Thinking Outside of Functional Fixedness with the Aide of Mental Fatigue

Abstract

This research explored the relationship between mental fatigue and creativity by testing the creative potential of 25 Keene State College students, half of which were subjected to mental fatigue. Little research has been done to look at these 2 variables together, but considerable research has been done on them individually. Using an independent-measures study, it was demonstrated that, although many view mental fatigue as inhibitory and bad for productivity, this inhibitory nature can actually be beneficial to one’s creativity by inhibiting the rigidity of one’s role assignment for objects. Participants (23 female) were primarily recruited from underclass-level psychology courses. Two forms of a working memory task—one difficult (43% correct) to induce mental fatigue, and the other easy (985 correct) as a control condition—and the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) to measure creativity, revealed that mental fatigue resulted in significantly higher scores across all measurements and forms of creativity within the TTCT.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by New Hampshire-INBRE funding to HMF through an Institutional Development Award (IDeA), P20GM103506, from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the NIH; and the Keene State College Center for Creativity Inquiry under grant KA1113 to TD. We thank Donna Vivieros and Gary Bonitatibus for their suggestions during the planning and analysis process, and Susan Menees for her guidance throughout the honors research process.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (US) [P20GM103506]; Keene State College CCI [KA1113].