The Frequency of Eye-Blinking is Linked to Creativity

Check out this research summary at BPS Research.  This study showed that the rate of eye-blinking was linked to performance on a creative task -- bot not to IQ.  Those subjects who blinked at a moderate rate were most creative.  Apparently, eye-blinking frequency is linked to dopamine.  As BPS reports:

The researchers pointed to evidence showing, for example, that patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, which is associated with excess dopamine, tend to have high eye blink rates. Patients with Parkinson's, by contrast, which is associated with reduced dopamine, show low eye blink rates. They also highlighted past research linking dopamine with creativity. For example, there's evidence that positive mood - which is related to dopamine levels - can enhance creativity, although the results in this area have been extremely inconsistent.

Now, this is just one study, but the implications are intriguing, and a bit scary.  If you have ever seen Blade Runner, you may recall that the test they used to determine if a creature was a human or a "replicant" entailed asking various strange questions and watching for changes in the rate of blinking. I can imagine some employment test based on the same principle, where -- much like Harrison Ford did in Blade Runner -- job candidates are given some test to determine their blinking rate.  Perhaps in our strange future, employers will forget the job sample test and other tried and true predictors, or the portfolio of past work, or that training in design thinking, and just look at the blinking rate! 

I hope this is just a strange fantasy, but it is a cool study. 

The reference is: Chermahini, S., & Hommel, B. (2010). The (b)link between creativity and dopamine: Spontaneous eye blink rates predict and dissociate divergent and convergent thinking. Cognition, 115 (3), 458-465

Comments

[Randy Bosch]

Fascinating.
But did the researchers find the answers for which they were searching or discover and interpret relationships?

And, less seriously (perhaps not), would not curricula vitae for the researchers include their blink rates?

Perhaps future pre-election debates can be non-verbal, just close-ups of eye blinking in response to questions? Of course the equivalent of a lie detector test would be required!

Finally, perhaps analysis of potential bosses' blink rates would need to be shared with job applicants!

[David Hekman]

Thanks so much for posting this! I read the research article and thought it was neat that dopamine/blinking was slighlty positively related to divergent creativity (thinking up lots of uses of a box) but negatively related to convergent creativity (figuring out what three words have in common). Just a hunch, but perhaps convergent creativity increases in the presence of stress/norepinephrine.

[Harris Silverman]

The deeper question of course is how much creativity you want in your workplace. Companies that need simple adherence to established procedures have a very hard time dealing with genuinely creative people, and may be better off without them. Other companies, which could actually benefit from some genuine creativity, don't always know how to handle it. Creativity is inherently disruptive, and truly creative people need to know how to conduct themselves in different environments.

Harris Silverman
www.harrissilverman.com

[Scentsy Bricks]

So, can I start blinking more to be more intelligent?! Forget reading books!

I'm only kidding.

This is interesting, though, because I was always under the impression that the more one did blink, the less interested they were in the current situation.

Perhaps there is a link their boredom and their more frequent blinking to make the situation more 'interesting' to them.

Just a thought.

[Randy Bosch]

Bob, Fascinating study & tentative theory on blinking speed! How amazing that so much human creative & technological progress was made for centuries and centuries without ever knowing this signal! Leadership & management progress - not so much! Human nature has not changed one iota in millenia, only technology, speed of impacts on each other and the world around us, and availability of strange and wonderous new studies has changed! This comment is only partially a "tongue in cheek" riposte, the rest of the intent is to focus on what counts - human relationships!

Please keep up the intriguing pokes at "business as usual"!!