How Looking for the "Right" Answer Stifles Your Creativity

For much of our lives, we are predisposed to look for a single solution to a single problem (e.g. What is 2 + 2? What is the capital of India? What is the chemical symbol for salt?). We have been “brainwashed,” in a sense, to think that for every problem there is one, and only one, way to solve that problem.

Much of our educational experiences have been focused on learning the right answer or discovering the one-and-only solution. Seldom have we been offered the opportunity to consider that there might be a multitude of potential responses to any single problem. The “one-problem, one-answer” syndrome has been thoroughly ingrained into our patterns of thinking.

But what happens when we’re asked to generate multiple responses instead of a single right answer? To find out, I asked a group of fourth-grade students to come up with as many possible solutions to the 2 + 2 problem as they could. I did it by asking them this question: “What if there was more than one way to record the answer to 2 + 2?” Here are some of the responses (out of the 54) they came up with:

• 6-2
• 22
• √16
• 1+1+1+1
• (2 x 1) + (2 x 1)
• ½ of 8
• 40 percent of 10
• The number of corners in a square
• What a golfer yells
• How Lincoln began "The Gettysburg Address”
• 6 x 6 ÷ 9
• Number of runners on a relay team (track or swimming)
• Always after 3
• 16 ÷ 4

As you can see, these kids were not “boxed in” by the artificial “requirement” of finding a single right answer (When you add the number 2 to another number 2 you will always get the number 4.). Rather, they were asked a question beginning with the two words “What if…?” The results, you must agree, were diverse and quite inventive.

What Experts Say

Ken Robinson put this into perspective when he wrote, “Too often our educational systems don’t enable students to develop their natural creative powers. Instead, they promote uniformity and standardization. The result is that we’re draining people of their creative possibilities and… producing a workforce that’s conditioned to prioritize conformity over creativity.”

In short, our educational system is focused more on getting the right answers than on promoting creative possibilities. In other words, we tell students to color inside the lines and then expect adults to think outside the box.

The implications can be staggering. Insight and logic support the notion that a focus on a one-right-answer mentality forces us into a “don’t take any risks” mindset. Consumed with getting the right answer (a proven consequence of a fact-based education system) conditions us not to take chances, particularly as adults.

Simply put: We are not taught how to be creative; rather our education is focused more on “mental compliance” than it is on innovative expression.

Dr. Robert Sternberg, a psychologist who has studied creativity extensively, agrees. He writes, “Creativity is a habit. The problem is that schools sometimes treat it as a bad habit…. Like any habit, creativity can either be encouraged or discouraged.”

Michael Roberto, in his book Unlocking Creativity further cements this view when he states, “Our schools may be discouraging creative students in a variety of ways. A stream of research has shown that teachers claim to value qualities such as independent thinking and curiosity, yet they reward behaviors such as obedience and conformity.”

Source: WOKANDAPIX/Pixabay

The Perils of Right Answers

Because of the prevalence of fact-based exams throughout the U.S. education system (approximately 2,500 between grades 1-12), we tend to stay in a comfort zone: a focus on single right answers.

Occasionally, we may have been asked to voice a creative response to a question (“What do you think are some of the long-range consequences of our current trade policy with China?”), but were hesitant to do so on the belief that the questioner may have been looking for a specific response. Perhaps our creative answer is not the one the questioner/teacher was looking for. We may have stepped outside the bounds of what was expected and into the territory of the unknown.

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The objective of our classroom lessons often became: Right answers get rewarded; wayward or unusual answers (e.g. creative responses) are often censured.

“If you think there’s only one right answer, then you’ll stop looking as soon as you find one.” —Roger von Oech

Consequently, as adults, many of us have been conditioned to be very logical thinkers. When presented with an intellectual challenge, we look for a single, logical response. Our vision is parochial rather than unrestrained.

The solution, simply stated, is to regularly generate a lot of possible answers rather than just a single one when faced with any creative challenge. And so, here’s your question: How many different ways can you answer this math question: 2 + 2 = ?