Creativity in the News

A few articles about creativity and innovation popped up recently.

The BPS' Research Digest blog reports about a study into group creativity, which found that narcissistic traits in individuals could be beneficial for the group as a whole in certain circumstances. Jack Goncalo - the lead author of the study in question - investigated the effect that narcissistic behaviour might have on creativity, and found evidence for the following;

• Narcissists are generally not more creative than average, although they will judge themselves as being highly creative
  
• Other individuals will also judge a narcissist's work as more creative than average
• Groups with approximately two narcissistic members outperformed others in a test of group creativity

On a related note, the BBC has this article about Steven Johnson's argument, detailed further in his latest book, that innovation almost always comes from networks, rather than individuals.

In general it seems like there's been a significant increase in the amount of psychological and neuroscientific research into creativity over the past decade. Probably to be expected given the swelling of all cognitive scientific research during that same timespan, but still interesting nonetheless. At some point (after a bit of research) I'll post something about the most significant studies in the area, but for the moment these two studies from this year caught my eye - The (B)link Between Creativity and Dopamine and The Neuroanatomy of Creativity.

More later, with discussion, hopefully.