[Music]
today we're going to talk a little bit
more about the fractionation of openness
to experience and we've done a fair
number of studies with the Big Five
aspect scale which we talked about a lot
which enables the Big Five model to be
differentiated down into two aspects per
trait and those aspects have been useful
for a variety of reasons for example
when we're looking at political behavior
we've been able to determine that
conservatives who are generally regarded
as higher in conscientiousness are
actually more specifically higher in
orderliness it's not a lot of difference
between liberals and conservatives with
regards to industriousness and we've
also been able to determine at least to
some degree that orderliness seems to be
associated with disgust sensitivity and
disgust sensitivity as part of the
behavioural immune system and so part of
the reasons that conservatives are more
inclined to want things like close
borders is because they're more
concerned about maintaining the
boundaries between things and the reason
for that seems to be fundamentally
associated with disgust and I'll talk to
you a lot about that next week because
once we've sorted that out it really
really illuminated my way of thinking
about things that had happened for
example in Nazi Germany because people
tend to people tend to think about like
when people have been studying
conservatism from the scientific
perspective they've tended to assume
that it's associated with fear of the
out-group say and the Conservatives are
more fearful the Liberals but that
actually doesn't seem to be
conservatives are not hiring trait
neuroticism and that's a really tough
one because if you are going to make a
case that a group one group is more
anxious let's say or threat sensitive
than another and you don't get
differences in treatment autism then
you've really got a problem well yeah
but the theories the theories seem to be
more trade like rather than situation
yeah so so but what we have found is
that that you know for a long time
people thought that all of the negative
emotions loaded on neuroticism and it
was like the global
the global trade for negative emotion
but disgust seems to be its own peculiar
thing and but I will talk to you more
about that next week and but that's just
an example of why differentiation at the
aspect level seems useful you also pick
up differences between men and women at
the aspect level that aren't obvious at
the trade level as well so you can think
about the model says you know you have a
model that operates at different levels
of resolution and low resolution
representations are good for one set of
operations and higher resolution
representations are good for other
purposes and the purpose of course is to
predict at least that's one of the
primary scientific purposes and so you
pick the level of analysis that gives
you the most prediction and perhaps also
the most utility in terms of formulating
scientific theories so and so we'll
concentrate a little bit more today on
openness per se so openness to
experience fragments into intellect and
openness proper and I think the right
way to think about intellect is that
it's the personality instantiation of IQ
roughly speaking and the reason I think
that is because well first of all
working memory predicts intellect quite
nicely and working memory tests are very
very highly correlated with G and
specifically G being the first factor
that you pull out of any set of IQ tests
right that that's the technical
definition of G you set up sets of
questions do a factor analysis and
extract out the first factor which is
roughly equivalent by the way to the
total or to that to the mean of the
items if it's if there's a one factor
solution it's not much different than
the average so the average is actually a
factor that's that that where the
hypothesis is that every single item
loads equally on that factor because
you're adding them all up and then
dividing them by the number so it's no
different than a factor analysis
sometimes you'll hear people like Steve
and Jay Google did this when he was
complaining about IQ back in the 90s he
said a factor and a factor analysis like
a factor is just a mathematical
abstraction it's like well yeah so is
the average you think it's the average
of a set of numbers real and answer that
question is depends on how you define
real you can use it for certain
functions which is a pretty good
definition of real
as far as I'm concerned but when you ask
questions like that you have to define
both your terms and you do that somewhat
arbitrarily anyways people with high IQs
tend to think that they're smart which
is and that's right and so then they can
to describe themselves as smart if you
give them the opportunity to do that and
then that shows up when you ask them
questions about their problem-solving
ability and that loads mostly on
intellect and so it isn't even obvious
that there's any real utility in
assessing intellect from the self-report
perspective when you could replace that
with an IQ test because the IQ test is
way more accurate so but that gives you
some sense you think about the whole
five factor model you know where
intelligence slots it slots in
underneath opens now the openness proper
part of openness to experience which
which I tend to think about as
creativity you can use that at least as
a shorthand to sort of aid your
understanding of what it is creativity
seems related to IQ in that more people
with higher IQs are likely to be
creative or if you take people who are
noted for their creativity there's a
high probability that they'll have a
higher IQ but there's more to it than IQ
and and what what creativity seems to be
associated with then again depends on
whether or not on how you define
creativity because you could define it
as the sum total of creative
achievements that you've made in your
life which would be the actual
production of say artifacts of one form
or another performances or inventions or
artworks or or what-have-you we'll go
over the dimensions in the middle in a
minute or you could also define it as
the proclivity to engage in creative
thought and I think we'll start with
that first so what does it mean to think
creatively it's it's sort of like it's
something like this you imagine that I
