Moshe Bar has found. Bar, who directs the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, reports that when he taxed subjects’ mental resources as they completed a test of creative thinking, they came up with more “statistically common” (that is, conventional and commonplace) associations. In his study, Bar found that “a high mental load consistently diminished the originality and creativity” of his subjects’ responses. His explanation: when our minds are otherwise occupied, we resort to mental shortcuts—convenient stereotypes, familiar assumptions, well-worn
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