Divergent Thinking

artistic expression depends in particular on the right dorsolateral frontal cortex for original, divergent thinking, and suggests that 'the left parietal region and the left temporal lobe have inhibitory effects on artistic expression through attention to visuo-spatial detail and semantic labelling'

McGilchrist grounds divergent thinking neuroanatomically in the right dorsolateral frontal cortex, identifying left-hemisphere inhibitory mechanisms — linear detail-focus and semantic labelling — as the principal obstacles to original creative expression.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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artistic expression depends in particular on the right dorsolateral frontal cortex for original, divergent thinking, and suggests that 'the left parietal region and the left temporal lobe have inhibitory effects on artistic expression through attention to visuo-spatial detail and semantic labelling'

Duplicating the thesis passage, this version confirms that divergent thinking is localised to the right dorsolateral frontal cortex while left-hemisphere structures suppress it through labelling and detail-fixation.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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a number of EEG studies suggest greater right hemisphere activation in both divergent thinking tasks and in insight tasks, very few suggesting the opposite … In two types of divergent thinking tasks, the posterior regions of the right hemisphere displayed higher involvement than the left in both conditions.

McGilchrist presents converging EEG evidence that divergent thinking tasks robustly activate the right hemisphere's posterior regions, consolidating the empirical case for a right-hemisphere substrate of creative cognition.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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a number of EEG studies suggest greater right hemisphere activation in both divergent thinking tasks and in insight tasks, very few suggesting the opposite … In two types of divergent thinking tasks, the posterior regions of the right hemisphere displayed higher involvement than the left in both conditions.

EEG data surveyed by McGilchrist consistently link divergent thinking to right posterior hemisphere dominance, with only marginal counter-evidence, reinforcing the lateralisation argument.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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Let's start with divergent thinking. I have no love of the term myself – language is inevitably poor at capturing anything subtle. One reason that psychologists go on using the term might be because it – or something very like it – is indispensible.

McGilchrist critically accepts divergent thinking as a necessary if imperfect placeholder concept, arguing that definitional difficulty reflects the phenomenon's genuine complexity rather than its non-existence.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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Let's start with divergent thinking. I have no love of the term myself – language is inevitably poor at capturing anything subtle. One reason that psychologists go on using the term might be because it – or something very like it – is indispensible.

McGilchrist defends divergent thinking's conceptual utility against reductionist dismissal while conceding the term's linguistic inadequacy for capturing the richness of creative cognition.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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the total divergent-thinking-induced effect of more co-operation between cortex areas in the right hemisphere indicates a substantial contribution of the right hemisphere in creative thinking … more, as compared with less, original ideas elicited a stronger event-related synchronisation of alpha activity … and higher phase coupling in the right hemisphere.

Neuroimaging data cited by McGilchrist demonstrate that divergent thinking induces specifically right-hemisphere cortical co-operation and alpha-band synchronisation, with the effect scaling with creative originality.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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the total divergent-thinking-induced effect of more co-operation between cortex areas in the right hemisphere indicates a substantial contribution of the right hemisphere in creative thinking … more, as compared with less, original ideas elicited a stronger event-related synchronisation of alpha activity … and higher phase coupling in the right hemisphere.

The passage accumulates quantitative evidence that divergent thinking increases right-hemisphere coherence in proportion to the originality of ideas produced.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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it has been suggested, rather in the face of reason as well as of the evidence, that critical and convergent thinking, eliminating error and aiming for the one correct answer, might be creative; and this goes with a denial that the right hemisphere plays the predominant role, or even an important role at all, in creativity.

McGilchrist identifies the convergent-thinking-as-creativity claim as the principal intellectual adversary to the divergent thinking paradigm, arguing it contradicts the substantial body of evidence for right hemisphere creative dominance.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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it has been suggested, rather in the face of reason as well as of the evidence, that critical and convergent thinking, eliminating error and aiming for the one correct answer, might be creative; and this goes with a denial that the right hemisphere plays the predominant role, or even an important role at all, in creativity.

The passage frames the divergent/convergent opposition as a live controversy in neuroscience and argues that attempts to rehabilitate convergent thinking as creative misread the weight of evidence.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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All the literature on creativity in whatever field makes the same point: that it is about seeing hitherto unperceived parallels, seeing shapes or Gestalten that others have failed to see, standing back and taking the broad view, not squinting at the same microscopic field and looking up the rule book.

