Have you ever experienced an “ah ha” moment? It’s what you feel when insight strikes, when a solution to a tough problem suddenly occurs to you, or when a great idea hits you seemingly “out of the blue.” Behavioral scientists have been studying this phenomenon for over a century. Recent research indicates that this creative insight is more positively influenced by “unexpected connections” than through deep knowledge of a particular field.
Past studies suggested that knowledge and experience within a particular domain are the most necessary ingredients for insight. Those researchers theorized that the more knowledge an individual possesses within a certain subject, the more likely they are to recognize the relationships between different ideas, resulting in a stronger and stronger ability to create reliable patterns, and hence, significant insight into the subject at hand. However, this knowledge, by itself, does not produce insight. In fact, more recent studies show that the level of experience an individual brings to a field can actually inhibit creative problem solving. This is due to what creativity experts call “functional fixedness.” You’ve seen functional fixedness
Unexpected Connections = “ah ha”
Several behavioral scientists, working in the 1990s, argued that insight occurs when a person’s mind is able to unconsciously peruse random combinations of ideas that finally synthesize. This theory explains why many of the most notable scientific breakthroughs occurred through a process of free association. Free association is when a person generates as many unusual combinations between the many different bits of knowledge they have, then screens the results, only retaining the Green Bay Packers #52 Matthews Jersey best combos. William James wrote about this process a century ago, in Principles of Psychology (1890):
Instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another in a beaten track of habitual suggestion, we have the abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most unheard of combination of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy; in a word, we seem suddenly introduced into a seething cauldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbling about in a state of bewildering activity, where partnerships can be joined or loosened in an instant, treadmill routine is unknown, and the unexpected seems only law. (p. 456)
The role of chance, then, is crucial to insightful discovery. One researcher, Melissa Schilling, writes, “This random recombination appears consistent with illustrative anecdotes of some of the great discoveries of the past.” Creativity expert, Sir Ken Robinson, puts it another way. In his 2006 TED talk on how schools are killing creativity, he offers this definition of creativity: “The process of having original ideas that have value.” Creativity, he tells us “comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.” How can we develop “different disciplinary ways of seeing things?” It’s one of those mandates, like “be creative,” or “think outside the box” that Green Bay Packers #52 Matthews Jersey sound so easy but tend to leave a person scratching their head, wondering where all their innovation is at. I think we need to create the means to make connections, and I think the place to start is in re-connecting our brains to our bodies.
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