Having the right attitude

Mind moves: Have you noticed how sometimes your most creative thinking emerges when you feel relaxed and at ease with the world? You lie there in bed with a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning or you come to the end of a walk beside the sea, and suddenly you see how to solve some problem that has been eating away at you.

An image that perfectly captures the essence of a project you are trying to put together suddenly comes together. Suddenly, there is some insight that you know will carry you forward in your work or your relationship with someone you love.

How people can encourage this quality of creativity in themselves and others was the focus of an intriguing experiment recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Research, perhaps the most respected research publication in psychology.

What was remarkable about this experiment was that, while it was sophisticated and carefully controlled in its design, it also told a good story that could enliven a dinner conversation as much as it might a board meeting or a psychology lecture.

Two groups of people were asked to look at a picture of a mouse that was placed at the centre of a maze, and to draw a path out of the maze that would offer freedom for the mouse.

In the first group, the participants were given a drawing that had a piece of cheese outside the maze; in the second group, the drawing had no cheese, but, instead, it included an ominous image of a predatory bird hovering over the maze.

The incentive to bring the mouse out of the maze in the first condition was the promise of some reward for the mouse while the incentive in the second condition was to free the mouse before it was attacked and eaten by the bird.

Participants worked independently and the time taken to free the mouse was compared between the two groups. It turned out the average time taken for each group was virtually identical. So what's the big deal, I hear you say. Bear with me, because we're not done yet.

Following the maze task, each group was asked to engage in a test of creativity. This task involved coming up with a range of creative uses for familiar everyday objects. Their answers were pooled together and rated on a creativity scale by an independent group of individuals who were entirely unaware of the nature of the experiment. And this is where it became interesting.

The ratings for the first group - the "cheese" condition - were over 50 per cent higher than those for the second group - the "predator" condition.

The experimenters were so surprised by the discrepancy in creativity ratings between the two groups that they repeated the experiments several times with a total of six completely independent randomly chosen groups.

The results were the same with every new cohort. Performing a task motivated by the promise of reward had a positive impact on releasing creative potential, whereas performing a task under the shadow of threat inhibited creative potential.

The researchers wondered if the difference in creativity scores was due to different levels of enjoyment or satisfaction among people in the cheese versus predator conditions. They tested for this possibility, but found this wasn't the case. The conclusions suggested by this experiment are that when the mind is activated by the presence of some threat, it behaves in a very different way than when it is activated by the possibility of some positive gain or reward. In both cases the work gets done, but where our minds are not engaged by a sense of threat, we think in a more expansive and creative way.

You can threaten someone in many different ways to force them to complete a task, and they will probably do it for you. But if you want to encourage creative thinking, if you want them to "think outside the box", you need to go at things in a different way. You need to focus with them on what the benefits of solving a particular problem might be, rather than threaten them with what will happen if they don't.

If you are trying to get your own creative juices flowing, you might do well to take time to calm down and re-establish a sense of safety in the world for yourself before considering some problem that confounds you. Think a little about why you are so concerned to resolve a particular dilemma. What is it you want and believe can be achieved by struggling with this problem? What would be the best possible outcome for you?

Being focused on what could be the most positive outcome sets your mind up to engage with the problem in a creative, expansive way, whereas worrying about all that could go wrong for you if you don't find the answer, constricts your thinking and inhibits creativity.

Dr Tony Bates is principal psychologist at St James's Hospital, Dublin.