Read this information trying to think if the constraints we live today can help us open our mind and channel our creativity.
Ravi Mehta, Meng Zhu, Creating When You Have Less: The Impact of Resource Scarcity on Product Use Creativity, Journal of Consumer Research, 42(5), 2016, 767–782.
As we become a more abundant society, do our average creativity levels decrease?
Findings from recent research support this proposition. In accordance with our line of reasoning, the analysis of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking performance data over the past five decades indicates that in spite of the rise in IQ scores, creative thinking scores have significantly decreased since 1990, especially for kindergarteners through third grade students (Kim 2011).
Various lines of research suggest a possible negative correlation between resource availability and creativity and Historians have suggested a negative relationship between overconsumption and innovation.
The literature on:
- Materialism shows that high levels of material values are negatively associated with individuals’ intellectual and spiritual development
- Consumption and society argues that creativity is incompatible with the repetitiveness of modern mass production, which is shifting the culture from one that was intellectually challenging into one that is harried, familiar, and entertaining.
- Paradoxes of technology suggests that while innovation and technology provide various benefits such as freedom, control, and efficiency, they could also usurp human motivation and skills, leading to dependence, ineptitude, and disengagement
