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- Written by: Lily Zhu, Washington State University
Do you think that creativity is an innate gift? Think again.
Many people believe that creative thinking is difficult – that the ability to come up with ideas in novel and interesting ways graces only some talented individuals and not most others.
The media often portrays creatives as those with quirky personalities and unique talent. Researchers have also identified numerous personality traits that are associated with creativity, such as openness to new experiences, ideas and perspectives.
Together, they seem to paint a dire picture for those who consider themselves conventional thinkers, as well as those who do not work in creative occupations – including roles that are often considered traditional and noncreative, such as accountants and data analysts.
These beliefs miss a key part of how creativity works in your brain: Creative thinking is actually something you engage in every day, whether you realize it or not.
Moreover, creativity is a skill that can be strengthened. This matters even for people who don’t consider themselves creative or who aren’t in creative fields.
In research that I recently published with organization and management scholars Chris Bauman and Maia Young, we found that simply reinterpreting a frustrating situation can enhance the creativity of conventional thinkers.
Using creative thinking to cope with emotions
Creativity is often defined as the generation of ideas or insights that are novel and useful. That is, creative thoughts are original and unexpected, but also feasible and useful.
Everyday examples of creativity are plentiful: combining leftover food to make a tasty new dish, coming up with a new way to accomplish chores, mixing old outfits to create a new look.
Another way you do this is when you practice what’s called “emotional reappraisal” – viewing a situation through another lens to change your feelings. There is an element of creativity to this: You’re breaking away from your existing perspectives and assumptions and coming up with a new way of thinking.
Say you’re frustrated about a parking ticket. To alleviate the bad feelings, you can think of the fine as a learning moment.
If you’re anxious about a presentation for work, you can cope with the anxiety by framing it as an opportunity to share ideas, rather than as a high-stakes performance that could result in demotion if handled poorly.
And if you’re angry that someone seemed unnecessarily combative in a conversation, you might reevaluate the situation, coming to view the behavior as unintentional rather than malicious.
Training your creative muscles
To test the link between creative thinking and emotional reappraisal, we surveyed 279 people. Those who ranked higher on creativity tended to reappraise emotional events more often in their daily life.
Inspired by the link between emotional reappraisal and creative thinking, we wanted to see whether we could use this insight to develop ways to help people be more creative. In other words, could emotional reappraisal be practiced by people in order to train their creative muscles?
We ran two experiments in which two new samples of participants – 512 in total – encountered scenarios designed to provoke an emotional response. We tasked them with using one of three approaches to manage their emotions. We told some participants to suppress their emotional response, others to think about something else to distract themselves and the last group to reappraise the situation by looking at it through a different lens. Some participants were also given no instructions on how to manage their feelings.
In a seemingly unrelated task that followed, we asked the participants to come up with creative ideas to solve a problem at work.
In the experiments, conventional thinkers who tried reappraisal came up with ideas that were more creative than other conventional thinkers who used suppression, distraction or received no instructions at all.
Cultivating flexible thinking
Negative emotions are inevitable in work and life. Yet people often hide their negative feelings from others, or use distraction to avoid thinking about their frustrations.
Our findings have implications for how managers can think about how to best leverage the skills of their workers. Managers commonly slot job candidates into creative and noncreative jobs based on cues that signal creative potential. Not only are these cues shaky predictors of performance, but this hiring practice may also limit managers’ access to employees whose knowledge and experience can play major roles in generating creative outcomes.
The result is that the creative potential of a significant part of the workforce may be underutilized. Our findings suggest that supervisors can develop training and interventions to cultivate creativity in their employees – even for those who might not seem predisposed to creativity.
Our research also indicates that people can practice flexible thinking every day when they experience negative emotions. Although people may not always have control over the external circumstances, they do have the liberty to choose how to cope with emotional situations – and they can do so in ways that facilitate their productivity and well-being.
Lily Zhu, Assistant Professor of Management, Information Systems and Entrepreneurship, Washington State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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- Written by: NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Like a sports photographer at an auto-racing event, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a series of photos of asteroid Dimorphos when it was deliberately hit by a 1,200-pound NASA spacecraft called DART on September 26, 2022.
