What Does It Mean That A Placebo Will Improve Your Creativity?
Okay, this study is almost embarrassing to humanity, but is super useful in our collective struggle against fear and doubt. It's from Lior Noy and Liron Rozenkrantz at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and it suggests that the placebo effect not only works for physical ailments, but as a way to increase our creativity. This study reveals the subtle and frail nature of creativity, but also reveals how we can overcome our own insecurities.
Placebo effect (definition): a beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment.
The study
The study recruited two groups of people who went through a typical form of creativity test. Prior to each test, one group was asked to smell a pungent smell (like cinnamon) and told that this smell would increase their creativity. The other group was also asked to smell the smell, but were not told it would increase their creativity.
Turns out the group who were told that the smell would improve their creativity performed significantly better at the creativity test. Study details here.
The implications
Think about that. If we believe we will be creative, then we are more likely to be. Even if we are tricked into believing it. A placebo is just such a trick!
To me, what this study proves is that, in order to be creative, our faith in ourselves needs to exceed any potential mental blockages. Those blockages could be insecurities, deadlines looming, or intimidation of any kind. It’s almost like we need to give ourselves permission to have an idea.
Smelling cinnamon while being told that doing so would increase our creativity gives us such permission because any internal struggle we are experiencing is completely dismissed (by us) as soon as we believe in the magic of the smell.
It’s hard to believe this works until you believe in belief.
Placebo yourself
Consider this study, “Placebos produce effect even when patients know it’s just sugar,” where researchers studied the effects of a placebo pill that was clearly marked “placebo” on the package. Believe it or not, 59% of the patients with irritable bowels experienced relief vs 35% in the control group. What???
Now, you could conclude that this finding is only further evidence of how embarrassingly stupid we all are, or you could, like I do, see it as a way to admit that “beliefs” are not only powerful things, but can be actively, consciously managed to our benefit.
Try this. Fill up a glass of water. Hold it up in the sunshine through a window for ten seconds, look at the glistening water, and tell the glass, “This water is going to make me more creative today than I have ever been.” Then drink it all up.
A ritual like this just might help you get out of your own way when it comes to your creativity. Next up? I’m going to look into a new Ideasicle X product called “Creativity Placebo,” which will be a bottle of branded sugar pills.
Will Burns is the Founder & CEO of Ideasicle X. Email him