Switching on Creativity
Leaders often struggle to structure work routines that nurture creativity. The authors describe a tangible way to help ‘switch it on’.
switching back and forth beIN A WORLD OF HUSTLE AND BUSTLE, tween tasks has become the default lifestyle — and work style — for many. Bombarded with emails, phone calls and meetings, employees constantly shift their attention from one task to another. The propensity to ‘task-switch’ now emerges as early as adolescence: The average 7th to 12th grader estimates spending 60 per cent of the time they set aside for homework switching between homework and other activities such as email and instant messaging.
Not surprisingly, the increasing prevalence of task switching has prompted research into its psychological consequences. To date, research has revealed that switching tasks increases our susceptibility to distraction, facilitates error-making, diminishes learning and heightens social anxiety.
While these studies unveil some of the negative consequences of task switching, they leave open the question of whether there are any positive benefits to task switching. In this article, we will summarize our research, which indicates that one benefit of task switching is something every modern organization is seeking: increased creativity.
Creativity at Work
Creativity — defined as ‘the production of ideas that are both novel and useful’— is critical to both individual and organizational success. From an interpersonal perspective, creative employees can inspire ‘outside-the-box’ thinking among their colleagues to build an inventive environment within the organization. And from an organizational perspective, creativity empowers an organization to thrive in a dynamic world of unforeseen challenges and opportunities.
Although it is clear that creativity influences critical organizational outcomes, many practitioners struggle to design work routines that foster creativity. In response to this ‘knowledge gap’, scholars have increasingly studied job design factors that enhance or hamper creativity. For example, studies show that job autonomy makes individuals more intrinsically motivated, which in turn enhances creativity. Other job design factors that spur creativity include the spatial configuration of work settings, job complexity, time pressure and contingent rewards.
One under-explored job design factor that may influence creativity is task switching. By forcing individuals to temporarily
put tasks aside, a ‘continual-switch’ approach may elevate creative performance by alleviating the tendency to cognitively ‘fixate’ on ineffective ideas or problem-solving strategies.
Psychologist Karl Duncker was one of the first to research ‘functional fixedness’ — the inability to think beyond the conventional use of a particular object or concept and repurpose it for a novel task setting. Duncker demonstrated that, when given a candle, a pack of matches and a box of tacks — and challenged to affix the candle to the wall so that the candle burns properly and does not drip wax — a large percentage of individuals fixate on the tack box’s function as ‘a repository for tacks’, failing to realize that it could also be affixed to the wall and converted into a candleholder (see Figure One).
Building on this classic demonstration, researchers have established cognitive fixation as a primary barrier to two principal forms of creativity: divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Whereas divergent thinking involves the generation of multiple ideas in diverse directions (e.g. listing creative uses for a brick), convergent thinking involves identifying the best solution to a clearly defined problem (e.g. Duncker’s candle problem). Both types of thinking are critical-yet-distinct pathways to creativity, as identifying creative solutions often necessitates both diverging from previous approaches and converging on an optimal approach.
A wealth of evidence suggests that cognitive fixation impedes both the divergent and convergent aspects of creativity. In the context of divergent thinking, individuals tend to generate fewer and less-novel ideas when the design instruction is accompanied by a pictorial example, because they are apt to generate ideas that conform to the example. Likewise, people generate fewer unique ideas when they are part of a brainstorming group compared to when they brainstorm alone, because they fixate on the ideas proposed by other group members.
In a similar vein, cognitive fixation is considered a barrier to solving problems that require convergent thinking. The classic convergent thinking task, the Remote Associates Test (RAT), presents three ‘cue’ words and asks the subject to conceive a fourth word that is associated with each (e.g., cue words: cheese, blood, print; solution: blue). The RAT can be challenging because people may first think of and fixate on a non-solution word that is strongly associated with just one of the cues (e.g. cheese — cake; blood — red; print — ink) instead of a word that is commonly associated with all three of them. Likewise, people commonly fail to solve insight problems because they fixate on unwarranted assumptions and strategies that interfere with the requisite insight (e.g. Duncker’s candle problem).
