More on Foreign Experience and Creativity

We recently suggested here that there might be a correlation between creativity and living in a foreign country. In a recent issue just last month, The Economist picked up on the same study and offered some additional insight into it.

The article, "Expats at Work," suggested that

Anecdotal evidence has long held that creativity in artists and writers can be associated with living in foreign parts. Rudyard Kipling, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Gauguin, Samuel Beckett and others spent years dwelling abroad. Now a pair of psychologists has proved that there is indeed a link.

Take that last statement with a small grain of salt. A study doesn't "prove" a hypothesis, it just supports it and, if tested enough, provides some validity. Remember, even if you test something 500 times, you'll never know what would have happened that 501st. So they've demonstrated a link, but haven't proved anything.

The study also didn't just focus on creativity as relates to Creatives. Of the two samples, one of them dealt with "creative negotiating" which, while certainly an opportunity for creativity, doesn't really fit our definition of Creatives as those who create something that didn't exist before.

In our post in April we suggested there was no real discussion of the direction of causality, that is, whether overseas experience enhances creativity or if creative people are simply more likely to try living overseas.

To check that they had not merely discovered that creative people are more likely to choose to live abroad, Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky identified and measured personality traits, such as openness to new experiences, that are known to predict creativity. They then used statistical controls to filter out such factors. Even after that had been done, the statistical relationship between living abroad and creativity remained, indicating that it is something from the experience of living in foreign parts that helps foster creativity.

It's an interesting study, and having learned more about it now, I'd still stick with our earlier suggestion: looking for employees with overseas experience can provide you with more creative employees.