toss you out an idea and there's some
probability that when I toss you that
idea that that will trigger off other
ideas in your imagination so you can
think about it as a threshold issue if
you're not very creative I'll throw you
an idea and hardly any other ideas will
be triggered and the ones that will be
triggered are going to be very closely
associated with that initial idea so
let's say I toss each of you an idea and
I asked you to think tell me the first
thing that comes to mind okay so what we
would see first is that the first thing
that comes to mind for you the first
thing that comes to mind in like in all
likelihood we'd be shared by many of you
okay so then you can think about that as
a common response right and so that's a
less creative response and then there'll
be some things that come to mind for you
that are that they're so idiosyncratic
that you're the only person that thinks
that and no one can understand it well
that's also not exactly creative because
the thing that you for something to be
creative it has to be novel and useful
at the same time that's sort of rough
definition creative something creative
is novel and useful and obviously you
know there's a there's a certain amount
of judgment that goes along with that
clearly but if it's too novel then no
one else can understand it and it's
unlikely to be useful so there's there's
a there's a range of convenience so
anyways if you want to decide if
something's creative like what we would
do for I could say to you okay in the
next three minutes I want you to write
down all the uses you can think of for a
brick so okay so someone tell me your
use for a brick breaking windows yes
okay what else can use a brick for build
a wall it's very small wall haha a wall
for ant and what else
paperweight okay okay well so you get
the idea you're not feeling very multi
today obviously but so so you see that
so if we gathered your responses say I
said you have to think of 20 items that
20 things that that you could do with a
brick then a bunch of the things that
you thought would be the same and some
people would come up with something
different like yours was reasonably
different than one about using it as a
publish stone for your feet but someone
else might come up with that but it's
it's a good creative response because
it's unexpected and it you could
actually do it you know so anyway so
you'll get a graph of probability of
response right and the more probable the
less creative roughly speaking it's not
the only criteria though because you
also have to look at utility so if I
said okay you've got three minutes to
write down as many uses as you can think
of for a brick
I would score that in a variety of ways
the first thing I would do is
just figure out how many uses you
generated that's called fluency and we
could also do that I could just say
write down as many words as you can
begin with the letter s in three minutes
or that begin with the letter C or
four-letter words that begin with the
letter D no I can I can constrain it and
if I counted how many words you
generated if I had an IQ measure and I
had a measure of how many words you
generated IQ plus the number of words
that you generated would be a better
predictor of your creativity than just
IQ so there's this fluency element
that's and so that's something like the
rate at which you can produce say verbal
ideas and one of the things we do know
about about the creativity dimension of
openness is that it is associated with
fluency and it's also associated with
originality and originality would be how
improbable your use was compared to the
uses generated by other people so so
anyway so you can think of you get
thrown an idea and there's some
probability that that will Co activate
other ideas and if it Co activates many
other ideas that's like fluency and if
it co activates ideas that are quite
distant from the original idea something
like that and you could you could track
distance by comparing it to to
probability that other people have
generated it then that's also another
indication of creativity so they have to
be unlikely many unlikely responses that
are useful
that's what creativity is roughly
speaking and then you can tracks innate
it in two different dimensions so that's
creative thinking
but then creative achievement would be
the ability to take those original ideas
and then actually to implement them in
the world and that's obviously much more
different than merely being creative and
so and then what creativity is depends
on which of those measurement routes
that you take now I developed a
questionnaire it's one of my students
Shelley Carson about Jesus just about 30
years ago now 20 years ago I guess
called the creative achievement
questionnaire and I'll show you that
here and I'll show you some of the
things that are interesting about it you
know you hear very frequently people say
things like everyone's creative it's
like that's wrong okay it's wrong it's
just as wrong as saying that everyone's
extroverted first of all you have to be
pretty damn smart to be creative because
otherwise you're just going to get to
where other people have
already got and that's not creative by
definition so so being fast and being
out there at the front of things really
makes a difference and then you also
have to have these divergent thinking
capabilities and that's part of your
trait structure and creative people are
really different than non creative
people you know partly because for
example they're highly motivated to do
creative things and to experience
novelty in two and two and to chase down
aesthetic experiences in to attend
movies and to read fiction and to go to
museums and to enjoy poetry and and and
to enjoy music that's not conventional
music for example
these aren't trivial differences and so
and so it's a real it's a real myth
statement to make the proposition that
everyone's creative it's just simply not
the case it's a matter of wishful
thinking it's like saying that everyone
is intelligent it's like well if
everyone is intelligent and then the
term loses all of its meaning because
any term that you can apply to every
member of a category has absolutely no
meaning now that doesn't and you know
the other thing you want to be thinking
about here is that don't be thinking
