By Susan Meindl 

Creativity and Inhibition

Psychological researchers Carson, Peterson and Higgins have researched the idea that creative individuals are less able than the general population to screen out unwanted or irrelevant stimuli.They refer to an ability found in humans and most mammalian species called Latent Inhibition (LI) which is the brains ability "to screen out of attentional focus, stimuli that have previously been found to be irrelevant." Since creative thinking is dependent on the ability to recombine elements in original ways, it is easy to see that having more elements available would tend to be advantageous in creative processing. In fact, other research on creative individuals indicates that this is the case.

Researchers Dellas and Gaier (1970) studying creative process have also discovered that creative individuals tend not to "screen out" irrelevant details and do not "pre-categorize" stimuli as automatically or rigidly as non-creative individuals. LI has also been found in personality studies to be associated with the traits of Openness to experience, and facility in divergent thinking and with over-all creative achievement. Divergent thinking tasks which are used to assess creative ability typically encompass: fluency (number of responses generated), originality (unusualness of responses, based on the statistical infrequency of each individual response within the current sample), and flexibility (number of different categories of response and the number of category changes). It is easy to see how access to a wider variety of stimuli (possibilities) plays into these abilities.

Do you have to be a little crazy to be creative?

In a related vein, "originality," which was described by psychologist Eysenk (1995) as the ability to produce statistically unusual ideas, is conceptually similar to "looseness of associations." This looseness is also presumed to be a by-product of the failure of an inhibitory filtering mechanism, probably the same LI described by Carson et al, which would normally function to limit associations to those perceived as relevant to the current task Looseness is of association, like most human qualities, is spread across a continuum from adaptive to pathological. It is easy to see how loose association and inability to filter relevant from irrelevant information is also distressingly symptomatic of mental illness, especially schizophrenia or psychosis.

Carson et al, have found however, that IQ is a modulating factor. Higher IQ in conjunction with reduced latent inhibition may allow an individual to override the problematic aspects of their "deficit" in latent inhibition by applying high-functioning mechanisms at a later stage, for example by using common sense and more conscious mechanisms of selection.

HSP and Latent Inhibition

Psychologist Elaine Aron estimates that approximately 15-20 % of all human beings have an inherited disposition which she calls "High Sensitivity" (HSP) which is effectively a tendency to process incoming stimuli in more detail. She suggests that "it means you are aware of subtleties in your surroundings, a great advantage in many situations." To the degree that this extra processing intersects with low Latent Inhibition it also suggests a reason why such individuals can be easily overwhelmed when they have been out in a highly stimulating environment for too long.

Many Highly Sensitive individuals self-identify as creative people and it may be that quite a few creative individuals are, un-knowingly HSP's. It is perhaps for these reasons that it is part of the mystique of the "tormented artist" to be overwhelmed by their sensitivity.

The intersection of High Sensitivity and low Latent Inhibition is therefore a double edged sword. On the one hand it can make the world an overwhelming place and at the same time it creates in the individual a mental space which is both highly receptive and able to work creatively with all the material that the environment offers.

References:
Shelley H. Carson, Jordan B. Peterson, Daniel M. Higgins (2003). Decreased Latent Inhibition Is Associated With Increased Creative Acheivement in High-Functioning Individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(3), 499-506.