Schoolchildren subjected to the strain of competition are at risk of blunting their inventiveness and imagination compared to peers who are allowed to develop without the pressure of overbearing parents pushing for top-of-the-class results.
Psychologists at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University and Baptist University have found that stress arising from factors such as "competition, noise, confined environments, and engaging in challenging tasks" could be behind reduced "creative performance."
In a paper published in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, the researchers found that strains related to exams and pushy parents bent on beating the neighbours "trigger anxiety" and leave children less inclined to "express creativity."
Everyone feels the effects of such stress, the team said, explaining that it can "increase cognitive load, which reduces the cognitive resources available for creative thinking."
However, the effect is "moderated by the type of stressor and the individual’s age," the team said, noting that adolescents, whose brain regions controlling "higher order thinking" are more developed than those of children, tend to perform better under pressure.
Teenagers are primed by least “moderate” competitive pressure and in turn show some improvements in their “innovative ability,” the team asserted.
"From a psychological perspective, creativity is one of the core abilities that people rely on to solve problems in daily learning, life, and work," said Lingnan psychology professor Huang Yi, asserting that creativity not only "helps to connect new things with existing knowledge" but also helps when there is a need to come up with "alternative solutions" to life’s difficulties. – dpa
