Does Falling in Love Make You More Creative?

Tepi Ennis Thursday, October 01, 2009

Core Chemistry 9 Block C , Even Days Mr. Ippolito

Lieberman Nira and Oren Shapira. "Does Falling in Love Make You More Creative?"

Scientific American Online. 29 Sept. 2009. Web. 1 Oct. 2009

< http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-falling-in-love-make >.

This article, as the title suggests, discusses the associations in the brain between love and creativity. Within this article love is referred to as when one or two individuals seek a long term relationship and satisfaction from a partner. Thus, romantic love forces us to imagine things in a long term perspective. Having to think so far into the future helps our brains think more globally, of more distant and uncommon outcomes or relationships or ways of solving a problem (in this case, finding true love.) However, the article's theory is that it also affects every day problem solving rather than just that of finding a stead-fast mate. This is opposite for sexual desire which is merely that of lust and has an entirely different effect on a person's brain. Such a want does not take large amounts of time to assuage; it is a mind-set focused on the now, promoting short-term perspective. It is also believed that lust triggers more logical, by the book, analytical thinking.

Just to clarify the difference between creative and analytical thinking. Say one is looking for a present. Analytical thinking will be thoughts on what is most cost-effective, what will look better when presented, what they might need, more literal. Creative thinking will consider "what makes them happy" and this is what helps people to come up more unconventional gifts as planning a vacation together or writing that special someone a song. Both types of thinking are essential to our everyday problem solving. One doesn't need to be thinking creatively when one is, say buying mattresses.

To support its theories the article draws on the work of Dutch scientists Jens Forster, Kai Epstude, and Amina Ozelsel from the University of Amsterdam. Participants in their studies were each asked to think of a different scenario and then tested using three creativity problems and four that required logic (e.g., if A<B and C>B then what can one conclude?) Some were asked to think of a long walk with their loved one (love scenario,) others were asked to fantasize about casual sex with someone they were attracted to, but didn't love (sex scenario) and the others were asked to just think of a walk alone (control.) The results were as suspected. Those instructed to think of love were more adept at solving the creativity puzzles than those who were told to consider sex beforehand.

The second study was to test whether subtle reminders could also promote the same thinking. Participants in this study were told they were aiding in a study on attention and were shown different cards with words related to the different variables ("loving," "erotic," or for controls "XKJGI.") Creative thinking was measured differently this time: participants were given an allotted amount of time to think of as many uses for a brick as they could. However, the results were similar to the first test: those engineered to think of love were better at the creative assessment and those engineered to think of sex were better at the analytical problems.

The last study tried to prove that love makes us think of connections that we might not think of before. This is called the halo affect: connecting seemingly unrelated attributes to each other (e.g., "he's so kind to kids, he must love animals.") The study did indeed prove it's hypothesis once again and people were able to make connections even about the physical characteristics of a chair!

I chose this article, because I think as young adults this affects us since we are only beginning to experience the pull of mating. (God that sounds crude, but I don't know how else to word it!) This article is important to society, because for all of us and to neurologists and psychologists, love is still a mystery that we are trying to unravel. No one really understands why it can affect us so strongly and all the different effects. This writing also touched home plate for me, because I find psychology fascinating and I think that it is a good thing to understand how someone's thinking patterns can unknowingly alter themselves, because of outside circumstances.

The article presented an interesting case study, but I do think that it could have focused more on the studies first and given more details rather than explaining what was concluded from the studies in the beginning. Reading the first few paragraphs made me feel as if the author was presenting a theory, but really had no data to back it up. Before I discovered the "Go to Second Page" button I was left with a feeling of emptiness and the article seemed embarrassingly inadequate. However, the case studies are very good at backing up the previous arguments made and I appreciated how the article explored many conclusions based on the studies rather than just a one sentence, breathtaking fact.