Creative thinking

Does brainstorming with peers cause limited creativity? When teachers say partner up and discuss the questions on the board, we all get a little more excited because that means that if we don’t know something then we can go off of something else someone says. However, is relying on other people bad for us?

                When we are paired up with someone, whether it be a really good friend, or that weird kid that sits in the corner, we suddenly are okay with the whole discussion because we don’t have to think the whole response up by ourselves. There is just that feeling of relief, however, maybe being paired with someone really doesn’t help with anything. Have you ever thought about when you are in a group with someone and you are trying to think of the answer to a question and you can’t seem to think of anything? But the second someone says something, we automatically go with it because we can’t think of anything better. Then you sit there and try and think of another alternate solution, and our mind just keeps going back to the other answer.

                I think there may be some parts good about working in a group because then you are learning something whether or not it be your own ideas, but you are at least retaining some kind of information. Going off of what everyone else says though doesn’t help us improve in anyway because then we start to lose the ability to think outside the box. Don’t get me wrong, I believe working with others and helping others out is good because it helps us learn as a person but when we always are working in groups at school, we are never able to grow as creative thinkers and start to form our own conclusions.

                Relating this back the human brain, we are always looking for ways to improve ourselves and when we are always relying on someone or something, we are not able to think creatively and that is going to inhibit our creative thinking neural pathways. My advice for this would be working by yourself every now and again because then you are going to be excising those pathways and making them stronger.