Scott Barry Kaufman Quotes

most widespread gains in brain training come from programs that simultaneously address multiple aspects of a person, such as traditional martial arts training and enriched school curricula.

While standardized tests can certainly be useful for scientifically investigating the mind and brain, and can greatly inform educational interventions, there’s no reason why educators or anyone else for that matter needs to compare the intelligence of one person to another based on a single dimension of human variation.

People with learning goals are all about increasing their skills, whereas those with performance goals are all about winning, and looking smart. Because

The person who behaves badly behaves so because of hurt, actual and expected, and lashes out in self-defense, as a cornered animal might.

Writing about a topic that triggers strong emotions for just fifteen to twenty minutes a day has been shown to help people create meaning from their stressful experiences and better express both their positive and negative emotions.

The common strands that seemed to transcend all creative fields was an openness to one’s inner life, a preference for complexity and ambiguity, an unusually high tolerance for disorder and disarray, the ability to extract order from chaos, independence, unconventionality, and a willingness to take risks. This

The comparison isn't with others; it's with your former and future selves.

when people consistently move in the direction of growth, feelings of happiness and life satisfaction tend to come along for the ride as an epiphenomenon of growth.

Creative people are hubs of diverse interests, influences, behaviors, qualities, and ideas—and through their work, they find a way to bring these many disparate elements together.

Within the humanistic psychology framework, the healthy personality is considered one that constantly moves toward freedom, responsibility, self-awareness, meaning, commitment, personal growth, maturity, integration, and change, rather than one that predominantly strives for status, achievement, or even happiness.7

Creative people have messy minds.

It is precisely when the foundational structure of the self is shaken that we are in the best position to pursue new opportunities in our lives.

exploration, love, and purpose. I believe that these three

The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.”8

Diogenes proved the law of motion using the phrase Solvitur ambulando, “It is solved by walking,

In other words, the best route to happiness and life satisfaction is through transcending your egoistic insecurities, becoming the best version of yourself, and making a positive contribution to the world around you.

The smartest person to ever walk this Earth in all probability lived and died herding goats on a mountain somewhere, with no way to disseminate their work globally even if they had realised they were super smart and had the means to do something with their abilities. I am not keen on 'who are the smartest' lists and websites because, as Scott Barry Kaufman points out, the concept of genius privileges the few who had the opportunity to see through and promote their life’s work, while excluding others who may have had equal or greater raw potential but lacked the practical and financial support, and the communication platform that famous names clearly had. This is why I am keen to develop, through my research work, a definition of genius from a cognitive neuroscience and psychometric point of view, so that whatever we decide that is and how it should be measured, only focuses on clearly measurable factors within the individual’s mind, regardless of their external achievements, eminence, popularity, wealth, public platform etc. In my view this would be both more equitable and more scientific.

Many of us who have observed our own behavior don't need science to prove that technology is altering us, but let's bring some in anyway. Dopamine, the neurotransmitter that records certain experiences in our brain (typically described as pleasurable) and prompts us to repeat them, plays a part not only in sex and drugs, but also the swiping and tapping we do on our smartphones. Scott Barry Kaufman--- scientific director of the Imagination Institute...gave me the straight dope on dopamine. "It's a misconception that dopamine has to do with our feelings of happiness and pleasure," he said. "It's a molecule that helps influence our expectations." Higher levels of dopamine are linked to being more open to new things and novelty seeking. Something novel could be an amazing idea for dinner or a new book. . . or just getting likes on a Facebook post or the ping of a text coming in. Our digital devices activate and hijack this dopamine system extremely well, when we let them. ...Kaufman calls dopamine "the mother of invention" and explains that because we have a limited amount of it, we must be judicious about choosing to spend it on "increasing our wonder and excitement for creating meaning and new things like art--- or on Twitter.

Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Science of Imagination Project at the Positive Psychology Center, has found that 72 percent of us come up with new, creative ideas when we’re showering. Why? According to Kaufman, “The relaxing, solitary, and non-judgmental shower environment may afford creative thinking by allowing the mind to wander freely, and causing people to be more open to their inner stream of consciousness and daydreams.”8 In other words, simplifying your environment so that you can be alone with your thoughts makes it more likely that you’ll tap into your own creativity.

Maslow believed that if people are inwardly free, they will more often than not choose wisely, in a healthy and growth-oriented direction.4 To Maslow, this is how the psychology of being and the psychology of becoming can be reconciled. Just by being yourself and shedding your defenses and fears and anxieties, you move forward and grow.