The primary objective of DART, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, was to test our ability to alter the asteroid's trajectory as it orbits its larger companion asteroid, Didymos.
Though neither Didymos nor Dimorphos poses any threat to Earth, data from the mission will help inform researchers how to potentially divert an asteroid's path away from Earth, if ever necessary.
The DART experiment also provided fresh insights into planetary collisions that may have been common in the early solar system.
Hubble's time-lapse movie of the aftermath of DART's collision reveals surprising and remarkable, hour-by-hour changes as dust and chunks of debris were flung into space. Smashing head on into the asteroid at 13,000 miles per hour, the DART impactor blasted over 1,000 tons of dust and rock off of the asteroid.
The Hubble movie offers invaluable new clues into how the debris was dispersed into a complex pattern in the days following the impact. This was over a volume of space much larger than could be recorded by the LICIACube cubesat, which flew past the binary asteroid minutes after DART's impact.
"The DART impact happened in a binary asteroid system. We've never witnessed an object collide with an asteroid in a binary asteroid system before in real time, and it's really surprising. I think it's fantastic. Too much stuff is going on here. It's going to take some time to figure out," said Jian-Yang Li of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
The study, led by Li along with 63 other DART team members, was published on March 1 in the journal Nature.
The movie shows three overlapping stages of the impact aftermath: the formation of an ejecta cone, the spiral swirl of debris caught up along the asteroid's orbit about its companion asteroid, and the tail swept behind the asteroid by the pressure of sunlight (resembling a windsock caught in a breeze).
The Hubble movie starts at 1.3 hours before impact. In this view both Didymos and Dimorphos are within the central bright spot; even Hubble can't resolve the two asteroids separately.
The thin, straight spikes projecting away from the center (and seen in later images) are artifacts of Hubble's optics.
The first post-impact snapshot is 2 hours after the event. Debris flies away from the asteroid, moving with a range of speeds faster than four miles per hour (fast enough to escape the asteroid's gravitational pull, so it does not fall back onto the asteroid). The ejecta forms a largely hollow cone with long, stringy filaments.
At about 17 hours after the impact the debris pattern entered a second stage. The dynamic interaction within the binary system starts to distort the cone shape of the ejecta pattern. The most prominent structures are rotating, pinwheel-shaped features. The pinwheel is tied to the gravitational pull of the companion asteroid, Didymos.
"This is really unique for this particular incident," said Li. "When I first saw these images, I couldn't believe these features. I thought maybe the image was smeared or something."
Hubble next captures the debris being swept back into a comet-like tail by the pressure of sunlight on the tiny dust particles. This stretches out into a debris train where the lightest particles travel the fastest and farthest from the asteroid. The mystery is compounded later when Hubble records the tail splitting in two for a few days.
A multitude of other telescopes on Earth and in space, including NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Lucy spacecraft, also observed the DART impact and its outcomes.
This Hubble movie is part of a suite of new studies published in the journal Nature about the DART mission. See NASA’s DART Data Validates Kinetic Impact as Planetary Defense Method to learn more.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble and Webb science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
Christopher Inglis and Jack Smalley were selected in a unanimous vote to serve four-year terms on the commission.
They will join the five-member commission, whose other members are Robert Coker, Terry Stewart and Fawn Williams.
Inglis and Smalley succeed Lisa Wilson and Erin McCarrick on the commission.
Wilson had previously indicated she did not intend to seek another term. On Thursday evening, McCarrick clarified for the city — which had reported that she was seeking another term — that she also did not intend to return to the commission.
The city received five applications for the two seats. In addition to Inglis and Smalley, applicants were Jamie DeWalt, Chris Jennings and Carlos Eduardo Ramos.
Jennings pulled out of the running before the meeting and Ramos did not appear for the interviews.
The council asked a series of questions of each candidate. DeWalt went first, and the others were asked to wait outside of the council chambers during her interview.
DeWalt works for a bank, Inglis is a certified financial planner and Smalley works for the county of Lake as a plans examiner. While DeWalt and Smalley both have lived in the county for more than 25 years, Inglis is a relative newcomer.
All of the interviewees noted interest in city growth and housing.
Smalley, in particular, noted that he felt that the housing issue is a major one for the whole state, and that Clearlake is going in a good direction with its effort to develop more housing.