An emerging body of research demonstrates that creative performance on both divergent and convergent thinking tasks can be improved if the effects of fixation are mitigated by setting a task aside — through breaks, distractions or interruptions. Breaks can free individuals from their fixated mindset by reducing the ‘recency’ value of inappropriate strategies. For example, brief breaks during brainstorming sessions can increase the number and variety of ideas generated. Similarly, performance on convergent thinking tasks (e.g. the RAT) improves as the break time between attempts is increased, because cognitive fixation ‘wears off’ over time.
Numerous studies on divergent and convergent thinking have found improvements in creative performance when subjects temporarily set aside the focal creative task to work on an unrelated one. For instance, researchers found that, compared to participants who started generating ideas immediately upon receiving a task, those who first engaged in a ‘distractor task’ generated more novel ideas. The common theme in these studies is that setting a task aside may reduce cognitive fixation and enable individuals to approach the focal task with a fresh mind, thereby enhancing creative performance.
Our Research
The goal of our investigation was twofold. First, we tested our main hypothesis that creative performance may improve when people continually switch between tasks. In particular, we hypothesized that continually switching between tasks may help people abandon initial, unsuccessful problem-solving strategies and approach each task with fresh angles.
To test this, we examined the effects of task switching on both divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Participants attempted two creativity tasks for a fixed amount of time under one of three conditions: continual-switch, discretionary-switch or midpoint-switch. In the continual-switch condition, they were instructed to alternate back and forth between the two creativity tasks (i.e., Task A, Task B, Task A, Task B, etc.); in the discretionary-switch condition, they switched between the two tasks at their discretion; and in the midpoint-switch condition, they dedicated the first half of the allotted time to Task A and the second half to Task B.
We predicted that creative performance would be the highest in the continual-switch condition, as instructing participants to continually switch between two creativity tasks should mitigate cognitive fixation the most. Importantly, evidence that continually switching between tasks improves performance is particularly meaningful if the person involved tends to undervalue the
People generate fewer unique ideas when they meet as a group because they fixate on the ideas proposed by other group members.
creative benefits afforded by continual task switching. Therefore, in addition to testing whether continually switching between two creativity tasks yields better outcomes, our second goal was to investigate whether people are aware of the creative benefits of this approach. That is, do people choose to switch continually when incentivized to maximize their creative performance?
We predicted that people would erroneously expect continual switching to be less conducive to creative performance compared with discretionary and midpoint switching, and therefore overwhelmingly select the latter two approaches over continual switching when structuring their work. We also predicted that differences in switching frequency would translate into differences in the flexibility and novelty aspects of divergent thinking. Specifically, we expected participants who continually switched to generate a greater number of uses that were categorically unique and novel compared to participants who switched at their discretion and participants who switched at the halfway mark. On the other hand, since usefulness is often inversely related to novelty, we did not expect more frequent task switching to improve the usefulness of ideas generated; thus, we predicted no significant differences in usefulness across the three conditions.
With regard to fluency, we predicted that continual task switching would have a negative effect, for two reasons. First, continually switching between two tasks requires participants to cognitively switch gears, which carries ‘switching costs’ in terms of time and attention. Second, we expected participants in the continual-switch condition to exhibit lower fluency, precisely because their idea generation would be characterized by diminished fixation.
We recruited 126 native-english speakers from Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing platform with subjects representative of the U.S. population. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions and had a total of eight minutes to complete two problems: listing creative uses for a brick; and listing creative uses for a toothpick.
In the continual-switch condition, they were instructed to list uses for the two objects in an alternating manner (i.e. brick, toothpick, brick, toothpick, etc.); and in the discretionary-switch condition, they were instructed to list uses for the two objects in any order they chose. In the midpoint-switch condition,
participants were instructed to spend the first four minutes listing uses for one object and the next four minutes for the other. In all three conditions, the two objects were counterbalanced such that half the participants started with the brick and the other half started with the toothpick.
As predicted, participants in the continual-switch condition switched far more frequently than those in the discretionary-switch condition and those in the midpoint-switch condition (who, by definition, only switched once between the two tasks). Four, independent coders then rated the uses in terms of flexibility, novelty, usefulness and fluency.
