The Effects of Negative 1 Running head: TIME PRESSURE, NEGATIVE PRIMING AND CREATIVITY The Effects of Negative Priming and Time Pressure on Creative Problem Solving

This paper examines the effects of negative priming and time pressure on creative problem solving, as measured by originality and practicality. In terms of negative priming, this paper builds on the work of Smith (1995, 2003). A negative prime is an example solution to a task that incorporates undesirable features, and is given to participants before they begin the task. In particular, attention is paid to Smith’s “coffee cup” paradigm, where participants asked to design as original a spill-proof coffee cup as they can will incorporate many basic features of the example which they are given, even if those features are detrimental to the function of the cup. Work on time pressure in various contexts is reviewed, as well as the cognitive load imposed by time pressure. Expected conclusions include main effects of time pressure and negative priming, and an interaction demonstrating a different effect of negative priming when time pressure is involved. Simply stated, time pressure leaves less time for participants to overcome the effect of negative priming, whatever specific strategy they use to do that. Actual results were significant interactions of the two variables for originality and quality/clarity, and a main effect of time pressure on originality, practicality and quality/clarity, but no main effect of negative priming, although the negative priming effect was in fact replicated. Implications of this result on the definition and operationalization of creativity is examined. The possibility that these results represent reliance on a different cognitive strategy, such as heuristics as opposed to algorithms, is examined. Applications to basic research in cognition, and to applied research decision-making are discussed. The Effects of Negative 3 The Effects of Negative Priming and Time Pressure on Creative Problem Solving Generally, creativity is not a central concern for people, because people just want things to work, usually relying on methods that have worked in the past. Sometimes, however, problems prove intractable or previous solutions no longer suffice. Then, we need a creative solution to that problem. That is to say that, many times, a problem remains a problem because previous attempts to solve it have been unsuccessful. In such a situation, repeating the failed solutions or methods that yielded no positive results for previous decision-makers would not help to solve the problem, and would probably cause us a significant amount of frustration in the process. What we want, then, are creative or novel solutions. We want, solutions, in other words, that have not been tried or attempted before. There are, unfortunately, several factors that can inhibit the development of such a solution. As we shall see, two of those are time pressure and the constraining effects of prior examples. Mandler (1995, p. 9) defines creativity as “the production of something novel,” in other words, something new and different. In an effort to clarify that definition, and perhaps to limit allegations that it is circular, Mandler (1995, p. 10) also says that novelty “exists in a social context...[and] may be novel for all of humanity, for a specific socialcultural unit, or for an individual.” Thus, something is creative when it is new to the person or population who created it. The social context that Mandler identifies as inherent in creativity would necessitate that the results of creative processes be useful to the individual or society, in the broadest possible sense of the word. Useful, of course, is a relative term, not meant in any way to be normative. Usefulness is determined solely in the context of helping to solve the particular problem, The Effects of Negative 4 so that if the problem involves, for instance, designing a new toy, the most useful responses would be those designs that were not simply reformulations of toys already on the market. Put another way, even the creation of art would fit this explanation of creativity. Art is useful so long as it fulfills the goals of the artist, which usually is to create some reaction on the part of viewers or the artist himself. Mandler (1995) makes a further differentiation between different degrees of creativity. That is to say that something can be more or less creative than something else. Creativity, therefore, is not a dichotomous variable that one either possesses or does not. In addition, even among two (or more) novel solutions, one can be more creative than another because it has less in common with previous solutions, from which, by definition, creative solutions distance themselves. One should also note that in many problem-solving circumstances, the creative solution is likely to be the better solution in terms of an objective judgment. The reason for this is that a problem, by definition, has remained a problem because previous attempts to solve it have been at most only partially successful. We do not try to create new ways to do things when the old way is completely satisfactory. Therefore, creative solutions are those that distance themselves from solutions that have not fully worked in order to, one hopes, find different solutions that do work. Thus, in situations where we are trying to be creative, we also want to be creative. That is to say that it is much easier to follow a procedure that we already know than to generate a new one. While we have adequately defined creativity, we are still left with the question of how it comes about. Weisberg (1993) uses historical case studies of significant scientific breakthroughs to argue that important creative discoveries are usually made by one of a The Effects of Negative 5 few possible processes, implying that the process behind creativity is not as extraordinary or mysterious as it may seem. Smith gives us an idea of how difficult it is to develop a theory of creativity when he points out two contradicting pieces of prevailing wisdom. As the common sayings go, we need to “stand on the shoulders of giants”, but we also need to avoid getting “stuck in a rut” (Smith, 2000). Prior knowledge can have negative effects, but, far from being bad, prior knowledge is actually necessary in problem solving. In situations where we just