Borderline Personality Disorder

How Impulsiveness Can Boost Your Creativity

A lack of inhibition can free a mind to consider new and unusual ideas.

How Impulsiveness Can Boost Your Creativity

THE KEY MAY LIE IN A BELIEF THAT SLIGHTLY NEGATIVE TRAITS HAVE SILVER LININGS.

Everyone who’s ever prepared for a job interview knows how to turn a personal weakness into a character strength. The flipside of being a little stubborn might be extra persistence. A bit of impatience, properly directed, fuels a sense of urgency. Shyness can be a drawback, but modesty is a virtue. And let’s be honest: what some people would call a pessimistic mindset could easily be seen as a practical one.

New research suggests these optimistic perspectives might serve a greater purpose than just winning over employers or comforting our self-esteem. A group of psychologists recently found that people who believed impulsiveness had a potential benefit in creativity actually scored higher on creative tasks. The work, led by Alexandra Wesnousky of New York University, suggests more broadly that faith in the positive side of a negative trait—a “silver lining theory”—might help it shine through.

“A silver lining theory is a lay theory in which an individual believes that a negative attribute is related to a positive attribute,” the researchers write in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. “The present research shows that this form of lay theory is prevalent, and leads to increased effort-based performance in the domain of the positive attribute.”

In a preliminary test, Wesnousky and collaborators found that more than 90% of people are inclined to see some sort of positive attribute associated with a typically negative trait. Subsequent experiments focused on the idea that there might be a silver lining to being impulsive—in the form of being more creative. As other research has shown, a lack of inhibition can free a mind to consider new and unusual ideas.

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