THE CREATIVE STEREOTYPE
Why we need to popularise a new way of characterising creative people
“Help me out. Think about an archetypal inventor. Tell me what you’ve got.” I delivered this instruction early on in many of my creativity workshops. I suspect you’re probably already obeying it, without thinking. That’s the nature of instructions, I guess.
The answers always came thick and fast:
“He’s got frizzy hair.” (Unfortunately, the male gender was almost always presumed.)
“Yeah, my parents would say he needs a good haircut.”
“He’s wearing a tweed jacket that has leather elbow patches, and one of them is hanging off.”
“He’s got glasses, thick glasses.”
“Yeah, and one of the arms on his glasses has been fixed with sticky tape.”
“He’s always late.”
“He’s got an untidy beard, with the remains of his breakfast crusting above his top lip. Eww!”
“He looks a bit dazed, like he can’t quite remember which way is up.”
“He bumps into things and drops things.”
“He’s got different socks on each foot.”
It was always a great way to break the ice. Everybody had an answer, all of which were correct, and everyone had a laugh. Although the inventor is just one aspect of the creative persona, it enabled me to draw the obvious conclusion. Almost everyone harbours a creative stereotype, whether we know it or not. Equally, we all know we’re not like that. It is then but a short step to conclude that we’re not creative. Once this belief is embedded in our identity, we no longer seek opportunities for creative expression, and our creative lights go out.
Welcome!
In the last but one post, we explored the link between beliefs and creative expression. And in the last post, I offered a process for changing self-limiting beliefs about our ability to be creative. In this post, we’re going to look at a particular set of beliefs: stereotypes.
Handle with care
Stereotypes have a bit of a bad rep, and it’s not entirely undeserved. The OED tells us that stereotypes are widely held, stable, but oversimplified images or ideas of a particular type of person or thing. In one respect, they actually serve a beneficial function. They are what psychologists call a heuristic: a quick and efficient means of making sense of received information, of making decisions, or of solving a problem. They are mental short-cuts. They save us from having to work out, from scratch, all sorts of things that we commonly encounter.
They get their bad rep from the fact that they often focus on exaggerated negative characteristics of types of individuals and have been used to demonise some social groups. They then become exclusive, dysfunctional, unproductive, and frankly, insulting. This is certainly the case as far as creativity is concerned.
The creative stereotype
I did a quick trawl of the resources on creative stereotypes I acquired while I was doing my research into creative identity, and I identified 60 (mostly) adjectives that would generally be regarded as negative. Here they are, in alphabetical order to avoid any inference of importance or frequency:
Absent-minded, alternative (as in don’t fit in with ‘normal’ society), arrogant, broke (as in penniless), chaotic, childish, cliquey, decadent, deviant, disorganised, disruptive, dissatisfied (with their outputs), druggy, eccentric, egocentric, emotional, erratic, extravagant, fickle, flaky, flighty, idealistic, immature, indecisive, insular, intense (not in a good way), introverted (used in a disparaging manner), lazy (because creative activity is not proper work!), lonely, mercurial, messy, miserable, misunderstood, moody, naïve, narcissistic, neglectful (of their appearance and anything else that’s not immediately important), obsessive, oversensitive, party-goers, perfectionist, pretentious (as in they speak in way that is unintelligible to noncreative people), prickly, rebellious, scatter-brained, self-absorbed, self-obsessed, self-righteous, technophobic, temperamental, thieving (as in they steal other people’s ideas), uncompromising, uncooperative, undisciplined, unrealistic (as in they live in a fantasy world full of mermaids, magic and mugwumps), unreliable, unstable, unsuccessful (while those that succeed have sold out or are lucky or dead), volatile, weird... I suspect I missed some.
It’s no surprise that when threatened with the application of the creative stereotype, our automatic response is, “Nah, not me!” And you can imagine that these labels are not delivered in a neutral tone. Instead, they come laden with a disparaging inflection and a sneer thrown in for good measure.
There was a smattering of positive attributes, such as funny, original, full of ideas, curious, and inspired. There were even some characteristics that contradicted those in the negative category, such as organised and focused, which suggests some interesting perspectives on creative personality that we’ll explore in a future post.
The priming effect of stereotypes
Counterintuitively, the positive face of the creative stereotype seems able to coexist alongside its negative sibling. For example, Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar demonstrated that individuals performed better on a divergent thinking test when primed with the eccentric poet stereotype rather than with the rigid librarian stereotype. The research population perceived the former as creative and uninhibited, while they saw the latter as dull and uninspired. (We won’t challenge the reliability of using divergent thinking tests to demonstrate any psychological phenomenon... meantime.)
