We propose that people exhibit an insight bias, such that they undervalue persistence and overvalue insight in the creative process

Lay people’s beliefs about creativity: evidence for an insight bias. Brian J. Lucas, Loran F. Nordgren. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, October 16 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.09.007

Abstract: Research finds that creative ideas are generated by two cognitive pathways: insight and persistence. However, emerging research suggests people’s lay beliefs may not adequately reflect both routes. We propose that people exhibit an insight bias, such that they undervalue persistence and overvalue insight in the creative process.

Keywords: creativitycreative processinsightpersistencelay beliefsjudgment

From performance to perception

What might an insight bias look like? We propose that an insight bias would be supported by evidence that people’s beliefs about creativity systematically mispredict creative performance such that people undervalue persistence and overvalue insight.

Initial evidence of an insight bias comes from research that compared people’s beliefs about the value of persistence for creativity against actual performance. After an initial period of idea generation, people predicted how many more ideas they would generate during a second round of idea generation and then they actually generated ideas a second time. This research found that people consistently underestimated how many ideas they would generate during the second round [6]. That is, they underestimated the value of persisting. Building on this finding, other research investigated people’s beliefs about how creativity changes over time. People were asked to predict the trajectory of their creativity across an ideation session and then to actually complete the session. These studies found that whereas creativity actually increased or stayed the same across the session, people consistently predicted their creativity would decline [7]. Finally, problem solving research has found that people overestimate how quickly they exhaust a problem’s solution space (i.e., the set of reasonable solutions to a problem). In one study, people estimated that they generated 75% of the solution space when in fact their ideas covered only 20–30% [8].

Other research more directly compares beliefs about insight and persistence. For instance, people believe creative ideas are more likely to be produced by cognitive processes related to insight (e.g., cognitive flexibility) than processes related to persistence (e.g., deliberate, persistent thinking) [9]. One study found that people believe creativity is stimulated more by defocusing (i.e., not working on the problem) than by focusing (i.e., deliberately working) on the task. However, when asked to recall and describe a recent idea generation experience, they reported the opposite: their idea was more often preceded by focusing than defocusing [9]. The preference for insight resonates with research on beliefs about the origins of talent. This research finds that people favor entrepreneurs whose ideas stem from innate talents (e.g., from traits related to genius and insight) over entrepreneurs whose ideas result from effort and hard work. In one study, people even preferred an innately talented entrepreneur with fewer achievements over a hard-working entrepreneur with more achievements [10].

The studies summarized above provide evidence that people undervalue persistence and overvalue insight. Understanding these (faulty) beliefs is important because they influence how people choose to engage in creative work. For instance, undervaluing persistence and believing one’s best ideas come early leads people to disengage from creative work more quickly, which limits creativity [6,7]. Valuing insight leads people to expect more creativity when in the bathtub than at one’s workstation [9] and to discount the value of others whose accomplishments draw on persistence rather than innate genius [10].

What causes the insight bias? One explanation relates to the subjective experience of idea generation itself. Specifically, the feeling of effortfulness experienced while generating ideas (also called metacognitive fluency) [11]. Generating ideas via insight feels less effortful and less mentally exhausting than generating ideas via persistence. This more pleasant experience of insight, versus persistence, leads people to think and feel more positively about insight [6,11]. For example, the research where people underestimated how many ideas they would generate while persisting [6] found that the feeling of effortfulness experienced during initial idea generation accounted for the discrepancy between predictions and performance. Similarly, people’s belief that creativity declines across an ideation session [7] was explained by people’s pessimism about the difficulty of producing ideas over time. Future research should continue to test this and other mechanisms.