Here's a weird creativity study as reported on the Live Science site: "To see if light bulbs could actually promote insights, Slepian and his colleagues [at Tufts University] gave college students spatial, math and verbal problems to solve and had either a bare light bulb or an overhead fluorescent light turned on in the room partway into the problem. The volunteers either solved the problems faster or more often with the light bulb than with the fluorescent light."
These were not trivial differences, either. In one case the light bulb people solved a problem twice as often as the fluorescent light people, in another they solved 70% more problems.
Another experiment compared a shaded bulb to a naked bulb. Advantage: naked bulb.
The conclusion is that the influence is the symbolic value of a naked light bulb rather than the type of lighting. The report says, "This kind of so-called "priming effect" has been seen before in psychology — for instance, when shown artifacts from the business world, such as briefcases, people play economic games more competitively, and exposure to the American flag triggers aggressive behavioral tendencies among regular news watchers, due perhaps to how the United States is often linked in the news to attacks both against and from other parties."
Hmm, look at the graphic above. Feel more creative yet?
(One thing that's sure to make your more creative is using the methods in my book, "Creativity Now!"--you can get it from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers right now.)
