I've just finished reading 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman. It's about how we can improve our lives in under a minute using psychology, and all based on actual experiments.
There are lots of chapters but following a post on Katharine's blog about imagination I thought I'd type up a brief summary of some of comments on creativity.
First and most powerfully, it's no surprise to dreamers that the unconscious is the root of creativity. Experiments in creative thinking and puzzle solving have shown that distracting your conscious mind with mathematics or intense word puzzles for 15-20 minutes causes solutions or new ideas to spontaneously appear from your unconscious mind. Distraction of the conscious mind is more effective than relaxation.
One head is better than many. Experiments have shown that groups produce less creative ideas in quantity and quality than individuals. This is for a variety of social factors. If you must work in a group, it's been shown that more creative ideas appear if you change the members around rather than stick to your friends.
Having a plant in the room has been show to increase the generation of original ideas. Pictures or even videos of nature don't exhibit the effect. The colour green has been shown to relax the mind and increase the chance of creative ideas too, whereas red has the opposite effect. Stick with green decor, or go for a walk in the park.
Creativity is rebellion. Seeing the world through the eyes of a rebel encourages creative ideas. In one experiment people were asked to list the attributes of a punk rocker, and another group those of an engineer, then they were all asked to come up with ideas. The punk group came up with more original ideas.
