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arXiv · 1502.02193

The Silver Lining Around Fearful Living

Liane Gabora
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Abstract

This paper discusses in layperson's terms human and computational studies of the impact of threat and fear on exploration and creativity. A first study showed that both killifish from a lake with predators and from a lake without predators explore a new environment to the same degree and plotting number of new spaces covered over time generates a hump-shaped curve. However, for the fish from the lake with predators the curve is shifted to the right; they take longer. This pattern was replicated by a computer model of exploratory behavior varying only one parameter, the fear parameter. A second study showed that stories inspired by threatening photographs were rated as more creative than stories inspired by non-threatening photographs. Various explanations for the findings are discussed.

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Liane Gabora. 2015-02-07. The Silver Lining Around Fearful Living. https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.02193

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