Uncertainty

I read a scientific article about the effect of uncertainty on people’s recognition of creativity (Bias Against Creativity). In brief, they authors did some experiments that showed that when people were put into an uncertain state, they became much less receptive to creativity.

This being a US psychology study, the induced uncertainty was very minor, much less than face by people in a business setting considering new project ideas. One great thing about psychologists is their ability to express these effects clearly. “Uncertainty is an aversive state*” says it pretty clearly; people avoid uncertainty and the utility of new ideas is clearly uncertain. The way that this aversion is expressed in looking at new ideas is to frame their perspective in terms of practicality. A really new idea has lots of uncertainty and thus does not immediately have much practicality. I can reject new ideas on practical grounds, reducing my uncertainty and increasing my cognitive comfort. I can do this even while I express a desire for greater creativity. Our findings imply a deep irony. Prior research shows that uncertainty spurs the search for and generation of creative ideas…, yet our findings reveal that uncertainty also makes us less able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most. When organizations say they lack enough creative ideas, maybe the problem is that they can’t shed their bias against creativity because of uncertainty in the environment. Uncertainty in the economy has certainly been present over the last 5 years, and many organizations are struggling with innovation. Perhaps the next thing that psychologists should identify is a way of temporarily inducing certainty so that people can accept the more creative ideas.

 But another way forward may be to consider uncertainty in relative terms. Innovation is often a response to a change in circumstances and induces further change. The intent to innovate can be relatively uncertain, even when the specific ideas are of uncertain practicality. Classic project portfolio thinking is a way of controlling uncertainty. If I am deciding the fate of a single project idea, the outcomes are success or failure. This seems like a very concentrated form of uncertainty. By if I am considering 10 project ideas, I know that some are better than others (a form of certainty) and that pursuing 2 or 3 ideas increase my chance of success (a bit more certainty that I will succeed). The pressure to choose good ideas and reject bad ideas feeds into this concentration of uncertainty, increases the bias and aversion, and freezes us in the status quo. We may not be able to predict the future, but we may encompass it and thus manage our bias against creativity.

 *text in italics is directly quoted from the source