The hobbies and personal passions we cultivate on our own—whether studying history, creating ink pen doodles, speculating in stocks and shares, playing the piano, or gardening—play a crucial role in shaping meaning in our lives. The creative person is constantly seeking to discover himself, to remodel his own identity, and to find meaning in the universe through what he creates.

So let me state this as clearly as possible: you may not be entitled to shine, but you have the right to shine, because you are a worthy human being. Changing your self-limiting narratives about your worthiness, asserting needs in a healthy way, overcoming your avoidance of fearful experiences, and taking responsibility for your behaviors—these actions strengthen and stabilize the vulnerable self.

Seed incidents tend to break the mind out of ordinary understanding and create new meanings for the writer, as evidenced by the writers’ descriptions of these events as “touching,” “intriguing,” “puzzling,” “mysterious,” “haunting,” and “overwhelming.” Commenting on a family incident that became the seed for a story, one writer said that the event seemed “full of meanings I couldn’t even begin to grasp.

As Barron began to make sense of what he observed, he came to identify a key consistency among creative people. Namely, these people seemed to become more intimate with themselves—they dared to look deep inside, even at the dark and confusing parts of themselves.22 Being open to and curious about the full spectrum of life—both the good and the bad, the dark and the light—may be what leads writers to score high on some characteristics that our society tends to associate with mental illness, while it can also lead them to become more grounded and self-aware. In truly facing themselves and the world, creative-minded people seemed to find an unusual synthesis between healthy and “pathological” behaviors. Armed

Picasso said of his own creative process, “A painting is not thought out and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it’s finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it.

The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.”8 Psychologist

Two “fairly sure” historical figures were Abraham Lincoln (“in his last years”) and Thomas Jefferson. Seven “highly probable public and historical figures” included Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Addams, William James, Albert Schweitzer, Aldous Huxley, and Baruch Spinoza.

Exploration is the desire to seek out and make sense of novel, challenging, and uncertain events.33 While security is primarily concerned with defense and protection, exploration is primarily motivated by curiosity, discovery, openness, expansion, understanding, and the creation of new opportunities for growth and development. The other needs that comprise growth—love and purpose—can build on the fundamental need for exploration to reach higher levels of integration within oneself and to contribute something meaningful to the world.

Enhanced empathic accuracy may promote behavioral prediction and management of external social forces and help individuals exert control over their life,

[Knowledge and understanding make] the person bigger, wiser, richer, stronger, more evolved, more mature. [They represent] the actualization of a human potentiality, the fulfillment of that human destiny foreshadowed by human possibilities. —Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being (1962)

By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us. —ALAN WATTS

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. —ALBERT EINSTEIN

healthy transcendence is more horizontal than it is vertical. It’s about confronting the realities of the human condition head-on with equanimity, wisdom, and loving-kindness and harnessing all that we are in the service of realizing the best version of ourself so we can help raise the bar for the whole of humanity.[6] With healthy transcendence, we have done the inner work to integrate our whole self, including our deprivation motivations, so that they no longer rule our actions in the world. We see the world on its own terms, and what we see may be intensely beautiful.

go to selfactualizationtests.com

Those who employ a problem-focus coping style attempt to deal with stressful situations by changing the source of the stress.

Human beings, like every other living organism on the planet, are cybernetic systems—simply put, we are goal-directed systems.37 As such, humans have multiple, often conflicting goals, some of which are conscious, many of which are not. Each of our goals has its own imagined future of what the world would look like with the goal completed,

To be sure, at times reality can feel unbearable, and despite the general satisfaction most people feel with their lives, mental illness is actually a lot more common than people realize. In fact, most people develop a diagnosable mental illness at some point in their lives.41 Nevertheless, most people report being fairly happy in life, show positive developmental change across their life-spans, and display extraordinary capacities for resilience, dignity, and grace.

Scott Barry Kaufman and pose the question to him. “It’s an interesting claim, but empirically it just doesn’t check out,” Scott says, to my great relief. “Actually, it’s the opposite. Research shows that people are more generous and pro-social when they feel gratitude.

Humans not only have a need for belonging and connection, but also have a need to feel as though they are having a positive impact in the lives of other people.

the more our judgment of self-worth becomes internalized, the less the power of others has to completely sway how we see ourselves.

