WHILE MOST PEOPLE try to forget the
embarrassing moments of their lives,
new research shows that recalling and
sharing those moments could spark
their creativity during group brainstorming
sessions. In fact, groups
whose members share embarrassing
stories produce ideas that are both more
numerous and more varied than groups
that describe experiences that made
them proud. These are the findings
of Elizabeth Ruth Wilson of Harvard
University’s Kennedy School of Government
in Cambridge, Massachusetts;
Leigh Thompson of Northwestern University’s
Kellogg School of Management
in Evanston, Illinois; and Brian J. Lucas
of the ILR School of Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York.
“When you have a brainstorming
session, what you’re hoping is that
people are putting out any idea, without
regard to any judgment or evaluation,”
says Thompson in an article on the
KelloggInsight website. When people
begin corporate brainstorming events
by describing their achievements, says
Thompson, there can be an inhibiting
effect, because they don’t want to look
ridiculous a few minutes later by proposing
an odd idea. But the researchers
wondered if people might stop censoring themselves if they’d already recounted
embarrassing anecdotes.
In one experiment, researchers asked
11 individual online participants to describe
either an embarrassing incident,
an accomplishment that made them
proud, or their morning commute (the
control group). Afterward, participants
were asked to brainstorm unusual uses
for a paper clip. Those in the “embarrassment”
group generated not only
more ideas but also a greater range of
ideas than those in either the “pride”
group or the control group.
In a second experiment aimed
at groups, the researchers created
three-person teams out of 93 managers
enrolled in an executive education program.
Each team was asked to come up
with unusual uses for a cardboard box.
Before brainstorming, half of the teams
shared recent embarrassing moments
and half shared proud ones. Teams that
had shared embarrassing stories generated
26 percent more ideas—and a wider
range of ideas—than teams that had
recited their accomplishments.
“One of the big findings in the creativity
and innovation literature is that
you want to have a lot of ideas to play
with,” Thompson says. “If one group
has nearly 30 percent more ideas than
another group, there’s just a lot more
fuel for the fire.”
The researchers speculate that
recounting embarrassing stories might
make participants stop worrying about
future embarrassment, or it might help
them like and trust their team members
more. In addition, says Thompson,
such an exercise engages participants
from the start.
“Automatically, people start listening,”
she says. “There’s an irresistible
urge to let [the storyteller] finish, because
the human story is never boring.”
“Pride and Pratfalls: Recounting Embarrassing
Stories Increases Creativity”
appeared in the January 2020 issue
of the International Journal of Design
Creativity and Innovation.