want to solve a problem as quickly as possible, and have successfully solved that problem before, we want to use that prior knowledge to replicate that previous solution. In addition, even when we are developing a creative solution, prior knowledge gives us a starting point, so that we are constantly moving towards a solution and not merely trying things that have been tried unsuccessfully before. In Smith, Ward, and Finke’s (1995) creative cognition approach, there is room for both of these viewpoints with regards to the effects of prior knowledge. Essentially, prior knowledge can have both positive and negative effects, quite possibly simultaneous ones. The authors admit that, whatever else the negative effects of prior knowledge may be, we need it because it serves as a starting point and illuminates a path in any problem, as prior knowledge tells us what has already been tried in the past, what has succeeded, what has failed, and, most importantly, what is most likely to succeed in the future. Related to this is the role of prior knowledge in novel insights. An insight is a solution that comes to a person suddenly and without warning, and is oftentimes simply the rearrangement of prior knowledge in new ways to generate a creative solution. Insight can occur when a person is working on a problem, such as a puzzle or brain-teaser The Effects of Negative 6 where it is impossible to measure progress until a solution is found, but more often insight occurs after the problem has incubated for some time (Smith, 2000). Incubation refers to the period during which, after attempting unsuccessfully to solve a problem, a person will move on to a totally unrelated task, and then suddenly think of a solution for the task they had stopped. This documented incidence of novel solutions arrived at via insight following incubation would seem to imply that an unconscious process is at work in creativity (Smith, 2000). Silviera (1971) took a slightly different view, however. The results of her “cheap-necklace problem”, which involved more subjects solving the problem as the length of the break they took in the middle of solving the problem increased, suggested that incubation effects were largely due to subjects forgetting set effects. Recall that a set effect is the bias that develops towards the initial attempted solution, so that alternatives are not considered. By getting the chance to start the problem over, subjects could approach it anew, and the initial way in which they approached the problem the second time would lead to different set effects than the first time, or possibly to none at all. This is usually how “insight” is explained. Prior knowledge can predispose a subject to generate certain solutions in certain situations. This phenomenon is referred to as priming. Priming can be either positive or negative. Positive primes would increase the ability of a person to solve a problem. They are words or cues that stimulate, as oppose to inhibit, the retrieval of later targets (Reed, 2000). For instance, after viewing a list of words which contained the word “doctor”, a participant will be more likely to recall the word “nurse” on a subsequent test in which nurse is the correct answer, and will also recall the word faster. The Effects of Negative 7 Negative primes would inhibit the creative solution of a problem (or any solution at all, in some cases) by acting as a blocker to the correct solution. Smith clearly demonstrated the effects of negative priming by presenting participants with a list of words, and then giving them other words with letters left out, a procedure known as a word-fragment completion task. When presented with the word “allergy” as part of the original list, for example, subjects had trouble solving the problem “al-e--ry”. The word “allergy” acted as a “blocker” so that participants could not retrieve the correct solution from memory, which was “allegory”. This effect was prevalent even when participants were explicitly warned to ignore the list of words they had been read in solving the problems (Smith, 2003). Smith’s work also demonstrates one other characteristic of problem solving. Once a response has been retrieved, the likelihood of retrieving it again increases, because the response has become active in working memory (Smith, 1995). Thus, after retrieving the same wrong answer a number of times, a participant might become “stuck” on a particular problem. Participants can also become stuck in a trap of using the same solution to a series of problems, even though, for some problems in the series there exists an easier solution. One demonstration of this is the Einstellung effect (Anderson, 2000). Originally demonstrated by Luchins, it involved giving participants a math problem in which they had three jugs that held different amounts of water (A,B, and C), and had to figure out how to use those jugs to achieve the desired amount of water. For the first five problems, the only possible solution was B-2C-A. However, for the sixth problem, there exited an easier solution (A-C), however most participants used the earlier more difficult solution that was active in short term memory and thus subject to biased retrieval. The Effects of Negative 8 The implication of this work is of particular importance for those involved in group decision-making. Logically, one can expect that, in a group brainstorming session, the first proposal put forward would prejudice a group toward retrieving the same or similar proposals for the duration of their brainstorming. Written pre-meeting brainstorming by individuals might help alleviate this problem, though. One could question Smith’s method, because participants had no systematic series of steps with which to work. The problem, in other words, could not be solved in a stagelike process (like mathematics) and was insight-based rather than incremental. The participants had no set of steps upon which to base the development of a creative solution to the problem. Thus, the exact onset of the blocking effect, and the exact process on which it acted within the temporal sequence of creative idea generation, is unclear. Insight problems are problems where the answer suddenly and unpredictably comes to you after you have been trying the problem for a long time and letting the problem incubate (Schooler & Melcher, 1995). The word example above