McGilchrist characterises divergent thinking functionally as the capacity for cross-domain analogy and Gestalt perception, contrasting it with the rule-following, detail-fixated mode associated with the left hemisphere.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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All the literature on creativity in whatever field makes the same point: that it is about seeing hitherto unperceived parallels, seeing shapes or Gestalten that others have failed to see, standing back and taking the broad view, not squinting at the same microscopic field and looking up the rule book.

The passage synthesises cross-disciplinary creativity literature to define the core operation of divergent thinking as perceiving unexpected connections at the level of the whole rather than the detail.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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The second phase, incubation, is unconscious, and not under voluntary control: it can only be impeded by conscious effort and introspection … The third phase, illumination, flowers out of the unconscious quite suddenly, again unwilled, and is effortless and accompanied by feelings of pleasure, satisfaction and fulfilment.

McGilchrist situates divergent thinking within a four-phase model of creativity in which the generative work is unconscious and involuntary, accessible only by suspending the controlling, convergent mode.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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The second phase, incubation, is unconscious, and not under voluntary control: it can only be impeded by conscious effort and introspection … The third phase, illumination, flowers out of the unconscious quite suddenly, again unwilled, and is effortless and accompanied by feelings of pleasure, satisfaction and fulfilment.

The passage establishes that the creative phases most continuous with divergent thinking — incubation and illumination — are unconscious and resist volitional direction.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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Over-control is the enemy here as elsewhere. The less we leave things to fortune, the less likely we are to make a fortunate find … The unwillable nature of creativity depends on the fact that the important processes are going on unconsciously.

McGilchrist argues that the volitional, controlling attitude characteristic of convergent thinking actively obstructs the unconscious processes that underpin divergent creative generation.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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Over-control is the enemy here as elsewhere. The less we leave things to fortune, the less likely we are to make a fortunate find … The unwillable nature of creativity depends on the fact that the important processes are going on unconsciously.

The passage frames divergent thinking as dependent on relinquishing left-hemisphere over-control, positioning unconscious processing as the necessary precondition for creative discovery.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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high creativity – right>left; average creativity – left>right; and low creativity – no hemisphere difference … not posing tasks that are truly creative, rather than at most minimally creative, is likely to have a similar effect – you won't really be testing what is special about creativity.

McGilchrist argues that the right-hemisphere signature of divergent thinking is most visible in genuinely creative individuals and is diluted by research designs using minimally challenging tasks.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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high creativity – right>left; average creativity – left>right; and low creativity – no hemisphere difference … not posing tasks that are truly creative, rather than at most minimally creative, is likely to have a similar effect – you won't really be testing what is special about creativity.

The passage reveals that the right-hemisphere dominance associated with divergent thinking varies systematically with the degree of creative ability, challenging null findings from studies using weak creative tasks.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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in a test of originality, subjects were asked to generate items in response to a cue … The most creative and original answers came from the group that had been distracted.

Experimental evidence cited by McGilchrist demonstrates that deliberate distraction — which disengages focused convergent attention — produces more original responses, supporting the claim that divergent thinking thrives when left-hemisphere control is relaxed.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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in a test of originality, subjects were asked to generate items in response to a cue … The most creative and original answers came from the group that had been distracted.

The passage supplies empirical support for the view that loosening deliberate conscious focus — as distraction does — facilitates the kind of generative, wide-ranging cognition characteristic of divergent thinking.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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It allows us to combine and recombine our knowledge in order to come up with novel approaches to everything from what to do with an empty day to how to lay out a five-year plan.

Dayton sketches a lay account of creative recombination — the functional core of divergent thinking — and situates it within prefrontal cortical activity and right-brain intuitive processing.

Dayton, Tian, Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Lasting Fulfillment, 2007aside

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Even large departures from what is normally expected are often the juxtaposition of familiar elements brought together from different contexts.

Dayton identifies the structural mechanism of creative divergence — novel juxtaposition of familiar templates — implicitly underscoring that divergent thinking operates on pre-existing cognitive structures rather than generating ex nihilo.

Dayton, Tian, Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Lasting Fulfillment, 2007aside

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