Monday, September 24, 2012
Are You A Bit Of A Loser? Don't Worry, You're Probably Really Creative
Co.Create: Creativity \ Culture \ Commerce: Are you a recovering high school geek who still can’t get the girl? Are you always the last person picked for your company’s softball team? When you watched Office Space, did you feel a special kinship to the stapler-obsessed Milton Waddams? If you answered yes to any of these questions, do not despair. Researchers at Johns Hopkins and Cornell have recently found that the socially rejected might also be society’s most creatively powerful people.
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17 comments:
This article is bound to upset a few of the people here at CMU. Why are "nerds" losers? I would not classify someone who enjoys sci-fi and has trouble making friends a loser. A loser to me is a person that does not pay their bills, or does not contribute to society.
She is also saying that these "Losers" don't care what others think, therefore they should be more successful and those that are already successful may have only gotten there because they care what others think. I'm so confused by her logic in this article that I had to read it three times. Maybe I should just read the study.
Well, 12 year old me would be very happy to read this article. The results of this study are really quite interesting. I really believe the findings too, just looking around at a SOD DP party it is very clear that we were all dorks growing up. This is the reason why we turned to both theater (relatively dorky) and specifically to tech (extremely dorky) and I guess according to this study is why we were actually good at it. I think there is something to be said for people who don't have a place fitting into somewhere where everyone will accept them, and that is usually in creative environments. I don't know how useful this will be to bosses but I suspect that fostering a place where people feel free to make artistic choices or I guess where they will be ostracized is a good thing.
I completely agree with Taylor. A loser should be defined as someone who can't function and do things like holding down a job or is an adult and still dependent on people. I get how the author was trying to make this article sound more appealing and not on the dryer end of these types of articles, but I don't like how this author states that all dorks or nerds are considered losers. I feel like this article focuses mostly on the loser bit, but doesn't really get to what, other then that, made the subject different (other then their social status)
Although some of my friends would yell at me for being so self-deprecating BUT:
This is me. I am bad at test-taking, and thinking the very strict way high school teachers require. How did/do I cope? Theatre! I never think of myself as a creative person, but the combination of artistic and realistic creativity allows me to do some cool stuff. That'w shy I'm a theatre TECH person: I am creative, but not on one side or the other. I can visualize both artistically and structurally.
This is an interesting article. It reminds me of a book I read a couple years back entitled: The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School.
While I can see how people can get upset about these articles and the broad generalizations they make, I firmly believe that they are valuable tools for educators (especially high school) to remember. While everyone is different articles like these remind people to try and look past initial preconceived notions of a person and work at figuring out a way to actively engage individuals.
Alright, there seems to be a mix of comments about this article. So maybe the writer is calling the creative people losers, or that if your a geek or were picked on you were a loser, but I dont think thats really what the study was saying.
What I think she was stating was that the independently minded individuals (not necessarily losers) are the more creative ones. In school, conformity is big, just like it is in the workplace. You go to a certain school you need to represent that school, you work at a certain company, your views should only be about that company. I think it is interesting that those who have a unique view or independent views would be more creative. It makes perfect sense to me. Think about hipsters. They had new trends and wanted to not be conformists. They made a style, it was creative. Now its a mainstream style, but it was once independent and creative.
I dont entirely agree with this article. I think the word "creative" itself is extremely subjective. The way this experiment was conducted was also subjective and i feel had a lot of flaws in the foundation. The whole "draw an alien and gain points based off of how least human it looks" shouldn't reflect the "creativity" of a person. drawing an alien with out given guide lines is kind of baiting someone, most people will typically draw the conventional alien, with pointy chin oval eyes and a slit nose. it would be the same as if you asked someone to draw a flower from a planet thats not earth, most people would probably draw the same relative shape because its what we know. Also im not quite sure i see the correlation between being socially rejected and creative. i just dont believe there is enough evidence to support this claim.
cIt's so fascinating how the article intends to celebrate "the loser" and yet all its really doing is perpetuating the vicious cycle of ridiculous stereotypes. Society has constructed this absurd notion of what fits in with the collective, and what doesn't.
Overall, equating artistic inclination with being a glorified outsider, great way to inspire pride.
