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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

Why are people creative? Why do some people have so many "ideas"? In one study, neuroscientists used word association games to reveal the birth of ideas in the brain.

(Noa Leach / tr. by Phil Newell)

Translation | Chai Danling

Editor | Wen Jing

The original article is published in Science focus, No. 12, 2023.

A paper published in American Psychologist suggests that if you prefer to come up with new ideas rather than repeat what others have already done, you may be a more creative thinker. Not only that, the study also shows that the more you like an idea, the faster you will perfect and come up with it.

"our results show that a person's subjective evaluation of ideas is an important factor affecting creativity," said Emmanuelle Volle, a neuroscientist at the Institute of brain Research in Paris, France, who was one of the participants in the study. "We observed a relationship between the speed at which new ideas are generated and how much people appreciate them. In other words, the more you like the idea you are about to have, the faster you will come up with it. "

People who tend to produce original ideas are more creative. Creativity is a complex process that we know little about. In this study, scientists define creativity as the ability to generate innovative ideas or make related attempts in a particular context in order to solve problems or improve the status quo. According to this definition, scientists set out to study what makes us selectively produce some ideas, rather than others.

To this end, the scientists recruited 71 volunteers to participate in the word association game-volunteers need to match words in the boldest way. Finally, volunteers need to evaluate their innovation ability according to the relevance and originality of the matching results.

The results show that the importance of originality and relevance in thinking varies from person to person. " It all depends on their experience, their personality, and it may also have something to do with their environment, "Waller said." some people prefer to come up with new ideas rather than ideas that are more relevant to existing things, while others do the opposite. However, people who prefer original ideas or ideas about connectivity can affect the strength of creative thinking: our research shows that people who tend to produce original ideas come up with more creative concepts. "

The process of generating ideas includes exploring, evaluating and selecting scientists and trying to use computer technology to simulate the process of creative production. Scientists believe that the process of generating ideas consists of three parts, namely, exploration (the ability to record and reorganize existing ideas), evaluation (evaluating all ideas) and choices (deciding which ideas to further improve and share). So they reproduced these three parts through a mathematical model.

Through mathematical models, scientists can predict the speed and quality of innovative proposals made by volunteers based on their thinking preferences in word association games. This result suggests that in the future we may be able to accurately describe what happens in people's brains when they try to be creative. By understanding this process, we can better improve our creativity through cognitive exercises or by designing an environment that is more conducive to the cultivation of creativity.

"many questions still need to be explored and answered, but we are confident that we can overcome these problems in the future." Said Aliz é e Lopez-Persem, one of the participants in the study.

Scientists believe that the process of generating ideas includes three parts: exploration, evaluation and selection. Among them, choosing among all the ideas that have been generated is the key for the brain to produce innovative ideas. (photo source: Pixabay)

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