Confirming our predictions, the continual-switch con-RESULTS: dition yielded more ideas that were categorically dissimilar (i.e. displayed higher flexibility) and novel than did the discretion- ary-switch and midpoint-switch conditions. Critically, the ideas generated in the continual-switch condition were rated as no less useful than those generated in the other two conditions.
Our second study examined whether having people continually switch between convergent- thinking tasks would enhance their performance, thereby testing whether the positive effects of continual task switching on divergent thinking would extend to the domain of convergent thinking.
Just as individuals can be less creative because they tend to fixate on preceding responses, they may fail to identify the solution to a convergent-thinking problem (e.g. Dunker’s candle problem) because they fixate on strategies that should be abandoned. When faced with multiple convergent thinking tasks, persisting with one task may result in fixation on an ineffective strategy, whereas switching between them may enable the mind
to approach each task with fresh angles. Thus, Study 2 examined whether instructing individuals to continually switch between two convergent-thinking tasks would reduce fixation and increase the likelihood of solving them.
We randomly assigned participants to complete two convergent-thinking tasks under one of the three conditions (continualswitch, discretionary-switch or midpoint-switch). To test whether the effects of task switching are generalizable across different types of convergent-thinking tasks, we used two Remote Associates Test (RAT) problems to examine the effects of task switching on verbal convergent thinking, and two insight puzzles to examine the effects of task switching on visual convergent thinking. As in Study 1, we hypothesized that participants in the continualswitch condition would switch at a higher frequency and thus perform better on the convergent thinking tasks.
One hundred and four native-english speakers from a large northeastern U.S. university completed our experiment. In the first half of the study, they had a maximum of four minutes to solve two RAT problems of similar in difficulty (RAT1: cheese, blood, print [solution: blue]; RAT2: way, mission, let [solution: sub]).
In the continual-switch condition, the experimenter instructed participants to alternate between the two RATS by uttering ‘switch’ every 30 seconds. That is, participants spent the first 30 seconds on the first RAT, then the next 30 on the second, the next 30 on the first, and so forth. In the discretionary-switch condition, participants were free to work on the two RATS in whatever order they chose during the four minutes.
After the time allotted to the two RAT problems elapsed, the experimenter administered two insight puzzles to assess visual
convergent thinking in the second half of the study. Participants had a maximum of 12 minutes to solve the nine-dot puzzle (see Figure Two) and the coin puzzle (see Figure Three), which had been pretested to be similar in difficulty.
In the continual-switch condition, the experimenter instructed participants to alternate between the two puzzles by uttering ‘switch’ every 90 seconds. In the discretionary-switch condition, they were free to work on the two puzzles in whatever order they chose over the 12 minutes, and the experimenter recorded how many times they switched. In the midpoint-switch condition, participants had six consecutive minutes to solve the first puzzle and immediately after, another six consecutive minutes to solve the second puzzle.
As predicted, participants in the continual-switch con-RESULTS: dition solved more RATS and insight puzzles than their counterparts. These results indicate that just as continually putting one divergent thinking task aside for another enhances performance, so too does putting one convergent thinking task aside for another.
The creative benefits of continual task switching were further corroborated by our finding that, within the discretionary-switch condition, participants who switched more frequently were more successful than those who switched less frequently.
Importantly, participants in the discretionary-switch condition on average switched far less frequently than those in the continual-switch condition, suggesting that individuals tend to ‘under-switch’ when left to their own discretion. Thus, encouraging individuals to switch tasks more frequently than they would ordinarily may enhance creative performance.
In closing
Despite the premium assigned to creativity in the 21st century workplace, leaders often struggle to structure work routines that nurture creativity among employees. By uncovering a bright side to continual task switching, our research offers a tangible way to help individuals ‘switch on’ creativity as they navigate multiple tasks. Jackson G. Lu is an Assistant Professor of Work and Organizations at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Modupe Akinola is the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School. Malia F. Mason is the Gantcher Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and the recipient of Rotman’s Dean’s Award for Emerging Leaders. This article summarizes their paper, “Switch On’ Creativity: Task Switching Can Increase Creativity by Reducing Cognitive Fixation”, which was published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.