The issue of Creativity in Problem Solving

Creativity is an overused word globally. Experts and laymen alike use it to explain everything that is wrong with everything from education systems to fashion and movies, and the host of solutions that are being proposed to ensure the survival of the planet. The knowledge that is lacking though is how creativity is born and can be nurtured to the point that it is able to be applied.

What is this creativity? Why are so many of us convinced that this is the one trait that will solve all our problems and be a stepping stone to success? Let’s start with some simple experiments that try to deal with the little details of this big picture called “Creativity”.

1. The Einstellung Effect (when thinking is mechanised due to previous experience): Lurchins Water Jar experiment, 1942

2. Incubation effect (when interruption of the task improves eventual success rate): Silveira’s Cheap-necklace problem experiment, 1971

3. Functional Fixedness (when problem solving is fixed by a perceived fixed use of objects, leading to failure): Dunker’s The Candle Experiment, 1945

4. Issues of Correct representation (when presentation of a problem can influence the ease by which it is solved): Wickelgren’s Mutilated Checkerboard problem, 1974

5. Spontaneous Transfer (when people solve new problems using learning from a prior experience, even when not conscious of the connection): Maiers’s Two String Problem, 1931

6. Intrinsic motivations (when people perform better and more consistently when they are motivated intrinsically) Deci’s Soma Cube Experiment, 1969

Knowing all these, where do we go next? How do we use this knowledge we have from all the research that shows what blocks, sparks and sustains creativity and intrinsic motivations?

Could our intensely vivid world restrict creativity?

I was reading a damn good book this morning, when I was engaged in my morning ablutions, and I suddenly realised I was running late. I was lost in a world of magic and adventure for 30 minutes and it felt like 5.

I then realised that this never happened when I was reading my favourite comics, Tintin or Asterix and Obelix. I never did get lost in the comic world because the imagery was all laid out for me and nothing much was left to my imagination.

What if in our world, where imagery and videos and YouTube greet us at every turn, we are losing the ability to imagine and dream? My children do not need to construct 3D worlds in their heads because everything is laid out for them. They don't need to lose themselves in their laptops, but must instead stay focused on the pictures and videos that are going by. What do they lose in the process? What do they gain?

Could it be that Creativity is becoming such a huge issue, simply because we are building a world that negates the need for our children to be creative - everything is precisely laid out for them? There is no need for them to turn inward and make order out of the chaos that is the usual resting state of our brains. They are constantly turning outwards and looking at directions and instructions that are laid out for them.

Is there a train of logic here? Can you reflect and build in your head, the scenario I have just mapped out and picture the results - a child of today waiting to receive pictures and imagery, rather than building them in his head? Is there a logical link between this vivid world and the destruction of a creative mind?