主要研究 今天

A course in the science of daydreaming got Lauren Flynn ’20 thinking about the creativity that can bloom when our minds are free to w和er. 这导致了对这种影响的研究, cognition 和 computation lab of assistant professor of 心理学 Caitlin Mills, 谁教的这门课?. 弗林遇到了20岁的凯瑟琳·麦格拉思, 另一位实验室研究员, 联合项目的第一个种子 2020年本科科研会议 开始成长.

“I was especially interested in the creativity aspect of the daydreaming class, our debates as to what constitutes ‘creative’ 和 what kinds of factors influence it, 不管是积极的还是消极的,弗林说. 凯瑟琳对教育心理学很感兴趣. We combined both our interests 和 decided to look at how boredom influences creativity, 希望运用我们的研究成果，创造一个更理想的课堂环境.” 

The pair spent the spring of 2019 “bouncing ideas off each other” before identifying the research questions for “Boring Ideas: Exploring Boredom as an Incubator to Creativity.” That summer, they read up on previous research results 和 gathered information. 然后, 在秋季学期, they conducted two experiments that examined how a brief boredom induction (less than 3 minutes) influences creativity when participants have prior exposure to a task. 受试者完成发散性思维任务(交替使用任务), then watched a brief boring or engaging video before returning to the same divergent thinking task. 

在两个实验中, we found evidence that participants who watched a boring video either generated more unique answers on the divergent thinking task or generated more answers overall compared to participants in an engaging video condition,麦格拉思说.

几乎每个人都经历过无聊, broadly defined as “the state of being weary 和 restless through lack of interest.” Yet Flynn 和 McGrath found evidence that linked boredom with positive outcomes like creativity.

在两个实验中, we found evidence that participants who watched a boring video either generated more unique answers on the divergent thinking task or generated more answers overall compared to participants in an engaging video condition."

They also looked at whether participants’ freely-moving thoughts (a dimension of mind-w和ering) while watching the video related to task performance 和 found it did not but was predictive of the number of ideas generated.

“Boredom 和 creativity are two things that seem to be completely opposite, but at the same time everyone can relate to thinking of some unique ideas when they’re bored. ,并列, 和 the possible implications which point to boredom not being solely negative, 我最感兴趣的是什么,麦格拉思说, a 心理学 主修，辅修 历史.

双学位的弗林补充道 心理学 和 人类发展和家庭研究, “我一直很享受创造性, 和 was curious about how to enhance creativity through environmental influences. I wanted to know what conditions were ideal for maximizing my own 和 others’ creativity.”

The conditions under which the pair presented their research was a first for the conference, 哪一个在2019年是20年.  This year, because of the coronavirus, all URC participants had to present their research remotely. (所有的项目都是预先录制的，可以在 URC网站.)

“虽然这与我们的预期相差甚远, 在网上聊天，听到自己的声音很有压力, 我很高兴能够分享我们努力工作的成果,麦格拉思说.

弗林同意. “这显然不是展示我们研究的最理想方式, but I was also glad to have been able to share our research since we worked so hard over the past year.” 

自2000年首次发射以来, URC已从159名演讲人增加到2名以上,000名学生和440多名教师导师.