You, Me, Creativity: Why we are drawn to collaborate
Why are we drawn to collaborate? And how can understanding the psychology behind our social behaviour allow us to work together more effectively on the creative journey?
I’ve been reflecting on these questions whilst reading Matthew Lieberman’s fantastic book, Social — a study of the science of social behaviour — a field known as social cognitive neuroscience.
The book is structured around three key social processes: Connection, Mindreading and Harmonizing. These processes emerged at different points in our evolutionary history, and appear in the same order during child development — from infants (Connection) to toddlers (Mindreading) to pre-teens (Harmonizing).
Each of these social processes has interesting and important implications for creativity and design thinking.
Connection
Connection, our need to belong, is the most fundamental process that underpins our social behaviour. From an evolutionary perspective, the extended child development that occurs after birth has driven the need for social connection to ensure that children survive this long period of dependence.
Brain imaging studies have shown that when we are given a break from performing cognitive tasks, the areas of the brain that become active are those involved in social cognition — thinking about oneself, other people and our relationship to others. So, our brain’s default network is social in nature.
Connection plays an important role in successful group working. When people feel they belong, groups become more collaborative and effective. Taking time to build the right environment for a group session, through careful planning, pre-tasks, rapport-building and session rules is vital. Equally important is recognising that our need to belong can be a distraction. There is a trade-off between social and non-social thinking, and when we are trying to problem solve or ideate, thinking about social aspects of the situation such as how we are perceived or the motives of others can interfere with our ability to perform.
Techniques that leverage the power of collaboration and connection whilst minimising the distracting effects of social cognition can be highly effective. One approach is to incorporate elements of individual work and reflection within creative sessions, whilst still providing a forum to share and build on each other’s ideas. This is the core principle behind Nominal Group Technique (NGT) — an alternative to traditional brainstorming methods.
Mindreading
Mindreading is our ability to consider the goals, intentions, emotions and beliefs of others, and build an and understanding of what someone else might be thinking and feeling. The psychological process of mindreading followed by the ability to imagine this experience as if it were our own — a process known as affect matching, is key to building empathy with others.
The science behind this is really interesting. A famous study run by Tania Singer at UCL examined brains of women in an MRI scanner whilst their boyfriends sat nearby. In different trials of the study, either the woman, or the boyfriend outside the scanner was given an electric shock. In both trials, the pain distress network in the test subject’s brain was activated, regardless of who was receiving painful stimulation. So, when the women said “I feel your pain” to their boyfriends, this pain was literal not just metaphorical.
Our capacity for mindreading and empathy can be leveraged in different ways throughout design thinking and creativity. It has a key role to play in building rapport with users and uncovering behavioural insight, but also helps us generate more relevant creative responses to user problems. It’s also a powerful tool to influence stakeholders and make sure our work has impact.
Harmonizing
My favourite process, Harmonizing, is the most subtle and interesting. Essentially, harmonizing is our ability to reflect on ourselves and think about our behaviour, beliefs and values in relation to other people around us, exerting self-control to restrain undesired behaviour in order to harmonize within the group and for our long-term gain.
The book describes lots of fascinating experiments showing how our behaviour changes if we think we are being watched — a concept known as panoptic self-control. In honesty box experiments, simply the presence of a poster with a pair of eyes on it makes people more likely to pay the right amount. Even abstract cues such as dots positioned in a “face” configuration (A below) can drive prosocial behaviour compared to alternative configurations (such as B).
Harmonizing has a really big impact on creative work. Whilst it can help to build trust and respect amongst the group, it is also one of the factors that drives Groupthink — the tendency for members of a group to agree and conform. When you’re looking for divergent, creative thinking, this can be a problem. There are various ways we can overcome this, such as priming participants to be more challenging in their thinking, carefully selecting group members for diversity of experience or background, or allowing time for individual input and reflection within the session.
Collaboration at its best
Effective collaboration is so important for project teams. Taking a step back to understand more about the psychology behind social behaviour can help us to design a creative journey built on collaboration at its best.
