TY - JOUR

T1 - Sticky Tradition Impedes Selection of Creative Ideas

AU - Reis, Moritz

AU - Foerster, Anna

AU - Zettler, Ingo

AU - Kunde, Wilfried

AU - Pfister, Roland

N1 - Funding Information: Some of the data and ideas appearing in this article have been previously presented at the 22nd meeting of the European Society of Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP) in Lille, France; at the 65th Conference of Experimental Psychologists (TeaP) in Trier, Germany; and at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society (Psychonomics) in Boston, United States. Roland Pfister received funding from the Heisenberg Programme of the German Research Foundation (PF853/10-1). The authors declare no conflict of interest. Preregistrations, raw data, materials, and analysis syntax are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF repository: https://osf.io/mwyp7). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 American Psychological Association

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - Creativity is a driving force for human development and has fascinated scholars for centuries. Surprisingly little is known about the cognitive underpinnings of putting creative ideas into action, however. To shed light on this part of the creative process,we tracked how hand movements unfolded when choosing between either a traditional or a creative use of a given object. Participants could freely decide between both options (Experiment 1, N = 51 adults) or were prompted to select a specific use (Experiment 2, N = 51 adults). Temporal as well as spatial measures of action unfolding revealed behavior to be strongly biased toward traditional options when choosing an available, more creative option eventually. Creative behavior thus comprises two obstacles: not only coming up with new ideas, but also overcoming a lasting bias toward using old ones.

AB - Creativity is a driving force for human development and has fascinated scholars for centuries. Surprisingly little is known about the cognitive underpinnings of putting creative ideas into action, however. To shed light on this part of the creative process,we tracked how hand movements unfolded when choosing between either a traditional or a creative use of a given object. Participants could freely decide between both options (Experiment 1, N = 51 adults) or were prompted to select a specific use (Experiment 2, N = 51 adults). Temporal as well as spatial measures of action unfolding revealed behavior to be strongly biased toward traditional options when choosing an available, more creative option eventually. Creative behavior thus comprises two obstacles: not only coming up with new ideas, but also overcoming a lasting bias toward using old ones.

KW - cognitive control

KW - creativity

KW - innovation

KW - motion-tracking

KW - response dynamics

U2 - 10.1037/xge0001490

DO - 10.1037/xge0001490

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 37796574

AN - SCOPUS:85182955938

JO - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

JF - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

SN - 0096-3445

ER -