that creativity is such a good thing
it's a high-risk high-return strategy so
if you're creative you just try this
there's creative people in this room man
you guys are going to have a hell of a
time monetizing your creativity it's
virtually impossible it's really really
difficult because first of all let's say
you make an original product you think
the world will beat a pathway to your
door if you build a better mousetrap
it's like that's complete rubbish it
isn't it isn't true in the least if you
make a good creative product you've
probably solved about 5% of your problem
because then you have marketing which is
insanely difficult and then you have
sales and then you have customer support
and then you have to build an
organization and you have to if it's
really novel you have to tell people
what the hell the thing is you know we
built this future authoring program
right and so it's available for people
online how do you market that no one
knows what that is and that's a real
problem if you wrote a book well then
you have the problem that another
million people have also written a book
but if you produce something that's
completely new and doesn't have a
category people can't search for it
online how are they going to find it so
you just have and then you have pricing
problems and it's really unbelievably
difficult to produce something creative
and then monetize it and even worse if
you're the creative
let's say you have a spectacular
invention you've got no money right
you've got no customers
those are big problems and so maybe you
go and you find a venture capitalist we
start with family and friends because
that's how it works you raise money for
your product you raise money from your
family and friends that's assuming you
have family and friends that have some
money and that they're going to give it
to you and most people aren't in that
situation so it's a terrible barrier
right off the bat and then of course
you're putting your family and friends
it's substantial financial risk because
the probability that your stupid idea is
going to make money is virtually zero
even if it's a really brilliant idea and
so then let's say well you get past
family and friends and you get venture
capitalist capitalists involved because
that's often the next step or an angel
investor that's there's their steps in
building a business family and friends
angel investor that's some rich guy that
you happen to meet some manner in some
way who's who's into this sort of thing
and is willing to provide you with some
money to get your product off the ground
well how much of your product is that
person going to take well most of it
most of it and then if you get a venture
and no wonder because you know you don't
have any money how are you going to
bargain for control over your product
he'll just say well do you want the
money or not
and if your answer is no then he'll go
and do something else with his money
it's not like there's no shortage of
things that you can do with your money
because there's a million things you can
do with it so you're not in a great
bargaining position and then if you get
venture capitalists involved they'll
take another big chunk and maybe if
they're not very straight with you
they'll just throw you out because maybe
by that point in the company's
development you're nothing but a pain in
the neck because what do you know about
marketing and sales and customer service
and building an organization and running
a business like you don't have a clue so
why do they need you so even if you're
successful at generating a new idea and
you put it into a business the
probability that you as the originator
of the of the idea are going to make
some money from it is very very low so
don't be thinking that creativity is
such a is such a something you would
want to curse yourself with now you know
it's not all bad because it opens up
avenues of experience for creative
people that aren't available to people
who aren't creative but it definitely is
a high-risk high-return strategy you
know so the overwhelming
probability is that you will fail but a
small proportion of creative people
succeed spectacularly and so it's like a
lottery in some sense you're probably
going to lose but if you don't lose you
could win big and that keeps a lot of
creative people going but also they
don't really have much choice in it
because if you're a creative person
you're like a fruit tree that's that's
bearing fruit so you don't really have
you can suppress it but it's very bad
for you you know the creative people
I've worked with is if they're not
creative they're miserable so they have
to do it but and and you know there's
real joy and pleasure in it and and the
end and and and psychological utility
but that doesn't necessarily mean that
it's an intelligent it's certainly not a
conservative strategy for moving forward
through life so and you know whenever I
talk to people who are creative and you
guys should listen to this because I
know what I'm talking about if you
happen to be creative if you're a
songwriter or another kind of musician
or an artist or or any of the other
number of things that you might be find
a way to make money and then practice
your craft on the side because you will
starve to death otherwise now some for
some of you that won't be true but it's
a tiny minority your best bet is to find
a job that will keep body and soul
together and parse off some time that
you can pursue your creative things
because then well as a long-term
strategy you medium to long term
strategy it's a better one but it's got
incredibly difficult for people
musicians for example it's incredibly
difficult for new musicians to monetize
their their craft even if they're really
really good at it
so it's it's well so anyway so don't be
so I say well everyone's not everyone's
not creative and everybody goes oh
that's terrible it's like it's not so
terrible it's not something it's not
self-evident that you would curse
someone with high levels of creativity
so alright so here's how our creative
achievement questionnaire works what we
did essentially was we thought up how
many domains there are in which you
might be creative and this is remember
when you're designing a questionnaire
you want to be over-inclusive because
the statistics will take care of it
