What facilitates creative insight? A few answers are provided in a chapter written by Lile Jia and Edward Hirt, a couple of creativity experts. (Incidentally, this chapter will appear in a book I'm co-editing called House and Psychology.) I'll focus on two answers they give to the creativity question: 1. taking risks (promotion versus prevention focus) and 2. functional fixedness.

In order to be creative, you have to be willing to take some genuine risks. Part of what it means to be creative is to be original, which involves moving the status quo forward. Unfortunately, whenever you mess with the status quo you run the risk of being scorned. But that is a risk you must take. Also, you must be willing to fail. Creativity requires experimentation. Some of these will be failed experiments. Creative people recognize that failures are not emergencies (at least not always), but rather learning opportunities. Overall, creativity and bravery go hand-in-hand.

These insights are neatly captured in a distinction psychologists make between promotion focus and prevention focus. These are stable dispositions, i.e., people are chronically disposed to be focused one way or the other. Promotion-focused folks view situations in terms of their potential for affording gains like success, growth, and accomplishment. They tend to ignore the potential for failure and punishment inherent in many creative endeavors. But these factors are exactly what prevention-focused folks home in on. Potential losses are what define situations for them. I bet you can easily classify your friends along this pretty transparent dimension. And I think we can safely skip any speculation regarding Tracy. The bottom line is that in order to up the creativity ante, you have to be promotion-focused, thereby leaving yourself somewhat more vulnerable to attacks from critics.

Another factor is something called functional fixedness. Believe it or not, the name pretty much says it all. We tend to fixate on the normal functions of objects. We automatically and uncritically treat objects as if their intended or most common function is their only possible function. E.G., it probably took people a long while to realize that books could be used to stabilize their wobbly tables and chairs. Get the idea? It normally takes lots of cognitive effort to overcome this bias, but some people seem better at it than others. I don't know if you're old enough to know the name McGyver. He was the least functionally fixated person in the world. Here are a few classic "McGyverisms":

• used shirt to filter gasses
• disarmed missile with paper clip
• used hair and white wine to make a magnifying glass

Jackie Chan's unconventional use of objects in his choreographed fight scenes is another entertaining variation on this theme.

You can think of functional fixedness more generally as the mindless tendency to accept conventional definitions of not only physical objects, but anything at all, anything your brain regards as a stimulus. And, in theory at least, it's possible to overcome this tendency in relation to an equal number of entities. For example, comedians like Tracy invent puns by playing around with different meanings of the same word, one of which is usually the primary, default definition. Or, they employ sarcasm, uttering the opposite of what they mean. Both of these techniques require that they disrespect convention by interpreting words their own way. As you would expect, there is a strong whiff of nonconformity emanating from all of this.

So, what does it take to be creative? In the simplest terms, you must be brave and a nonconformist.

Except who wants to be creative? Creative people are often highly regarded. But, allowing creativity to flourish can be a double-edged sword, both for individuals and societies. The down side for societies is that they must from time-to-time relinquish the status quo; for creative individuals, that they must from time-to-time incur the wrath of society. And that is the rub; creativity by nature poses an antithesis between the individual and society. Every creative victory is a victory against society, because society is by its very nature geared towards maintaining the status quo. To be successfully creative is to win this eternal battle against society. I think Tracy, arguably the most creative character on 30 Rock, embodies this stark reality more hilariously and accurately than anybody.

Ted Cascio is co-editor of House & Psychology (John Wiley & Sons).

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