In 1950, the American psychologist Joy P. Guilford delivered a lecture to the American Psychological Association (APA) calling for a scientific focus on creativity. Psychology knew little about creativity at the time. Years earlier, during WWII, the Air Force commissioned Guilford, then a psychologist at USC, to identify pilots who would respond to emergencies… read more »
Contagious
Sidetracked
The Complete Essays
Posts Tagged: Jonah Lehrer
A Week Of Cognitive Science (10/27-11/4)
What Exactly Is Critical Thinking? A thoughtful a well written piece from Paul Gary Wyckoff, a professor at my alma mater, Hamilton College. Why do we see faces in the clouds but not clouds in faces? Christian Jarret explains new research that explores why the brain is so apt at seeing faces in random… read more »
Human Nature in the Lab and on the Page
We live in an era where readers of science books on the human condition expect clever psychological studies to explain every nook and cranny of our complex nature. They expect specifics, what happens in the brain when musicians improvise or when we experience a-ha moments, and they expect generalities, how friendships form or how decision-making… read more »
Jonah Lehrer and the New Science of Creativity
For most of human history, the creative process has been associated with higher powers; it was about channeling the muses or harnessing one’s inner Apollonian and Dionysian; it was otherwordly. Science has barely touched creativity. In fact, in the second half of the 20th century less than 1 percent of psychology papers investigated aspects of… read more »