right so you can you can take a big area
of potential you can take a large area
and aim your questionnaire at it and you
can do statistics post talk to see
you're covering the area if if the
things that you're measuring are nicely
correlated they're this you know there's
something about them that's similar if
they're not correlated then maybe you're
measuring two different things and you
can get rid of one of them that's fine
so we did start with a pretty wide range
we thought okay well what domains can
you be creative in visual arts painting
and sculpture then we had experts sort
of rank order levels of achievement
within those domains and so if you are a
painter you can 0 gives you I have no
training or recognised talent in this
area okay so you really want to keep an
eye on the zeros alright so then I have
taken lessons people have commented on
my talents I have won a prize my work is
being critiqued in national publications
all right so you get you get you get
zero to seven points but you can
indicate more than no maybe that's
happened to you more than once so and
what happens this is interesting is that
higher you are up in this hierarchy the
more likely it is that those things have
happened to you more than once and
that's that's another example of this
weird thing called the Pareto principle
or Prices law which is that it's sort of
good things happen to you the
probability that more good things will
happen increases right so because once
you're famous people give you all sorts
of opportunities to do other things
right so your your your success doesn't
go like this goes like this zero zero
zero skyrocket that's how it works but
getting from zero getting from zero to
one if you're starting a business the
hardest customer you'll ever get is your
first one and then the second hardest
one will be your second one it's
virtually impossible to get a first
customer because they're going to say to
you first of all you're going to be
selling to people who are basically
conservative and there aren't going to
be evaluate they're not going to be
willing or able to evaluate whether your
damn product is good for anything and so
they'll say well who are your other
customers and if your answer to that is
well we don't have any it's like well
then what they're going to be the first
one no because people don't stick their
necks out at all
not a bit ever and so unless you're well
established in the market especially if
you're dealing with a big company you
can just bloody well forget it it's like
a three year sales cycle anyways it's
RIT because big corporations move very
very slowly and you might be able to
find a small company that doesn't have
much money who would be willing to use
your stoop
product for nothing if you're really
nice to them and you get one customer
that way it's very very difficult and so
you'll you'll end up you know and what
do you think the royalty just out of
curiosity so I've written a book it's
going to be published by penguin Random
House and in January what do you think
the royalty is for an author on a book
so you make something creative you get a
percentage of the sale what do you think
the percentage is just out of curiosity
guess yeah it's like 5% so think about
that so that means that you make your
thing and 95% of it belongs to someone
else and that's that things are going
quite well for you and it doesn't really
matter what you manufacture or produce
that's about what you can expect sales
marketing distribution it eats it all up
so us all well anyways you need to know
these things because they're not
self-evident okay
so seems to be working all by itself
all right so let's take a look well how
else can you have creative achievement
well you can be a musician I have no
training or recognize Talent recordings
of my composition have been sold
publicly that's the top end my
composition has been copyrighted
recorded critiqued in local population
publication I have composed an original
piece of music well let's try this how
many of you have composed an original
piece of music wow there's lots of
creative people in here that's very
impressive so there must be 10 or 11
people in here oh that's cool so how
about your coffees composition has been
copyrighted how about it's been the
recordings have been sold publicly and
actually sold how many people - two okay
well so what you can see is there's a
rapid drop-off in the number of people
who say yes how many of you fit into
category zero I have no training a
recognised talent in this area yeah okay
okay zero is the median score on all of
these median is the score that's the
most likely for people to have or it's
different than the mean median score is
zero so what's the median score and the
entire creative achievement
questionnaire zero you you add up all
over all thirteen domains the most
difficult score is zero so that's how
creative people are there's zero
creative
at all yes everybody has a certain
degree not really creative well the
thing is you could say that people have
people all people are creative and that
all people can generate ideas but the
issue isn't whether or not you can
generate ideas it's whether or not you
can generate ideas that are different
from the ideas that other people
generate that's the critical issue
because it mean it depends on how you
define it you could you well the novelty
is a huge part of it but that's that's
sort of built into the definition of
creative it has to be novel and useful
and if your idea that you generate is
the same as the idea that a bunch of
other people have it's not it's an idea
fair enough and if you define creativity
that way then everyone's creative but
it's a foolish way of defining
creativity because everyone does it and
and we know that there has to be
something novel about creativity useful
idea today the Integra's all seem to be
artistic and well as requiring specific
non-creative skills for example music
and require yeah are there ways to be
creative outside there well let's go
through the rest of the domains because
we did include domains that aren't that
aren't artistic and yes there are
engineering is a good example of that or
writing nonfiction that those things
tend to tilt more in the intellect
direction but I'm concentrating most