“Getting people off the street should be a major objective,” he said.
Following the interviews, the council voted by ballot and City Clerk Melissa Swanson conducted the tabulation. Smalley received the most votes, followed by Inglis, DeWalt and Ramos.
During public comment, Rick Mayo, the Lake County NAACP Branch president and co-founder, who also is a former city planning commissioner, said he was glad to see how the council was handling the appointments for the very important position.
“It’s a big job,” Mayo said.
Councilman Dirk Slooten moved to appoint Smalley and Inglis, with Councilman David Claffey seconding and the council approving the motion 5-0.
Councilman Russell Cremer said it was a tough vote, noting that DeWalt also is qualified.
Mayor Russell Perdock asked DeWalt to apply again as he wanted to encourage community members to participate.
Claffey called them “three incredible candidates,” adding that there is a lot of need within the community for people like them.
The Clearlake Planning Commission is next set to meet on March 14.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Jess Berthold
No one can blame parents for being spooked by new research finding that tweens’ risk of suicidal behavior increases with their amount of screen time.
However, lead researcher Jason Nagata, MD, of UCSF Benioff Children Hospitals, says that caregivers should view these findings mostly as a reminder to ingrain healthy screen use habits in their kids as early as possible.
So your study found that screen use increases suicide risk?
The more time kids spend using screens from ages 9 to 11 years old, the higher their odds of suicidal behaviors two years later, at ages 11 to 13. Specifically, each additional hour of screen time increased the risk by 9%. The risk was highest with texting, followed by video chatting, watching videos, and playing video games. Social media didn’t show an effect, but that may be because, technically, kids aren’t allowed to be on social media platforms until they are 13 (though some still are), so we didn’t have as much data there.
What does “suicidal behavior” mean?
It means thinking about suicide, with or without a specific plan, as well as attempting suicide. We weren’t able to separate attempts versus types of thoughts in this study. I should also note that, overall, suicidal behavior was uncommon in these young kids, occurring in just 1.38% of the 11,633 kids we studied. The risk of suicidal behavior tends to increase with age, so this could be seen as an early warning sign.
Why does screen time increase suicidal behavior?
Time spent on screens often displaces time spent on in-person socializing, physical activity and sleep – all of which are good for mental health. Screen usage can lead to cyberbullying, poor eating habits, isolation and disrupted sleep – all of which can worsen mental health. It also increases exposure to potentially anxiety-provoking or otherwise distressing content.
Is all screen time bad for tweens?
Screens can be helpful in some cases, like for kids who, say, are LGBTQ and don’t have real-life access to support, and to stay in touch with friends and family who live far away. I’d say it’s about being thoughtful about how kids engage with screens and keeping an eye on what they consume.
What can parents do to help kids use screens safely?
It’s important for parents to do what’s developmentally appropriate. For older teens, it’s about giving advice. With younger children, preteens and young teens, it makes sense to have a more hands-on approach, like using parental controls and keeping them off social media until they are 13. This time, during early adolescence, is when you set the behaviors that will help kids develop healthy screen habits later on.
What healthy screen habits do you recommend for tweens?
• Avoid screens before bedtime. We know screen use interferes with sleep, and good sleep is so important for mental health.
• Avoid snacking while using screens, to make eating more intentional; and no use of screens during family meals. That helps keep family time about connection, and also helps parents monitor their kids’ eating, which is important because screen overuse is connected to disordered eating, a mental health issue.
• Parents can also establish screen-free zones, like bathrooms and bedrooms. Kids are less likely to get into violent or harmful content in public spaces in the home.
• Parents should try to model all these behaviors for their kids, which can be the hardest part.
What questions are you still trying to answer about screen time and suicide risk?
One is whether screen use causes suicidality, or whether the increased odds of suicide is because kids who are already depressed are more prone to using screens. With this paper, we see a little more evidence that it’s screens leading to suicidal behavior, because we adjusted for mental health at baseline and we looked at the kids two years later.
Another question is, how can we identify the 1% of kids who might tip into suicidality? We need to learn more about the type of content they consume and how it might play a role.
Jess Berthold writes for the University of California San Francisco News Center.