Living abroad gives you a creative edge

Living abroad gives you a creative edge(economist.com)

21 points by __ 17 years ago | 19 comments

cia_plant 17 years ago |

This article, like many other science articles, follows this template:

People have long suspected that <extremely general conclusion involving vaguely-defined terms with complex meanings, like 'intelligence', 'love', 'creativity', 'belief'>. But now scientists have proved it. <Description of experiment, in which some simple test is used as a substitute for the trait in question - either a psych test, or an MRI, or something - and middle class North Americans are used as a substitute for humanity>.

I find these articles really tiresome.

pj 17 years ago | |

There's a creative edge of a person who decides to live abroad in the first place. There may be correlation, but what is the causation?

ojbyrne 17 years ago | | |

Living abroad? Going outside your comfort zone, experiencing new places, languages, cultures?

gojomo 17 years ago | | |

I haven't lived abroad, but simply from travel and reading, it becomes clear that many social practices are arbitrary, and the range of workable possibilities is much larger than simple intuition-from-limited-experience might suggest.

After a while, surprise that things could be done so differently becomes surprise that each region thinks their ways are so natural.

That sort of insight certainly helps in negotiation scenarios like the one tested, and possibly other problem-solving as well.

vomjom 17 years ago |

"To check that they had not merely discovered that creative people are more likely to choose to live abroad, Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky identified and measured personality traits, such as openness to new experiences, that are known to predict creativity."

Is this what passes for controls these days? It'd be much smarter to test people right before they're about to go abroad.

ojbyrne 17 years ago | |

Social sciences generally can't manage the strict experimental methods we're taught in science so they rely on quasi-experimentation (and are fully aware that that is less rigorous). The control you suggest would be confounded by the problem of age. What if people get more (or less) creative just through the passage of time?

Not that I'm defending this study, though it may be extremely rigorous, it's really impossible to know from an economist article.

patrickg-zill 17 years ago |

People who live outside the country are already outliers to begin with. Only 20% of Americans even have a passport.

(I knew a woman who was in her mid-30s that had never been outside the state of Pennsylvania; her first trip to NYC was at the age of 33.)

anamax 17 years ago | |

> Only 20% of Americans even have a passport.

Yes, but there is far more diversity in the US than in other regions, let alone other countries.

For example, there's more diversity south of the Tehachapis than there is in Western Europe. (It would be mean to point out the diversity within 50 miles of Disneyland.)

jasonkester 17 years ago | | |

Are you sure about that? I lived in Pamplona for a year, and I noticed a lot more cultural difference between the local Basques, the French Basques across the border, the Spaniards to the South and the Catalans to the East than I ever saw between LA, NYC and Nebraska.

That's one 50 mile circle. Europe has dozens of similar examples.

jasonkester 17 years ago | |

Anybody know what percentage of Europeans have been outside of Europe? That would make a much better comparison, and I'd wager it's a similar number.

(Egypt and Morocco don't count, for the same reason Canada and Mexico don't.)

markessien 17 years ago | |

I knew a girl from Hatfield who thought Devon was in another country.

swombat 17 years ago |

Ok, they filtered out for some known factors that encourage creativity... but we barely know how creativity works, so how can they know for sure they've filtered for all the factors?

To me, it seems that it's as likely there's a factor they don't know about, as that their hypothesis holds (i.e. living abroad causes creativity).

billswift 17 years ago |

The article sounds more like reaching a predetermined conclusion, rather than research.

"Nevertheless, where both negotiators had lived abroad 70% struck a deal in which the seller was offered a management job at the petrol station in return for a lower asking price. When neither of the negotiators had lived abroad, none was able to reach a deal."

Struck me as incredibly obvious, in the few seconds between the presentation of the situation and the solution, and I have never lived abroad, and don't usually consider myself all that creative.

jasonkester 17 years ago |

Living abroad gave me a suntan and a bit of perspective, but honestly, I don't feel any more creative than when I left the States.

That said, it's pretty good out here and the dollar is crazy strong right now. I'd hop a flight if I were you!

tigerthink 17 years ago |

This isn't a very good study. What if the foreign students were simply smarter to begin with? I imagine they faced higher barriers to entry.

Ardit20 17 years ago |

However, although this article itself might not prove much, when I was doing some research I came across this study which had found a link between eminent scientists and immigrants. I think it might be the cultural shock which perhaps forces the individual to once more learn the basics, i.e. customs, traditions, how to behave and of course language.