particularly here on sort of creativity
that would be associated with openness
so yeah okay so dance well it's roughly
the same as music so we won't we won't
move forward into that architectural
design my architectural design my
architectural design has been recognized
in the national publication Creative
Writing my work has been reviewed in
national publications million books sold
last year 250 of them sold more than
100,000 copies right so that's another
that's another example of high risk high
returns so probably you won't write a
book if you write a book probably no one
will publish it if you publish it almost
certainly no one will buy it
so you see you see what I mean there's
exclusion the exclusion criteria there
are so there's so
thoroughly they're so difficult because
it's very difficult to write a book even
a bad one you have to work a long time
to write a bad book and then your book
has to be pretty damn good before you're
going to get it published and and you
also have to know about know how to go
about getting it published that's also
you don't send a book to a publisher by
the way they don't want your stupid book
they want a summary of the book they
want an outline of the book they want
three chapters of the book they want to
know who the hell you are and why anyone
should listen to you they want to know
what other books your book is like and
most importantly perhaps they want to
know where it would sit in a bookshelf
in a bookstore and the reason for that
is that and I have trouble this is
trouble with the books that I write is
no one was where to put them that's a
big problem because then the marketing
people don't know how to market them and
maybe that's because they're more
creative than usual it doesn't matter if
there isn't a place that you can put the
book where people can find it then
you're not going to publish it and even
if you do you can't sell it because no
one can find it so you just think about
the difficulties and being a successful
author you're not going to write a book
it's too hard there's no damn way you're
going to get it published and if you do
it probably won't be a very good
publisher then they have to do a really
good job of selling it and marketing it
then you have to enter the market at the
right time right and then you have to be
reviewed by the right people and then it
has to be put in the right places it's
like most what happens is your book will
go out for a week no one will buy it and
it'll disappear and that's if you've
done 99.99% of things right so okay
creative writing our humor my humor has
been recognized in a national
publication that's at the top and I've
written a joke or cartoon that has been
published I've written jokes for other
people I've worked as a professional
comedian inventions I regularly find
novel uses for household objects I've
built a prototype of one of my designed
inventions I've sold one of my
inventions to people I know has anyone
in here built a prototype of a designed
invention no one okay has anyone in here
created original software for a computer
one to three people yes three people how
about I've sketched out an invention and
worked on design flaws how many people
so maybe two or three yeah I mean if
this was an engineering class and all
likelihood there would be more people in
not telling but that this is more in the
domain it's not the exactly the artsy
end of the creativity distribution it's
more on the ideas and and mechanical end
of it and and and that's a reasonable
way of thinking about it I would say so
um scientific discovery I do not have
training or recognizability in this
field I received a scholarship based on
my work in science or medicine how many
people have received a scholarship based
in their work on science and medicine
okay nobody so we don't have anybody
that goes up that high I've won a prize
at a science fair or other local
competition anybody there yes there's
maybe two or three four people there so
that means we've got four people in the
class of about 150 who hit the third the
second level of scientific discovery
anybody received a grant to pursue their
work in science and medicine its highly
unlikely you guys are mostly too young
to have had that happen to you okay
so theater and film anybody who's at how
many people have performed in theater or
film oh yeah your Narsee bunchy so my
acting abilities have been recognized in
local publication how many people for
that one
that's it anybody higher than that I
have directed or produced a theater or
film production
one two I've been paid there's a good
one I have been paid to pit one two two
okay my theatrical work has been paid to
direct the theater film production ha
got you there so you've done that Hey
congratulations you're way the hell up
on the list right right right right hard
to monetize how many films did you make
you made poor did you make any money oh
you did well congratulations yeah yeah
yeah well that's about yeah
yeah calab recruiter and then also
piracy got really bad right yeah well
that's one of the big problems with
anything that can be distributed
digitally it's like yeah yeah yeah I rat
right timing is everything and that's
it's actually well that's that's another
one of the terrible cut offs is that not
only do you have to be right and have
yourself together and produce the proper
thing but the market has to open it's
exactly that moment so that you can walk
through there has to be a demand so
people won't buy anything that they
don't have a crying need for because
they have priority say it's imagine
everybody has ten priorities and ten
number ten is important but no one ever
does it and number eight is important
that no one ever does it and so you have
to go talk to someone to buy what you
have and that has to be priority one or
two for them because they'll say oh
that's good we really need it but it's
priority eight it's like forget it
they'll never buy your thing because
they never get to priority eight on
their list of ten priorities they only
get down to like priority four so and
then the other thing that will happen
too is if you go up try to sell your
product you won't know who to talk to
and you'll end up spending ninety five
percent of your time this is especially
true in companies with the people who
