Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Finding creative new ideas requires both release from fixationand a productive search mindset. Recent research has shownthat messy desks, walking, and mind-wandering can lead tomore new uses for old objects. Here we show that a human-centric mindset is superior to mind-wandering for generatingmore alternative uses and more creative uses because itprovides both release from fixation and an effective searchstrategy. A human-centric mindset entails perspective-taking,and perspective-taking is likely to be an effective generalstrategy for enhancing creativity, problem-solving andinnovation.