I also don't quite understand the logic of the author here, and I'm not quite sure this study represents the larger population. Some of the most creative people I know have been and still are the "popular kids". I don't think being rejected is a way of making you more creative. On the contrary, I think being constantly rejected can really stifle your creativity because you are afraid of experimenting with new things and putting yourself out there. Rejection doesn't automatically make you not care what other people think. The fear of not being accepted can hold you back from a lot, it doesn't necessarily let you be more free.
While some of this article was interesting, I do not quite agree with some of the conclusions. As with any study, I think that it depends on the study group which guided the results. Also people who are less popular or maybe more reserved are seen as "more creative" because they generally have more free time on their hands because they may not be as social as others and have more time to sit and focus and work on their craft. However as Tiffany said, many of the "popular kids" also are very creative, I think that it really depends on how focused someone is and their parenting and drive for success.
It is interesting to read this article because in my Undergrad I also read many articles on studies that found correlations between "losers" or "recluse" children and adults and the potential to be criminals or serial killers or rapists.
I see the author's point of this article, and can see the correlation she is drawing. However, I do agree with many of my peers that there are some gaps in her logic which make this hard to swallow. I am curious to see if there could have been better relationships drawn than that of being a social outcast to creativity. I think it would have been interesting to break down creativity to something more root, like conceptual thinking abilities or ability to see multiple possibilities.
I feel that creativity is born of these abilities and others, and being able to put a finer point on the study would have been interesting. Are these kids weird because they see a ways other kids their age don't, and logically, it makes more sense to them? I see a lot of potential for this to be the start of some really interesting research.
And Cornell???? Come to CMU if you want to get some real data.
I'm not sure if I agree with this article either. I do agree with tspeegle that creative people should not be titled "losers". It's not that creative people are unpopular, it's that they are in a world of their own. Rather than participating, they watch. They study the world around them, collecting inspiration, remembering certain characteristics about people, events, etc. But then again, not all creative people live in solitude. Actors and musical theatre majors are the most fun, welcoming, and sociable people I have met at CMU, and they are still as creative as a fine arts major (just in a different form). I don't like how the creativity tests relate to drawing. Some people are more creative in acting, sound, lighting, etc. Since when does creativity only involve art? Creativity can be a new way of thinking or philosophy. I don't believe creativity can be scientifically tested, because no one is the same.
I can see that the experimenter rooted her findings in her research but and while the lines of the experiment may have been cleanly cut, I don't think that was the only way or the best way to test creativity. I can see why being rejected may cause someone to become more confident intrinsically but, in agreement with the above, I think too much rejection could lessen the confidence that any creative person has. In a theatrical setting, we as actors are rejected constantly and we as designers will not have our pitch accepted every time, but I don't think that's why we are creative people as a whole. I think that despite our rejection the creativity that was already there is just challenged to rise to a different occasion.
I have a problem with this article as a matter of fact. Well yes, many creative people are more unique and by default are less likely to be included, this seems like a very broad stereotype. Mainly, look at theater, well we are quite inclusive in our own group, we like being part of the theater group (why else would we be in theater). but if you go watch a show, it tends to be very unique, beautiful, and creative. Therefor theater people (in the professional world) directly contrast to this article. Also the part where they asked about we or I and me or us doesn't show whether or not a person likes to be a loner, the person could just a narcissist, which is also a sterotype of theater people.
I also have a problem with this article. It comes across as creative people being the separate group. Artists are always somewhat in their own group but does not mean they aren't relatable. Many times in society we see extremes like Lady Gaga that are in no way relatable by the media's thoughts. I feel that we should look at our similarities and how our creativity can build off each other. I think this study was very limited and considered negatives that caused people to be creative not if a person was creative in the first place.
The main claim of this artical is that perhaps people who feel seperate from the group are more able to be creative. This artical uses Steave Jobs and Lady GaGa as examples of people who have sucseeded in the modern world as a resauslt of their creativity. The artical also says that compainys may want to encourage this sort of creativity by hiring the people who might otherwise be considered outcasts.
I think that this is a great idea and that more reasherch should be put in to the topic. I also think that we can re examin history with this consept in mind and we will find many new insights. For example Nikola Tesla was an outcast from normal scosioty for most of his life and yet he continualy found creative solutaions to problems his contemporarys thought were imposible.
It is my experience that usually the kid left alone in the corner of the playground with his imaginary friends is probably the one having the most fascinating conversations of all.
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