Creativity is the ability to generate new and practical ideas. This quality is favored, but few people talk about the many negative characteristics that come with it. Recognizing these negative tendencies can help people better understand their own or others' creativity.
First of all, research has confirmed that there is a link between creativity and negative emotions. This does not mean that you have to be depressed if you want to be creative (and it must be noted that severe depression brings more damage than creativity), but the stereotype that "artists tend to be depressed or emotionally unstable" does have empirical support. As Nietzsche said, "A person must have chaos in his heart to light up the dancing stars." Generally speaking, if a person's mood is very stable and there is no dissatisfaction, there will be no need to create. After all, if the current situation is good, why change it?
Secondly, the unique mode of "creation" that leads to original thinking contains negative factors. For example, one of the characteristics of creativity is the inability to suppress irrelevant and inappropriate ideas. Moreover, the ability of creative thinkers to control their own impulses is often weak.
Recent research has found that creativity is also related to deception, presumably because creativity enables people to creatively distort reality. This does not mean that creative talents must be immoral, but such people have a lower tolerance for boring stereotypes and a richer imagination, so they will more skillfully use thinking tools to deceive people.
It is worth mentioning that this ability can often be used to serve others. Outstanding entrepreneurial talents can use this ability to persuade others to believe in their vision. (Remember Jobs's famous "reality distortion force field"?) Perhaps entrepreneurial talent involves the ability to see things that do not exist - to see things that have no basis, turn them into a persuasive vision, and then turn them into products and services to show to others.
The research also found that creative talents tend to be narcissistic, and narcissism can indeed achieve innovation. This conclusion is not difficult to understand. Narcissistic people focus on themselves and naturally spend more time focusing on their own ideas, and less time worrying about whether they can please others. However, it should be noted that narcissists tend to overestimate their creativity, which is higher than their actual talents, and most people cannot accurately measure creativity. Therefore, people who are enthusiastic and confident about their own creativity may be more able to fool others. Research also shows that narcissists, even if they are not more creative than others, are also more able to sell their ideas to others, producing an effect of realizing self-worth (this is consistent with the research findings of "narcissism is related to leadership", which includes foresight and initiative).
Even the seemingly ideal creativity trait creates more problems than opportunities for those who embody it. For example, treason, which is a necessary prerequisite for innovation, is highly respected in popular culture. However, in daily life, we will force those deviants to follow the crowd. Similarly, it seems cool to think about the attitude of taking risks and tolerating mistakes. However, human nature tends to keep the status quo and make the surrounding environment as familiar and predictable as possible. Therefore, real creative talents are often seen as threats.
Of course, the advantages of creativity outweigh the disadvantages. At the individual level, creativity is associated with many positive emotions, such as smooth thinking, total involvement, and subjective well-being. If people are assigned meaningful work and get autonomy in that work, they will be creative and benefit from it. At the team level, coordinated organizational behavior and interpersonal synergy can transform creativity into practical innovation, that is, practical aspects of creativity. At the organizational and social levels, creativity sows the seeds of change and progress. Without creativity, we must still be living in a dark period like the Middle Ages.
However, many relevant discourses today advocate how scarce and charming creativity is. If this is the case, creativity should be vigorously cultivated, without any side effects on creative talents. Many people just want to "improve creativity", but they don't know that the source of creativity is often dark, and they don't know what challenges creativity will bring to us. In fact, creativity is a complex and exhausting quality.