How can sci-fi make you more creative?

A dive into another paper exploring the association between sci-fi and creativity. The secret? Transportation.

I’ve been on a sci-fi kick of late.

Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash

Maybe this isn’t a surprise, given that I spent much of last year working on horror comics, film scripts, and an anthology, and it’s natural that my brain wants to focus on something different.

You may recall a post from last year, where I looked into the relationship between sci-fi and creativity.

The work highlighted in that post focused on the association between creativity and having a background in STEM. I had some thoughts about the conclusions of this paper, which prompted me to go deeper into the literature. But I found another paper¹ that also explored the association between creativity and sci-fi.

However, this paper was interested in the effect (if any) of a single dose of sci-fi, namely watching the pilot episode of a sci-fi show, amongst a randomized group of students.

The authors of this study begin with a detailed theoretical framework for attempting to understand how sci-fi can have an impact on an audience.

Regarding sci-fi as an enabler of imaginative practice, they proposed that it could lead to increased levels of creativity. However, they also noted that because sci-fi is a departure from reality, it could require extra cognitive effort for readers/viewers to build and understand an internal model of the story world, for those who are unfamiliar with the genre.

My gut reaction was to deny this argument, but the more it sat with me, the more I felt it could be plausible. I grew up with a love of genre fiction, particularly sci-fi, and feel familiar with its tropes and conventions, and the suspension of disbelief needed to make (some) stories work. It’s hard for me to imagine coming to sci-fi later in life and having to keep track of all the elements, but then I remembered the movie Tenet.

Did you watch Tenet? Did you watch it and feel like you understood it on the first watch? In conversation with friends, I realized that they were struggling to keep up with all the elements of the movie, and had to expend more cognitive effort as they watched it.

Something similar happens with comics. If you read a lot of comics, you take the structure for granted. You know which panel is the next one to be read. But for those who are new to comics, they pause. They don’t know how to read comics, and have to apply extra cognitive effort to engage with the story.

I had this exact experience helping my mom to read my book Scratcher.

This argument sits with me much better than the one in the STEM paper, where the authors claimed that some people just don’t understand sci-fi. I think this mental model of extra cognitive effort is much closer to the truth, and could negatively impact someone’s enjoyment of the story.

With all that said, the authors of the current paper did a good job of establishing the theoretical framework for connecting sci-fi and creativity, but they also noted that extra cognitive load can affect not only analytical reasoning, but also moral judgment, which they also included as an outcome variable of interest in their study.

However, creativity and moral judgment are also impacted by how involved someone becomes with the story, which is conceptualized as transportation in the literature - the extent to which an audience/reader becomes emotionally and cognitively involved in the narrative. They postulate that people who are less involved with a story may experience extra cognitive load as they try to watch and reload their mental model of what’s happening.

To measure creativity, the authors used a divergent thinking test, which asked participants to think of different uses of everyday objects. For moral judgment, participants were asked to think of counterfactuals to immoral or taboo statements. Transportation was measured using Likert scale questions.

The study

The study recruited N=226 college undergraduates and randomized them into three different groups to watch the pilot of a TV show, either a sci-fi or a realistic show.

• Sci-fi group: participants were randomized to watch either Firefly, or Continuum. After the episode, they completed all three instruments.

• Realistic group: participants were randomized to watch either Castle or Jane the Virgin. After the episode, they completed all three instruments.

• Control group: participants completed the creativity and moral judgment tools first, then watched either Firefly or Continuum, and then completed the transportation instrument.

The hypotheses under investigation were the following:

1. There would be a difference in the number of moral counterfactual conditions generated between groups.

   1. There would be a positive correlation between transportation and moral counterfactuals only for those in the sci-fi group.

2. There would be a difference in the number of alternate uses generated between groups.

   1. There would be a positive correlation between transportation and alternate uses only for those in the sci-fi group.

The findings

The analysis relies on ANCOVA and regression modelling, but in short, there were no differences in the number of moral counterfactuals or alternate uses generated between groups. This means that the two main hypotheses were rejected, which means there was no statistically significant difference in creativity or moral judgment scores between any of the groups.

However, there were statistically significant associations between the numbers generated and transport scores for those in the sci-fi group: moral imagination (b=0.36, β=0.244, p<.05); creativity (b=0.06, β=0.220, p<.05). In simple terms, this means that the more the sci-fi viewer felt they were immersed in the narrative, the more counterfactuals and alternate uses they were able to generate, i.e., the more creative they were.

This suggests even a single dose of sci-fi can improve creativity, provided the viewer is sufficiently immersed in the narrative. The converse is also true, however. Those who were not sufficiently immersed had lower levels of creativity. The authors’ hypothesis is that those with low transportation scores may have expended more cognitive effort to keep up with the show, and therefore were less engaged in the story, but more work is needed to determine if that is correct.

What does this mean for creators?

The study suggests that sci-fi can be a powerful tool to enhance creativity, provided the reader/viewer is sufficiently engaged in the story. This is important for creators because there is likely a correlation between a person’s enjoyment of a sci-fi work, and their creativity. The research doesn’t go this far, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis that those who feel more creative are also more inspired, and this could lead to an increased quality of life.

So, a good, immersive, sci-fi experience could be impactful for an individual. That they then may associate their positive associations with your work, or you as the creator, then speaks to the importance of trying to deliver an immersive experience for your audience.

How does one do this?

The transportation questions in the study were adapted from an older paper “The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives.”² While the exact modifications are unknown, the original transportation questions are listed below (which were designed for written material), and respondents use a Likert scale for their responses:

1. While I was reading the narrative, I could easily picture the events in it taking place.

2. While I was reading the narrative, activity going on in the room around me was on my mind.

3. I could picture myself in the scene of the events described in the narrative.

4. I was mentally involved in the narrative while reading it.

5. After finishing the narrative, I found it easy to put it out of my mind.

6. I wanted to learn how the narrative ended.

7. The narrative affected me emotionally.

8. I found myself thinking of ways the narrative could have turned out differently.

9. I found my mind wandering while reading the narrative.

10. The events in the narrative are relevant to my everyday life.

11. The events in the narrative have changed my life.

Many of these seem like common sense advice for storytellers (e.g., don’t be boring), but they are a good reminder of things that creators should consider as they flesh out their stories, no matter the format.

What did you think? Did this finding surprise you? Let me know in the comments.

1. Black, J. E., & Barnes, J. L. (in press). Pushing the boundaries of reality: Science fiction,

creativity, and the moral imagination. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

doi:10.1037/aca0000281

2. https://weatherhypepodcast.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/the_role_of_transportation_in_the_persuasiveness_of_public_narratives.pdf