Exploration and seemingly blind experimentation were key to Picasso’s creative process. Rather than creating a painting to reflect his own preexisting worldview, he seemed to actively build and reshape that worldview through the creative process. While he may have had a rough intuition, it’s likely that Picasso did not quite know where he was going, creatively, until he arrived there.4

In contrast, females, on average, tend to be more sociable, sensitive, warm, compassionate, polite, anxious, self-doubting, and more open to aesthetics. On average, women are more interested in intimate, cooperative dyadic relationships that are more emotion-focused and characterized by unstable hierarchies and strong egalitarian norms. Where aggression does arise, it tends to be more indirect and less openly confrontational. Females also tend to display better communication skills, displaying higher verbal ability and the ability to decode other people's nonverbal behavior. Women also tend to use more affiliative and tentative speech in their language, and tend to be more expressive in both their facial expressions and bodily language (although men tend to adopt a more expansive, open posture). On average, women also tend to smile and cry more frequently than men, although these effects are very contextual and the differences are substantially larger when males and females believe they are being observed than when they believe they are alone.

As Pasteur said, in science, luck is granted to those who are prepared.

George Bernard Shaw: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

Some people—those with high levels of neuroticism, need for closure, and obsessive-compulsive disorder—find uncertainty particularly aversive. Neuroticism is a personality trait characterized by a pattern of negative affect, anxiety, fear, and rumination. When people high in neuroticism are exposed to uncertain feedback compared to negative feedback, the nervous system delivers an outsize emotion-laden response.17 As psychologists Jacob Hirsh and Michael Inzlicht note, people scoring high in neuroticism “prefer the devil they know over the devil they do not know.” The implications of neuroticism for mental health are tremendous, with some researchers going so far as to argue that neuroticism is the common core of all forms of psychopathology!

Heaven, so to speak, lies waiting for us through life, ready to step into for a time and to enjoy before we have to come back to our ordinary life of striving. And once we have been in it, we can remember it forever, and feed ourselves on this memory and be sustained in times of stress.

On average, males tend to be more dominant, assertive, risk-prone, thrill-seeking, tough-minded, emotionally stable, utilitarian, and open to abstract ideas. Males also tend to score higher on self-estimates of intelligence, even though sex differences in general intelligence measured as an ability are negligible [2]. Men also tend to form larger, competitive groups in which hierarchies tend to be stable and in which individual relationships tend to require little emotional investment. In terms of communication style, males tend to use more assertive speech and are more likely to interrupt people (both men and women) more often-- especially intrusive interruptions-- which can be interpreted as a form of dominant behavior.

the imagination network enables us to construct personal meaning from our experiences, remember the past, think about the future, imagine other perspectives and scenarios, comprehend stories, and reflect on mental and emotional states—both our own and those of others.36

Unfortunately, our society increasingly allows children’s creativity and imagination to fall by the wayside in favor of the passive consumption of social media and television as well as superficial learning evaluated by standardized tests—which only serve to increase extrinsic motivation, often at the expense of intrinsic passion. And

My research has convinced me that we all have extraordinary creative, humanitarian, and spiritual possibilities but are often alienated from them because we are so focused on a very narrow slice of who we are.

RECOMMENDED READING Brooks, David. The Road to Character. New York: Random House, 2015. Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. New York: Free Press, 2009. Deci, Edward L. with Richard Flaste. Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012. Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. Emmons, Robert A. Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. Ericsson, Anders and Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz (eds.). The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Kaufman, Scott Barry and Carolyn Gregoire. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. New York: Perigee, 2015. Lewis, Sarah. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. Matthews, Michael D. Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. McMahon, Darrin M. Divine Fury: A History of Genius. New York: Basic Books, 2013. Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. New York: Little, Brown, 2014. Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. Renninger, K. Ann and Suzanne E. Hidi. The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement. New York: Routledge, 2015. Seligman, Martin E. P. Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Steinberg, Laurence. Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Tetlock, Philip E. and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015. Tough, Paul. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

emotional, motivational, and ethical characteristics.19 The common strands that seemed to transcend all creative fields was an openness to one’s inner life, a preference for complexity and ambiguity, an unusually high tolerance for disorder and disarray, the ability to extract order from chaos, independence, unconventionality, and a willingness to take risks.

seed incident—an event or observation that inspires fascination and exploration and becomes the fertile ground on which creative growth occurs.