Why Traveling Abroad Makes Us More Creative

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Why Traveling Abroad Makes Us More Creative
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Like many college students, I took a semester
abroad. I spent the first half of my junior year
in London taking classes at UCL, exploring the
museums, and learning the difference between two
pints, two pounds and two pence. After a few
lovely months on the other side of the pond I
returned home feeling cultured.
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Of course, the difference between London and New
York (where I went to school) was small. But the
UK nonetheless influenced me to see the world a
bit differently.Such are the benefits of travel.
A few weeks or months in a foreign country wont
necessarily transform our lives, but wandering
the streets of Helsinki, Harare or Hong Kong
leaves a residue on our minds.
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Returning home, this cultural footprint is hard
to ignore and difficult to identify. Something's
different, but what?Given the importance of
traveling abroad, its no surprise that
psychologists study how these experiences affect
our cognition. Do they make us smarter or more
open-minded? Does learning a foreign language
boost IQ?
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Is it a good idea to live outside of your native
country for a while? Consider a study conducted
by Lile Jia and his colleagues at Indiana
University.In one experiment the team of
psychologists asked participants to list as many
different modes of transportation as possible.
They explained that the task was created by
either Indiana University students studying in
Greece (distant condition) or by Indiana
University students studying in Indiana (near
condition).
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This small ripple turned out to have large
effects participants in the distant condition
generated more modes of transportation and were
more original with their ideas.The second
experiment demonstrated similar results. The team
asked participants to solve three insight
problems. Heres an example of one
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A prisoner was attempting to escape from a tower.
He found a rope in his cell that was half as long
enough to permit him to reach the ground safely.
He divided the rope in half, tied the two parts
together, and escaped. How could he have done
this?Like the first experiment, Jia and his team
told participants that the questions came from
either a research institute around 2,000 miles
away or in Indiana 2 miles away. (In a control
condition they did not reference a location).
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Again, the researchers found that participants in
the distant condition generated more solutions
than participants in the other two conditions.A
ScientificAmerican.com article on Jias study
summarizes the results this wayThis pair of
studies suggests that even minimal cues of
psychological distance can make us more creative.
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Although the geographical origin of the various
tasks was completely irrelevant it shouldnt
have mattered where the questions came from
simply telling subjects that they came from
somewhere far away led to more creative thoughts.
In Imagine, Jonah Lehrer parallels this research
with a 2009 study out of the Kellogg School of
Management and INSEAD.
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The researchers reported that students who lived
abroad for an extended period were significantly
more likely to solve a difficult creativity
problem than students who had never lived outside
of their birth country. Lehrer concludes that,
the experience of another culture endows the
traveler with a valuable open-mindedness, making
it easier for him or her to realize that a single
thing can have multiple meanings.
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Its unclear if this finding is causal or
correlative students who go abroad might be
endowed with an open and creative mindset in the
first place but the point remains diverse
experiences are good for creativity because they
influence us to look at problems from multiple
points of view. This brings me to a brand new
study out of Tel Aviv Universitys School of
Psychological Sciences conducted by professor
Nira Liberman and a team of her students.
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They wanted to see if expansive thinking
improves the creative output of 6 to 9 year
olds.Their experiment was straightforward. The
researchers gave the kids a series of photographs
displaying nearby objects (a pencil on a desk)
and distant objects (a picture of the Milky Way
galaxy). Heres the important part half of the
kids started with the nearby objects and
progressed to more distant ones (expensive
mindset) the other half saw the photos in
reverse order (contractive mindset).
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Next, the kids tackled several creativity tests
in which they were given an object and asked to
name as many different uses for it. The tasks
were designed to test outside of the box
thinking. For example, if the object was a paper
clip, an unimaginative response would be to hold
paper. More creative answers, on the other hand,
would be a bookmark, or Christmas tree
decorations.
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Liberman found that kids in the expansive mindset
scored significantly better on all measures of
creativity. They came up a greater number of uses
and more creative uses for the objects. Why?
According to Liberman, spatial distance, as
opposed to spatial proximity, was clearly shown
to enhance creative performance. and
psychological distance can help to foster
creativity because it encourages us to think
abstractly.
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Two important findings come out of Libermans
research. The first is that creativity can be
taught. David Kelley makes this point precisely
in a recent TED talk. Drawing upon personal
experience and years of research, Kelley puts it
this wayDont let people divide the world into
the creative and the non-creative like its some
God given thing.People should realize they are
naturally creative and these people should let
their ideas fly.
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They should achieve self-efficacy, meaning
they should do what they set out to do And
reach a place of creative confidence.The second
point brings me back to London. One way to kill
creativity and abstract thinking two cognitive
attributes vital in the 21st century economy is
to maintain a here and now perspective. London
steered me away from this mindset it influenced
me to adopt a more open-minded perspective.
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To be sure, my leisurely strolls through the
British Museum didnt make me smarter, and by no
means was I culturally transformed upon hearing
that 'soccer' was actually 'football'. But its
remarkable what you can learn by sitting in an
English pub for a few hours. For starters, pints
are two pounds, not two pence.
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