Marijuana does not increase Creativity

MARIJUANA DOES NOT INCREASE CREATIVITY, IT MAKES YOU THINK YOU ARE CREATIVE

A set of studies published in the Journal of Applied Psychology has failed to find evidence that cannabis has any creativity-enhancing effects. The researchers found that cannabis brings out a feeling of playfulness that made cannabis users perceive their own ideas and those of others as more creative. A popular belief due to its association with artists who use this drug.

191 occasional cannabis users from Washington State in the US were randomly divided into two separate groups. The first group was asked to begin the study within 15 minutes of consuming cannabis. The second group only if they had not used cannabis in the last 12 hours.

Participants first reported whether they were "happy" and "cheerful". Next, they completed the alternative uses task, a well-established measure of a type of creativity known as divergent thinking. The test is to come up with as many creative uses as you can for a brick in four minutes and to self-assess their creative output.

Without knowing who had used cannabis, the researchers reviewed the 2,141 ideas generated. Participants in the cannabis use condition were more likely to feel "happy" and "joyful" compared to the others. The cannabis users also rated their own ideas as more creative, an effect associated with their better mood.

Unexpectedly, this state of playfulness did not translate into an increase in creativity. That is to say that the independent judges considered the ideas generated by those in the cannabis-using group to be as creative as those in the controlled condition.

CANNABIS DOES NOT INCREASE CREATIVITY AT WORK

In a second study that included 140 participants, the researchers tried to replicate and expand their results. Participants were again randomly divided into two conditions. But they also completed a measure of cognitive functioning known as the Sternberg memory exploration task. Instead of completing an alternative uses task, participants were instructed to complete a work-focused creativity task.

Participants were instructed to imagine that they worked for a consulting firm and had been asked by a local music group, called File Drawers, to help brainstorm ideas to increase their income. They were told that their goal was to generate as many creative ideas as possible in 5 minutes.

Again, the researchers found that cannabis use did not significantly affect cognitive functioning. However, participants in the cannabis condition tended to have more favourable appraisals of others' creativity compared to those in the control condition. In other words, cannabis makes you think that you are more creative and also makes you think that others are too.

Cannabis users tend to be more extroverted and open to experience. They also performed better than non-users on a test of convergent thinking, that is, the creative process of narrowing down possible solutions to find a correct answer. In conclusion, cannabis might increase creativity, but not the types of creativity that were tested in the current research. May be it enhances creativity in specific contexts, such as music and art production.