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Ethan Mollick Profile picture
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8 Sep, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Our intuitions about creativity are very different than reality. In this survey, most people didn't know:
🧠Group brainstorming generates less ideas than individuals working alone
📦Constraints increase creativity
👩‍👦Kids are not more creative than adults sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Here's a thread on the myths of group brainstorming, which people keep getting wrong...
And here’s an example of how constraints can boost creativity 👇
Also on the list of things people believe but isn’t true: they think alcohol makes you creative… but it doesn’t. Previous research had found a relationship, but this careful replication study finds no significant effect across multiple measures & dosages of booze.

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More from @emollick

Ethan Mollick Profile picture
6 Sep
This paper poses a puzzle about what we think makes us human.

Before I give the answer, try it: You & an AI that looks like a person are in front of a human judge. You can each say only one word. The judge then kills whoever they think is the AI

What do you say? (Don’t peek)
The most common answer was “Love" but that really didn’t help the judge. The best answer was 💩

If someone said 💩 and the other said "love," judges would assume that whoever said 💩 was the human 69% of the time, and kill whoever said "love." "Banana" is also a good choice.
The graphic shows all the words given by at least one person, clustered by semantic similarity (yes, that means at least two people chose “moist” and two chose “bootylicious”). Here’s the paper: cocodev.fas.harvard.edu/publications/a…
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
28 Aug
This is the second high quality study in the past week to show that incentivizing vaccines through lotteries or other rewards does NOT work. The concept is good, but it doesn’t have the desired effect.

Alternatives to mandates don’t seem to move the needle, literally.
Here’s the other study showing lotteries failed to make a difference.
These are also good examples of social science at work: nudges, lotteries, and other incentives have proven useful in many other situations, so they were reasonable to try here. And now some very impressive & rapidly-conducted studies are showing that we need to change course.
Read 5 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
14 Aug
I post a lot of academic articles, but less than 0.5% of viewers click to read the papers. If you want to understand more, here is how to read:
📊A social science paper: icpsr.umich.edu/files/instruct…
⚖️A legal opinion: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
⚕️A medical paper: bmj.com/about-bmj/reso… ImageImageImage
A useful overview of how to assess academic papers, generally 👇 Image
One key distinction in reading academic work is whether a paper can make causal claims - that can it show that changing one thing will definitely change another? “Correlation isn’t causation” is not actually a useful rule to figure this out, this thread has more 👇
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
29 Jul
I hadn't heard of the "twisties" before, but it turns out to be a known & not well-understood risk for elite athletes, like the "yips" in 🏌️‍♂️& "target panic" in 🏹 (except much more dangerous!) - a sudden loss of elite skills. This was a helpful overview: frontiersin.org/articles/10.33… Image
Also, to be clear, I am not a sports psychologist, so my reading suggestion could be wrong- more expert people should please feel free to correct me! But it does highlight how incredibly complex true mastery and expert ability is (and how little we really understand it)
I like this classic description of how experts differ from non-experts. Making it harder: experts have trouble explaining the principles behind what they do in a way that non-experts can usnderstand. They just operate at a different level. ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
26 Jul
You have probably heard the argument that we might be living in a simulation, but no one asks the next obvious question: if we were, when would someone turn it off? Well, this paper decided that the answer is "soon" - either out of boredom or to save money arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pape…
So, everyone, be more interesting!
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
25 Jul
Seven classes of strategic errors:
I Misinformation: claiming a data relationship that isn’t there
II Misinformation: missing a relationship
III Vision: Solving wrong problem
IV Innovation: Not generating alternatives
V Inaction
VI Action: Acting when you shouldn’t
VII Cascade! Image
This paper outlines 7 classes of errors that affect strategic decision makers, ending with the epic-sounding Type VII Iatrogensis Cascade. Also, there’s a list of questions to ask yourself to avoid cascades. The paper is readable & full of examples. semanticscholar.org/paper/Decision… ImageImage
Many of these are warnings for entrepreneurs. Positives about founders (bias towards action, willingness to experiment) can become negatives if not also tempered with a little planning & patience. It is why having a formal business plan increases a startup's chances by 10-20%. ImageImageImage
Read 4 tweets

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