The lone genius
One creativity stereotype that has been widely researched is that of the lone (male) genius. This was partly promoted by a desire amongst some contemporary creativity scholars to understand the nature of major historical figures, such as Leonardo da Vinci. Investigating the dynamics of genius is all well and good, but it’s disappointing that it has permitted the lone genius myth to take root.
Affinity bias and social exclusion
There is a darker side to the negative aspect of the creative stereotype. Affinity bias encourages us to favour and associate with people who share our own interests and perspectives. Consequently, people who identify as being uncreative will likely gravitate towards others of a similar persuasion, reinforcing both their perceptions about creativity and the creative stereotype.
Why does the creative stereotype persist?
Of course, this creative stereotype is, in part, based on the narrow, conventional understanding of creativity, which only recognises arty, crafty, and musical endeavours. Were we to accept the authentic definition of creativity, bringing something (in other words, anything) into being, then we would realise that we’re all doing it all of the time, and the creative stereotype would (I hope) quickly shrivel and die. And there is so much contradictory evidence to demonstrate that those 60 (mostly) adjectives represent a deeply inaccurate representation of creative people. I wonder how and why it persists.
I suspect skullduggery. The negative face of the creative stereotype is simply society’s pernicious tactic to constrain creativity and avoid the supposed anarchy that might otherwise ensue. If most of us continue to believe we are not creative, society can just about handle the output from those of us who are resistant to socialisation and the stereotype.
The call to action
So, what are we going to do about this unwelcome guest at our table? I have one simple suggestion: call it out! Every time you notice anyone using the negative creativity stereotype (and that might be you), challenge their thinking, provide contradictory evidence, create cognitive dissonance, shake their beliefs, promote an alternative perspective, quote examples, and explain how it feels to be on the receiving end. Do let me know how you get on.
Key takeaways
Stereotypes are widely held, stable, oversimplified representations of a particular type of thing, group, or person.
Stereotypes are beliefs, and beliefs are a component of our personal and creative identities.
We all know about the creative stereotype, even if we don’t know we know.
The creative stereotype is overwhelmingly negative.
The creative stereotype is a subtle but generally terminal influence on creative expression.
Affinity bias reinforces the impact of stereotypes.
The creative stereotype exists largely to constrain the amount of creativity occurring in society.
Anyone wishing to build a solid creative identity has a duty to call out the creative stereotype.
Next time...
Next time, we’ll take a first look at the idea of a creative personality, another component of our creative identity.
The chilling reality of stereotypes
In 2008, the American Broadcasting Company (aka ABC) launched what they called a hidden-camera, sociological reality show hosted by journalist John Quiñones. The premise was simple yet powerful: use actors to play out controversial scenarios and ethical dilemmas in plain sight to see how innocent bystanders might respond.
It was perhaps prompted by the famous bystander experiments, conducted by Bibb Latané and John Darley in the late 1960s, which demonstrated that individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency when they know that others are present. They called this the bystander effect.
These experiments were, in turn, influenced by the real-life murder in 1964 of Kitty Genovese, who was killed in New York while neighbours allegedly watched without calling the police, each expecting that someone else would have made the call.
In February 2016, the show aired a segment where three individuals were separately filmed trying to steal a bicycle: a white guy, a black guy, and an attractive woman. The actors wore similar clothes so as not to mark them out in any particular way. They all had the tools for the job, clearly visible to passers-by.
The white thief was left to his own devices by passing strangers despite, at one point, employing an electric saw to draw their attention. When asked if it was his bike, he replied, “Not exactly.” Even then, he wasn’t challenged. More than 100 people passed him by, hardly registering what he was doing. Only a single couple contacted the police. One person even wished him good luck!
Similarly, the female thief garnered no unwanted attention. Two men even stopped to give her assistance!
The black male, on the other hand, had a very different experience. He quickly attracted a crowd, with people yelling, “Thief!” and using phones to take incriminating pictures.
This informal experiment might not stand up to academic scrutiny, but it clearly demonstrates the potentially insidious nature of stereotypes, in this case, gender and racial stereotypes. You might think the creative stereotype is pretty harmless in comparison. However, just consider all the creative activity that has been, and continues to be, suppressed, intentionally and unconsciously, as a direct result of its invisible hand.
That’s it for this post. Thanks for reading. Do recommend and share. And remember:
A solid creative identity is all you need to be creative for the rest of your life.
Till next time, be bold!
Alisdair.
Notes
Affinity bias: https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.102.1.4
Creative stereotype: https://www.justhowcoolisthat.com/2017/05/09/33-common-stereotypes-about-creatives
Creative stereotype effect: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0142567
Lone (male) genius: Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity, by Dean Simonton, ISBN 9780195128796
Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination, edited by Todd D. Nelson, ISBN 9781032505848
Stereotypes and the Construction of the Social World, by Perry R. Hinton, ISBN 9781138637535