December 8, 2014No Comments

The Comfort Zone of Conformity

The words "conform" and "comfort" are disturbingly similar. You can't even tell them apart at a quick glance. Psychologically, "conformity" has a strong link to "comfort zone" as well. Neither word goes well with "creativity".

The Asch experiment, one of the most famous and popular in psychology, is a big eye opener. It simply exposes our group-confirming nature in an undeniable way. Humans are very prone to agreeing with what everybody else thinks, to go with the flow, to drop their own opinion in favor of the others', to conform. That's known as the "Asch Paradigm".

It's worth having a look at the video below – and think that you're not any different from the people being tested. By the looks of the video, you can tell this knowledge has been around for a while, but still to this date too many people change their opinions for the wrong reasons.

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October 29, 2014No Comments

Dishonesty: tap into your dark side to be more creative

"With great power comes great responsibility"

Voltaire or Uncle Ben (Spider-Man's uncle) - depending on your mood.

Dishonest people are very creative. Everyone can agree with that. We all know the examples: the con man coming up with lies to get money out of you, the crooked car salesman and his stories to get you to buy a lemon, fake letters from Nigeria and the sweet talk of the famed Brazilian "malandro" hiding his bad intentions.

Big examples in pop culture, like Kevin Spacey's character Keyser Söze in "The Usual Suspects" (1994) and Christian Bale's Irving in "American Hustle" (2014) drive home the same point – evil geniuses are very creative!

evil genius kevin spacey in The Usual Suspects

Kevin Spacey as an evil genius in the 1994 movie "The Usual Suspects"

But what if I flipped the order around and told you this:

Being dishonest can actually make you more creative.

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