P. P., Devitt, A. L., Brashier, N. M., & Schacter, D. L. (2021). Linking Creativity and False Memory: Common Consequences of a Flexible memory System. Cognition, 217, 104905.
About the Author
Kaile Smith is a creativity researcher, creative director, and Ph.D. student in New York City. Her research explores the dynamic relationships between creativity, inspiration, emotions, and well-being in everyday life.
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