will talk to you right obviously but
those aren't the people who ever make
any decisions so they'll tell you all
sorts of good things about your product
and how interested they are but they'll
never buy it because they can't make
make decisions and you won't be able to
get to the people who make decisions
because other people who know how to do
that have already got there and that's
not you so that's very difficult as well
culinary arts my recipes have been
published nationally anyone how about I
often experiment with rest misses
purposeful experimentation right not
accidental experimentation yes sorry
alright my recipes would be published in
the local cookbook anyone know okay okay
well you get the you get the point right
you see you see how this works it's just
well here are ways you can be creative
and here are strata of accomplishment
within those ways and so then the
question is what does it look like yes
yes yes yes fair enough and and this
probably needs to be updated to reflect
that so so there's there's the
distribution of scores
now that's dismal that's a dismal thing
to look at you have to understand that
why look at this
zero right the median person has not
done anything creative ever in their
life with anything on any dimension
right it's really important to know that
and then you have these horrible people
out here right they do everything they
do everything price is law here's prices
law this is something to hammer into
your heart the square root of the number
of people in a domain do 50% of the work
okay so let's go through that you have
ten employees three of them do half the
work makes sense that's reasonable you
have a hundred employees ten of them do
half the work that's problem so the
other 90% are doing the other half who
cares about them you have 10,000
employees 100 of them do have to work
right so here's that here's a nasty
little law as your company grows
incompetence grows in it exponentially
and confidence grows linearly got it
right because it with ten it's three who
are doing half the work but at 10,000
it's 100 that are doing half the work so
nine thousand nine hundred of your
employees are doing as much as the best
100 you might not even know who the best
100 are but probably they know and maybe
their peers know too and so one of the
things that's really interesting when
big companies start to shake which means
maybe they've had a bad quarter too bad
quarters and the stock price starts to
tip down and the people the hot people
who have options are not very happy
about that and maybe they start to
announce layoffs all the hundred people
who have opportunities leave and they're
the ones who were doing half the work so
boy that puts your company in a pretty
rough situation because now you've got
the ninety nine hundred people left over
who we're only doing half the work and
the next time you announced layoffs the
next most productive hundred leave and
so then you're left with nobody who's
productive at a massive overhead payroll
prices law you can look that up to Sol a
price to Sol a price is a guy who is
looking at scientific productivity and
one of the things he found was when he
was looking at PhD students is that the
median number of publications for a PhD
graduate when he did his work which was
in the early 60s was one okay half as
many had - half as many as that had
three half as many as that had four -
real stepped out and one of the
corollaries of that is that there's a
number of people who are hyper
productive and that's these people out
here and if you were graphing the
distribution let's say you graphed how
many people in that population of 300
had $10,000 in a savings account it
would look very much like this some of
them would have are some of some of them
would most people would have like no
savings whatsoever the median person
would have no savings whatsoever and
then you go up here where the 1% is they
have all the money but the thing you
want to understand about that 1% issue
that you always hear about is that it
applies in every single realm where
there's difference in creative
production every realm doesn't matter
number of Records produce number of
records sold number of compositions
written so here's here's an example 5
composers produce the music that
occupies 50% of the classical repertoire
by Bach Beethoven Brahms
Tchaikovsky who's Mozart that's right
those 5 ok so here's something cool so
you take all the music those people
wrote 5 percent of the music all those
people wrote occupies 50 percent of the
music that of their writing that's
played so not only do almost all the
composers never get a listen but even
among the composers and you get a list
and almost none of their music ever gets
played so so then that's that's another
example of this price is law of scaling
so and it applies to all sorts of things
like number of hockey goals scored is
also distributed this way number of
basketball basketball basketball
successfully put through the hoop
follows the same distribution size of
cities follows the same distribution
it's a weird it's a weird law and you
you can think about it in part why does
this happen
law imagine what happens when you play
Monopoly what happens everybody has the
same amount of money to begin with right
so then you start playing it's basically
a random game well some people start to
win a bit some people start to lose a
bit and then if you win the probability
that you'll keep winning starts to
increase and if you lose your
vulnerability increases as you lose and
then maybe you've got to say six people
play Monopoly soon one person has zero
what happens when they have zero they're
out of the game so zero is a weird
number
because when you hit zero you're out of
the game so so then if you keep playing
people start to stack up at zero right
what happens at the end of the game one
person has all the property and all the
money and everyone else has none right
that's what happens if you play an
iterated trading game to its final
conclusion and that's part of the the
law in a sense that's underlying this
kind of distribution so it's it's really
it's it's it's not a consequence
necessarily of structural inequality
it's built into the system at a deeper
level than that so you know people talk
about all the time about how unfair it
