Dead Reckoning 5 : Inside the Risk Aversion Box (Jessica Olien / Slate)

Good article.   Bosses don't encourage underlings to think outside the box.  

 Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.

Having dealt with it for years, I think it's a little more complex than a general native tendency, however. A large packet of society defers decisions (outsources) to a higher authority. Those authorities demand structure to order the size of the authority delegated to them, and tend to view "outliers" collectively as a threat to that order. The hostility to creativity is particularly intense when the question is "moral authority". In science, the "out of the box" thinker has scientific method and an option or hope to "prove" or "demonstrate" their alternative, creative, view. In religion, a creative morality is considered a threat but it's very difficult to demonstrate credibility with anything other than generations of experience (I did X, which the Priestatollah said not to, and no hair on my palms etc).

Cross culture is unfamiliar, by definition, and unfamiliar is risky.  People will tend to outsource authority, and authority will keep order by creating simple rules around things like culture, race, and language.

Where science is vulnerable is when a morality is attached. I'm not advocating for scientists to be immoral. But certain branches of science (e.g. Environmental) are susceptible to moral authority, which makes them more susceptible to Priestatollahs opposing creative thinking.

This is about risk aversion, cognitive risk, and perception of risks.   When a large group delegates authority, it doesn't need to know all the complicated stuff.   But when the complicated stuff is actually also over the head of the regulator (or moral regulator), the regulator feels risk of losing control or losing authority and tries to simplify.  

This is what is going on at the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.  

The 2011 Cornell University paper is actually pretty short.

The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas

Jennifer S. Mueller - University of Pennsylvania

Shimul Melwani - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

Jack A. Goncalo - Cornell University

Read the previous posts about our instinct to nurture, or externalized perceived risk.   Like Parents who think internet is dangerous, or dictators who think internet is dangerous, or E-Stewards who think trade with six billion people, in geographies as diverse as Lima, Penang, Soweto, Accra, Karachi, and Sonora, should be restricted via a simple moral rule (Basel Convention Amendment).

Abstract

People often reject creative ideas even when espousing creativity as a desired goal. To explain this paradox, we

propose that people can hold a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt, and which is activated when

people experience a motivation to reduce uncertainty. In two studies, we measure and manipulate uncertainty

using different methods including: discrete uncertainty feelings, and an uncertainty reduction prime. The

results of both studies demonstrated a negative bias toward creativity (relative to practicality) when

participants experienced uncertainty. Furthermore, the bias against creativity interfered with participants’

ability to recognize a creative idea. These results reveal a concealed barrier that creative actors may face as they

attempt to gain acceptance for their novel ideas