Cinderella for Turkish Children

Think about the following two things:

1. Imagine you had to rewrite the Cinderella story for Turkish children. What would help you do a good job?
2. Imagine you are seven years old. School has been cancelled and you have the rest of the day off and can do anything you'd like to do. What would you do?

With some provisos, both of these spark greater creativity in adults, than simply asking individuals to be creative. In the March, 2010 issue of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, lead researcher Angel Kay-yee Leung found asked adults to write the Cinderella story after a short briefing on Turkish cultural history.

But to make this assignment a bit more interesting, the adults were assembled in five groups after everyone had been given the Turkish overview. The first group went straight away to the assignment. The second group received some additional stimulation in the form of a review of American culture. The third group was shown images and information about Chinese culture. The fourth was shown information about American and Chinese culture. The fifth was shown information about Chinese-American culture in America.

The two groups that were more creative were number four and five. The other three groups were relatively less creative. The effects of this stimulation on creativity held over a five to seven day period when the adults were tested again.

In the second study (Journal of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts) Darya Zabelina and Michael Robinson found that merely asking adults to imagine they are a child before completing a task boosts creativity.

Play and play-time have been shown over and again to boost creativity. Yet in a productivity-minded, efficiency oriented world we are constantly confronted with mandates, inhibitions, and rules that defeat our participation in such activities. Add a downsizing recession to the mix, and you have adults with so much to do, there's not a moment to imagine how a seven-year old might solve the problem.

Maybe that's what Congress should do about health care. They are behaving like children, so maybe they should think that way about the problem.