is that 1% of the population has the
vast amount of the money and 1% of the
1% has most of that money and 1% of the
1% of the 1% has most of that money but
it is a it's a it's an inevitable
conclusion of iterated trading games and
we don't know how to fight it we don't
know how to take from the people who
have and move it to the bottom without
instantly moving back up to the top
different people maybe but still back up
to the top because even the 1% turns a
lot like I think you have a 10% chance
if I remember correctly you have a 10%
chance of being in the top 1% for at
least one year of your life and a 40%
chance of being in the top 10% for at
least one year in your life that's in
Canada in the u.s. it's less so in
Europe so there's a fair bit of churning
at the top end it's not the same people
all the time you have the money but it
is a tiny fraction of the people all the
time who have all the money yeah people
inside redistribute to recreate no not
usually
I mean they do but it's attenuated
because the people mean if you reach up
the entire company and put everywhere
somewhere else there's some probability
that some of those people would rise to
the top that weren't at the top before
but in that company that that isn't
generally what happens people get stuck
in their niche and they don't move so
yeah this is you kill you wonder
sometimes well how can companies die so
quickly well they go they go into a
death spiral it's almost impossible for
them to get out of so and it happened
happen extraordinarily quickly this is
why you know the typical fortune 500
company only last 30 years that's it
it's not that easy for these Bale moths
to continue existance across time so and
it's because it's really easy for
something to die it's very unlikely that
it will be built it's very unlikely that
it will be successful and once
successful it's very unlikely that it
will continue to duplicate its success
because the underlying landscape shifts
on it and it doesn't know where to go
and that's also partly because it's not
that easy to integrate creative people
into your company right you certainly
don't want them at the bottom because
they're supposed to be people who are
doing what they're told to do so you
filter out a lot of them at the bottom
and then you need them at the top but
they've already been filtered out and
also creative people are troublesome to
work with because they're always how do
you evaluate a creative person you all
you almost can't by definition because
they keep coming up with new things and
you don't have a good evaluative
strategy for a new thing it wouldn't be
new if you had a good evaluative
strategy for it right it would have to
be the member of a class that you've
already encountered substantially so
anyway so the take-home lesson from this
is zero right right and then that's like
that's like a graph of money monetary
distribution as well and the thing the
problem with being at zero is it's very
difficult to get out of zero this is
also why people get stuck in poverty you
know you can't get a bank account if
you're if you don't have any money right
if there's a bunch of things that start
to move against you when you're at zero
that you can't shake it's very difficult
to get out of the to get out of the that
the pit here because zero is a kind of
pit okay so now we've got the creative
achievement questionnaire and we're
going to take your score and your score
is summed across all the categories and
and and all the exemplars of the
categories that you've chosen so then
the question is well can you predict
creative achievement and and this is
this is this is how we did it with this
was construct delegation the first thing
we wanted to know was was the creative
achievement questionnaire actually
associated with something that you might
regard as creativity okay so we got a
number of students to come in and we
gave them a collage kit
and so then everybody got exactly the
same tip and then we had to make a
collage out of the collage kit then we
have five artists rate the collage for
quality and then we averaged across the
ratings now the first thing you would do
if you did that is because you would
might think well can artists actually
come up with a a measure of how creative
a collage is and the answer to that is
actually technical if all say you guys
are the panel if all of you identify the
same collages as of high quality and the
same ones as of low quality then we can
assume that there's something about your
judgement that's like independent of
your idiosyncrasies we could say well
there is a judgment that emerges as a
consensus across artists and the first
thing we found was that there was there
is quite a high correlation between each
artists judgment of the quality of the
collages I can't remember what the
inter-rater reliability was but it was
something like 0.8 it was really high so
it was clear that trained artists could
make reliable judgments about the
quality of collages because you had to
check that out first because if they're
all over the place you got no measure
right it's like everyone's using a
different rulers got no measure so they
have to be using the same ruler well we
found that the correlation between the
creative evaluation of collages and the
total taq was 0.59 which is
mind-boggling I told you last time that
under 5% of published social studies
social science studies have a are
demonstrate a correlation coefficient of
an effect size greater than 0.5 this is
0.6 and if you if you square it point 5
squared is 25 percent of the variance
point 6 squared is 36 percent of the
variance point 6 is a lot more than 0.5
and point 5 is unheard of and so the
fact that you could estimate someone's
lifetime creative achievement by having
them do a collage that for artists rape
was an indication that there really is
something real at the bottom of it right
that's like the definition of real the
creative personality scale you use
circle adjectives that are associated
with creativity from a very large list
of adjectives that work pretty well
Goldberg's adjective markers that's
another Big Five variant that was
correlated at about 0.5 1 it doesn't
measure
to experience it just measures intellect
but be that as it may it's still an
personality marker of trade openness it