is an example of an insight problem, because you cannot tell how far you are from finding the answer, it just suddenly comes to you. Insight problems, then, also demonstrate poor metacognitive control. The subject was not able to ignore blockers and solve the problem when it was originally presented. Incremental problems, on the other hand, can be solved in a stagelike process, so that the subject knows approximately where he or she is in the process and how long it will take to finish. Smith has, however, also demonstrated the effect of negative primes in two separate incremental tasks (Smith, 1995, 2003). In the first task, Smith asked a group of students to draw a hypothetical alien that would develop on an earth-like planet far, far The Effects of Negative 9 away. The students were given examples, all of which contained four legs, antennae, and a tail. The students’ designs varied from the examples in important ways, but almost all included the features with which the students had been primed: four legs, antennae, and a tail. This effect was observed even after students were told to draw aliens as different from the examples as possible. Even more striking was an example in which Smith (2003) asked a group of engineering students to design a spill-proof coffee cup, and then presented examples with several obvious mistakes (or at least, mistakes that would be obvious to engineers). Note that this example more clearly illustrates the negative dimension of negative priming, in that not just unoriginal but undesirable features are incorporated into the designs. Most engineering students in the experiment incorporated the negative features of the example designs into their own designs, even when specifically told that they were seeing bad examples and to avoid emulating them. Thus, one sees how negative priming works here: the negative primes act as blockers, making participants unable to retrieve alternate responses that they clearly have the knowledge to generate, even when they consciously try to do so. One could conceivably question why negative priming is called “negative” at all. It is, after all, similar to priming in that those subjected to it are unable to overcome it to solve a problem. Negative priming is negative because of its effects. Negative primes make a problem harder to solve by priming a subject with information that distracts from finding the correct solution. The phenomenon of priming itself, though, is not necessarily good or bad. If the priming does not significantly impair the finding of a solution, or if the problem is not important so that an uncreative solution is not necessarily undesirable, The Effects of Negative 10 then the priming is not negative. Put another way, the process of priming is a single consistent physiological process. What makes it negative or positive is the effect of the prime on the solution, not the actual process of priming itself. Priming (knowledge presented just prior to the task) and prior knowledge (present in long term memory prior to the experiment) could both have similar effects independently. That is to say that both provide the subject with some fund of knowledge from which they can draw on at the onset of the task and in initial planning, because the knowledge was obtained before the presentation of the task. Priming can do this because, as we have seen, it is presented before the experimental task and will be drawn on in the performance of that task. Prior knowledge can do that because a subject will draw on prior knowledge to have some idea how to complete a task in the absence of instructions that would prime the subject. Both priming and prior knowledge, then, help subjects to complete the task more quickly than they otherwise would have by giving them a cognitive road map from which to plan. Furthermore, one could assume that the effects of priming and prior knowledge interact. That is to say that subjects will perform faster in a task for which they have prior knowledge and are primed than they would perform in a task in which neither priming nor prior knowledge is present. Priming is only one variable that can affect performance. Another such variable is time pressure. For example, George (1980) and Mann and Tan (1993) and Hahn, Lawson & Lee (1992) all identify time pressure as having a negative impact on decisionmaking performance and each reaches that conclusion studying decision-making in a markedly different context. George (1980), for example, studied the foreign policy decision-making process of United States presidents. He attempted to identify the The Effects of Negative 11 impediments to effective decision-making. He identified several such factors through case studies of crisis decision-making in presidential administrations, with particular emphasis on JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and FDR and Pearl Harbor. Among the factors George identified were a reliance on only one stream of information, nearunanimity of opinion in a group of advisors where not every viable option has an advocate, human prejudices, and time pressure. The effect of time pressure was mainly to prevent consideration of every alternative in turn, thus creating a situation that relied heavily on heuristics, and where the first option was implemented so that at least something would be done in time. A definition of some decision-making terms might be helpful here. Problem solving strategies are often discussed in terms of heuristics and algorithms. A heuristic is a strategy that is sometimes helpful in solving a problem, but won’t always work. The availability heuristic is a specific kind of heuristic that employs the strategy of “estimating probability by the ease with which examples can be recalled” (Reed, 2000). In other words, the availability heuristic is sometimes helpful, but since you can recall some examples more easily than others, you will be likely to make biased estimates of outcomes. Thus, your creative product may simply be the first thing to come to mind, which, as demonstrated by the research on positive priming, may in itself be the last thing you saw, or, put another way, your biased retrieval set. Keep in mind that under time pressure, there is even less time to recall examples than would normally be available. Thus, under time pressure, the availability heuristic would produce results even more