#cognative

Peak-end rule says that people judge an experience based mostly on how they felt at its peak, for example, its most intense point, and at its end. As opposed to a person judging an experience based on the whole average of the experience, taking into account everything that happened. It is, however, not the case that other information before and between the peak and end of the experience is forgotten, but rather it is not used in reaching a decision or judgement on the experience. This process occurs whether or not the experience is positive or not. We see an example of this with movies as well. We are more likely to recommend a movie that has a slow start but an amazing ending than a movie that has an amazing start but a bad ending. This heuristic theory helps people to make a conclusion on an experience easily and can have a profound effect on how we view an experience even if it was all round a positive experience, we can view it negatively because it didn’t have a peak. This is important as it can be applied to real life in things such as movies, to make sure that there is a peak and a good end will ensure that the movie is a success.

Kahneman did an experiment to test the peak-end rule. He did this by asking participants to hold their hand in a bowl of freezing cold water until they were asked to remove them. Researchers used two conditions: the first was 60 seconds of immersion in water at 14 degrees Celsius. After the time was up they were told to take their hand out the water. The second condition lasted for 90 seconds, with the first 60 seconds being the exact same as the first condition but after that time for the last 30 seconds, the researcher poured slightly warmer water into the bowl, raising the overall temperature by about 1 degree. After they have completed the two conditions participants were told they were to undertake one more trial which was to be a repeat of either condition 1 or 2. The participants were asked which they would rather repeat, and results showed that 80% chose the second condition. This supports the peak-end rule as participants chose the second option even though the first would've been the smarter choice as both conditions would have the same level of pain for the same amount of time, but after that time, condition 1 gets to finish and condition 2 gets a slight decrease in pain for an extra 30 seconds.

Love him or hate him, many of our readers may know enough about Daniel C. Dennett to have formed some opinion of his work. While Dennett can be a soft-spoken, jovial presence, he doesn’t suffer fuzzy thinking or banal platitudes— what he calls “deepities”—lightly. Whether he’s explaining (or explaining away) consciousness, religion, or free will, Dennett’s materialist philosophy leaves little-to-no room for mystical speculation or sentimentalism. So it should come as no surprise that his latest book, Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, is a hard-headed how-to for cutting through common cognitive biases and logical fallacies.

Read this entire article https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/01/30/daniel-dennett-presents-seven-tools-for-critical-thinking-via-open-culture-shared/

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This seems as good of a place to start as any - what is creativity? 

It’s strange, but until I stopped to think it, I hadn’t realized how hard a word it is to define. So the obvious place to turn was the dictionary. 

Merriam-Webster has this to say: 

Creativity is "The ability to make new things or think of new ideas"

And from dictionary.com there’s: 

“The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination"

And finally from the oxford dictionaries we get:

"Relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work"

While those all seem pretty good, I think the second part of that last one 'especially in the production of an artistic work’ is what often trips people up. 

When you ask people what creativity is, particularly those who would say they are not creative, they often start talking about artistic endeavors, painting, writing, making music etc. And of course those things are creative, you are clearly creating something, but it feel like a truly useful definition of creativity needs to have something of a wider scope. 

So let’s go back to our dictionary definitions start dissecting them a bit, starting with the simplest version from Merriam Webster - creativity is the ability to make new things or to think of new ideas.

Now far be it from me to question the venerable Messrs Merriam and Webster, but personally I think this definition misses a couple of key points. it’s nice and succinct, but to my mind it’s backwards and gets two key words wrong.

If it was up to me it would go a little more like this (fair warning things are about to get really semantic) 

“Creativity is the process of thinking of new ideas and making new things" 

Again deceptively simple, maybe even an over simplification, but what I do think it does is speak to the two sides of creativity and the important difference between creativity and talent. 

Process v ability 

So while the world ability, in the original version, isn’t completely wrong, the danger of that word is the implication of an inherent talent. Again looking at strict dictionary definitions tells us that ability can be read as "talent, skill, or proficiency in a particular area”. 

And here’s where things can get a bit sticky because, although there’s a big difference between talent and proficiency, it’s that word talent that causes so many of the issues and here the dictionaries pretty much agree on the definition of the word talent as something along the lines of: "A natural aptitude or skill"

So the problem with a term like ability, and the fact that it can then be thought of as a synonym for talent, is all the baggage that comes with it. The idea that it is something that is naturally occurring, that you either have or you don’t, that it can’t be taught or learnt.  

To some extent, anyone can learn to paint, probably to the point of ‘proficiency’. However, someone who could perfectly recreate exact replicas of the Mona Lisa or Starry night is someone you would say is talented. Talented but not creative.

Sure they’re using their natural ability to make something, but it’s not something original or unique. So while talent can help you make something, it isn’t actually essential to creativity.

Which is all a really long way of getting to a point that John Cleese summed up very succinctly.

Source: 99U 

or to put it another way, it’s a process.

AND making new things v Or making new things 

So why in this context does ‘AND’ rather than ‘OR’ make this a better definition?  

Well fortunately this one’s a little simpler. If you come up with a new idea, but don’t turn it into something tangible, you’re being imaginative not creative. You haven’t actually created anything.  And again we find another reason creativity is often confused with talent, because talent can massively shorten the distance between having an idea and creating a finished product. i.e. if you have an idea for a story about a bank heist perpetrated by expertly trained capuchin monkeys, and you happen to be a talented short fiction writer, chances are you can make that a real thing much faster, and more efficiently than someone without that talent. 

But can you be creative without that naturally occurring talent? 

Ok so lets say you’re working for a company who needs to explain what it is they do.   

And let’s say they make a widget that’s 50% better at being a widget than any of your competitors widgets.   

So you do some research, you look at what your competitors are doing, you brainstorm, you refine, you test some ideas and eventually, through this process, you come up with a concept for a compelling short film. A short film that will show people in a completely unique way why your widget is better. But you aren’t a talented writer, director, cinematographer, sound designer, actor and casting agent. So, you go out and you find a talented director an expert cinematographer and all the other skills needed to make your video. And before you know it it’s a hit. 

Ok so again a gross oversimplification, but the point is without any preexisting, magical talent that makes you a natural at film making, you can follow a process to create, concept and produce a creative product. 

Now I know a lot of people who consider themselves creative are probably going to have an almost viscerally negative reaction to this definition, but let me just be clear. I am not trying to say that there are a predefined set of steps, instructions that you can follow one by one until bam! Out pops a creative masterpiece. 

But what I am trying to get to with this definition is that creativity is a process, there are ways to learn it and get better at it. 

To go back to painting. If you pick out a paintbrush, set out some paints and a canvas, dip your brush in the paint and start laying it on the canvas, then you are painting. Continue to do it and you will produce a painting. If you have a natural talent maybe your first go will be fairly good, if not chances are it won’t, but keep doing it, keep practicing, learning from experts and trying different techniques and you will get better. 

The same applies to creativity, and by making sure we’re defining it the right way we can change the way we think about it. Then rather than people feeling that creativity is just something they can’t do, instead they can have a go, practice, learn and get better.  Because make no mistake about it, creativity can be part of everything we do and now more than ever, whatever you do, creativity is quickly becoming the only way you can truly succeed.   

But more on that later.