Can Other People Make You Less Creative?

Although it is sometimes assumed that creativity is good and therefore, the more creativity the better, an evolutionary perspective suggests that this is not always the case. Creativity is the process that generates cultural novelty, and human culture – like all evolutionary processes – requires a balance between the generation of new outputs, and the perpetuation of successful previous outputs. This paper provides a layperson summary of a test of the idea that society benefits by balancing creators with conformers. The test was carried out with a computational model composed of neural network based agents that could spend their time either inventing new ideas or imitating what their neighbours were doing. The study suggests that societies may benefit as a whole by self-organizing into a balanced mix of novelty generating creators and continuity perpetuating imitators. The paper concludes with discussion about the implications for real human societies.