Imagination, Memory, and The Creative Process: Q&A With Scott Barry Kaufman
Cognitive scientist Scott Barry Kaufman has devoted his work as Scientific Director of The Imagination Institute and a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center to come to a fuller understanding of how we develop and assign value to imagination, creativity, and intelligence.
We connected with Scott at the 2014 ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL to get his take on information overload, finding inspiration, and the role storytelling plays in the creative process.
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There’s been a lot of talk about “Information Overload” and “Content Shock” in recent years. How do you filter the information you consume?
Scott Barry Kaufman: I follow particular outlets religiously. I’m very interested in articles that relate to creativity and imagination, and I have put together a good network of people I follow on Twitter.
It’s helpful for me to have a very targeted, focused area where I look out for information because there’s not a lot of good stuff coming out from just everywhere, given what I’m interested in. I’m very curated. I have people who follow me who have a lot of followers, and because of that, I try to put out high quality stuff too.
I also run a site called The Creativity Post, where our entire goal is to produce high-quality articles on these topics.
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Since we’re at an ideas festival — where do your best ideas come from?
Scott Barry Kaufman: That’s an excellent question. Usually by looking up from what I’m immersed in.
I think that we probably undervalue the extent of preparation. My best ideas only seem to come after I’ve spent days immersing myself in a literature and reading every perspective on it, getting as many sides of the story and results and findings on the topic all in my head and then just sleeping. Or taking a long shower. Just totally chilling, and then returning to the problem.
My creative process is I write things down. I like unloading them from my mind as well. I’ll copy things onto a Word document, and then when I come back a couple of days later after all this is in my head, I start looking for patterns and try to rearrange things to see, “How does this group fit with this?”
Insights usually emerge naturally, eventually, from that hard process. I have to work hard to be inspired. But I think it really helps — the more information I can load up in my head from different perspectives, and then integrate those perspectives. The “ah-ha” doesn’t ever come if you don’t integrate various things.
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How does the power of storytelling manifest in your work?
Scott Barry Kaufman: For me personally, it’s a crucial, crucial role. A lot of my work talks about how I want to change education and change the way we think about intelligence, but I always start from my personal story and how that got me interested in this idea in the first place.
I like it when people can see things through my own eyes, and why am I trying to redefine intelligence to begin with. I want people to really see how my theory is really a natural outgrowth of what I saw as a child and the injustices in the education system.
With the storytelling aspect, the key benefit is how it helps people make a personal connection to what they’re missing and also helps them make an analogy. Analogical thinking is crucial to understanding.
If you identify with someone’s story, you analogically get it. You understand it. Then when you discuss the science, it makes so much more sense afterwards.
The personal narrative really helps and it’s what people remember, too. We know there’s a neurological reason for that.
There’s a whole field of neuroscience around stories and storytelling. You’re much more likely to remember the information later if you can learn it through something you can imagine.
If you liked this post, you might like Social Media, Storytelling, and “Demonstrable Authenticity”: Q&A With Matthew Bishop or Authorship and Authentic Marketing: Q&A With Candice Faktor.
Interview has been edited for clarity.
Kara Burney is the Content Marketing Maven at TrackMaven, the Competitive Intelligence platform for Digital Marketers. Have content marketing questions or topics you'd like covered on the TrackMaven blog? Tweet her your ideas! See more of Kara's posts
