Creativity Quote of the Day: Anti-Creativity.

In his humor piece "The anti-creativity letters", cognitive psychologist Richard E. Nisbett, implies that the best way to destroy your creativity is to get you worried about creativity:

But worries about creativity are the best. Regardless of your patient's real or ascribed intelligence, he is bound to have doubts about his creativity. It is hard to believe, but humans actually think there is a properly of creativity that one can either "have" or "not have," as opposed to a talent for some field -- a love of its content that keeps them thinking about it all the time--organization, and a willingness to work. Because your patient hasn't the foggiest idea what the property of creativity might be or how he would know whether or not he has it, you can keep him constantly searching for signs and flinching at chimeras. And, of course, worries about his creativity will have the same salubrious effect on his work output that worries about his potency will have on his love life.

Nisbett, R. E. (1990). The anti-creativity letters: Advice from a senior tempter to a junior tempter. American Psychologist, 45, 1078-1082.

tags: creativity, psychology, quote