was correlated at 0.5 won the Neel PIR
openness was correlated at 0.33 and then
we use the divergent thinking tests and
I told you about those already's how
many uses can you think of for a brick
for example and so those are scored
according to fluency how many answers
you provide and then also originality
how many unique useful answers do you
provide and that was nicely correlated
as well overall correlation of 0.47 and
then fluency 0.38 originality 0.46 and
flexibility point 3 7 so so what does
that mean well the creative achievement
questionnaire indexes lifetime creative
achievement in a way that's powerfully
associated with actual creative
production of a single item plus
creative creativity as it's indexed by
personality markers on the C IQ is also
potently predicted by IQ which is
exactly what you'd expect so you can do
an extraordinarily good job of
determining how likely someone is to
have high levels of creative achievement
across their lifespan by using
psychometric tests so it means that
creativity is a real thing that's the
first thing both in terms of thinking
creatively that would be the divergent
thinking tests and also in terms of
creative production and and that
creative production and creative
thinking are quite tightly aligned so
that was good that's been a very
influential paper I think it's got about
500 citations now people use the
creative achievement questionnaire a lot
to assess creativity it's also
associated with a higher than average
likelihood of psychosis and the other
thing you see with creative people is
that they tend especially if they're
writers they tend the pathology that
goes along with that is often manic
depressive disorder and that's partly
because manic people become unbelievably
fluid I think they speak incredibly
quickly they generate ideas like mad and
it's a hyper arousal of the positive
emotion system roughly speaking and that
can have as a side effect creativity so
this is a cool study I just found this
one today it's a terror management study
so what I'll read it to you the
relationship between creativity and
symbolic
mortality had been long acknowledged by
scholars in the review of the literature
we found 12 papers that empirically
examined the relationship between
creativity and mortality awareness using
a terror management theory paradigm
overall supporting the notion that
creativity plays an important role in
the management of existential concerns
also a mini meta-analysis of the impact
of death awareness on creativity
resulted in a small medium weighted mean
effect we examine the existential
buffering functions of creative
achievement as assessed by the creative
achievement questionnaire in a sample of
108 students at high but not low levels
of creative goals creative achievement
was associated with lower death thought
accessibility under mortality salience
well that means if you remind people
that they're going to die the creative
people were less likely to generate
death related thoughts as a consequence
to our knowledge this is the first
empirical report of the anxiety
buffering functions of a creative
achievement among people for whom
creativity constitutes a central part of
the cultural worldview it's like a
empirical examination of some of the
existential theories that I was
presenting to you previously because
part of the idea that was put forth to
say by people like Nietzsche was that
one of the ways to fight back against
existential anxiety and death anxiety
and all of that is to engage in creative
production and so that was actually put
to the empirical test in this study so I
thought that was quite cool
so there's another paper this was by
Kaufmann and a couple of my students
Jacob Hirsch and Colin Dion I'm on that
paper as well near the end there they
were interested in whether openness and
intellect predicted different elements
of creative achievements or goes back to
your question about the differentiation
between the artsy end of creativity and
maybe the more practical idiot and the
practical end associated for example
with the proclivity to like nonfiction
the Big Five personality dimension
openness / intellect is the trait most
closely associated with creativity and
creative achievement little is known
however regarding the discriminant
validity of its two aspects discriminant
validity is whether one aspect predicts
one set of things and the other aspect
predicts a different set of things if
there's no discriminant validity if they
can't be used for different purposes
then there's no point having them so you
want to see that they're actually
capable of differentiating between
between real world phenomena two of its
aspects openness to experience
reflecting cognitive engagement with
perception fantasy aesthetics and
emotions and intellect reflecting
cognitive engagement with abstract and
semantic information primarily through
reasoning in relation to creativity in
four demographically diverse samples
totaling over a thousand participants we
investigated the independent predictive
validity of openness and intellect by
assessing the relations among cognitive
ability divergent thinking personality
and creative achievement across the Arts
and Sciences we confirm that hypothesis
that openness predicts creative
achievement in the arts and intellect
predicts creative achievement in the
sciences inclusion of performance
measures of general cognitive ability
that's IQ and divergent thinking
indicated that the relationship of
intellect to scientific creativity may
be due at least in part to these
abilities lastly we found that
extraversion
additionally predicted creative
achievement in the arts independently of
openness so what that means is that
creative achievement in the arts is
actually a function of
higher-order trait plasticity right
because plasticity was openness plus
extraversion and that's associated
fundamentally with activation of the
underlying dopaminergic system which is
the system that mediates exploratory
behavior so if you're dominated by that
the function of that system
you're an exploratory gregarious person
then you're more likely to manifest
creative ability in the arts so
apparently it's time stop yeah I think
that's the same student who always does
that alright we'll see you on Tuesday
[Applause]