Why do ADHD people have high creativity?

by Design_Miss_C

Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) , characterized by symptoms such as hyperactivity, impulsivity, or carelessness, can not be kept still in school classes or acts such as careless mistakes in work It tends to take. On the other hand, ADHD people are often said to be "creativity excellence" and why ADHD people have high creativity, Mr. Holly White who studies psychology at the University of Michigan explains.

The Creativity of ADHD - Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-creativity-of-adhd/

Past research suggests that "divergent thinking" is important as one of the elements necessary for demonstrating creativity. And research results that ADHD people are good at divergent thinking conceiving various ideas from one departure point are also announced.

People with ADHD superior in divergent thinking may be active in situations such as using different uses of everyday life and brainstorming to add innovative functions to mobile phones .

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Also, in tasks that need to demonstrate creativity, "having many prior knowledge" may interfere with creativity. When we are trying to create something, we may refer to past examples as a reference to ideas, but the products produced as a result are often influenced strongly by past cases .

In the past research , if you show some cases as an example in a group given the task of "invent something new", it is easy for the invention product to be affected by the example shown as an example It is shown. Although this is not an unexpected finding, it is important to have a free idea that is not limited to past cases in scenes where it is necessary to demonstrate creativity.

A research on the creativity of adolescent children with ADHD gave a group of children with ADHD and a group of children without ADHD the task of "inventing new toys". Before executing the task, both groups showed a number of toys with the same characteristics (such as soccer balls, rugby balls, ping pong balls, etc.).

Then, it seems that the toys created by the group with ADHD were less likely to contain features of toys shown in advance than the toys invented by groups without ADHD. From this, it can be said that ADHD people have less creative thinking than pre-given knowledge and less creativity than people without ADHD.

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Also, not only knowledge acquired in the past but also "common sense of the world" will also interfere with creative thinking. For example, when given the task of "Think about extraterrestrial life forms living on other planets", many people start thinking based on the life of the earth and modify it "aliensily" In the past research it is known that creation of an extraterrestrial life entity is known.

Mr. White insists that it is necessary to "extend the concept" in order to escape such fixed thinking. In the example of the extraterrestrial life body, since life on the earth is mostly symmetrical, people tend to be caught up in the concept of "being bilaterally symmetrical in life". However, as there is no need to be caught by the concept on the earth about extraterrestrials, escaping from the concept of "life is symmetrical" may allow more creative thinking than others not.

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In a study conducted by Mr. White for a college student, I gave a task of explaining and describing "fruits on the planet different from the earth" against college students with ADHD and university students without ADHD It was. Mr. White said that he imposed university students "as creative as possible and not mimicking the fruits present on Earth".

Then, college students of ADHD seemed to have a higher proportion of drawing highly creative fruits that were not influenced by fruits on Earth compared to college students who were not ADHD. Both had similar fruit-like characteristics such as seeds and stems, but the ADHD group had a tendency to add foreign substances different from fruits such as antennas, tongues, straws and hammers. College students of ADHD escaped from the concept of "fruits on the earth" and demonstrated higher creativity. Similar trends have been confirmed by children who are not ADHD but are judged to have "excellent talent".

People at ADHD may find it difficult to behave like anyone else in a scene where sustained concentration is required, such as schools that have to listen to classes carefully. Meanwhile, Mr. White says that through thought patterns such as divergent thinking and free thinking unconstrained in the past case, expansion of concepts can demonstrate superior ability in areas where creativity is required It was.

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