Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

There is a debate in the literature as to whether inhibitory control improves or hinders creativity. Alternatively, we proposethat flexible alterations between these two states would actually benefit creativity best. Therefore, the purpose of the currentstudy was to resolve the debate by inducing inhibited/disinhibited/flexible states of mind and subsequently examine theinfluence on creative performance. To do so, the Stop-Signal task (SST) was deployed through the use of differential taskinstructions. Afterwards, participants completed two creativity tasks: a free association task (FAT) and the alternate usestask (AUT). Results indicated that while the inhibited group scored higher in the FAT, the flexible group scored higher inthe AUT. Based on the results, we propose that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between inhibitory control andcreativity: while some cognitive control is needed to generate original ideas; excessive control might hinder creativity asit may lead to premature closure of ideas that could otherwise be further developed.