22 APRIL 2020
Dispatches HUMAN NATURE
Being considered “weird” in
your culture can also enhance
an element of creativity called
“integrative complexity.” Peo-
ple who are strong in inte-
grative complexity tend to
handle uncertainty well and
excel at reconciling conflict-
ing information. They’re often
able to see problems from
multiple perspectives.
Chris Crandall, a psychol-
ogy professor at the University
of Kansas, told me that peo-
ple who are on the periphery
of society tend to be freer to
innovate and change social
norms. “Fashion norms come
from the bottom up,” he said.
Outsiders are less concerned
with what the in-crowd thinks
of them, so they have more lee-
way to experiment.
In fact, people who don’t
fit neatly into a particular
group have been found, over
and over, to perform better
at outside-the-box thinking.
Foreigners are often consid-
ered strange, but there are
psychological advantages to
feeling like a stranger. Children
who are exposed to multiple
languages—perhaps because,
like me, they were raised in a
country far from where they
were born—are better able
to understand an adult’s per-
spective, and they may go on
to become better communica-
tors overall. In one experiment,
people who had lived abroad
were especially good at find-
ing hidden solutions to word
and conceptual problems. That
might help explain why Pablo
Picasso began experimenting
with Cubism in Paris, and
George Frideric Handel com-
posed his Messiah while living
in England.
Happily for those who have
never lived abroad, this creativ-
ity boost can also happen for
people who live in unusual
frames of mind, rather than
exotic locales. In a small study,
Rodica Damian, an assistant
psychology professor at the
University of Houston, and
her colleagues had college
students engage in a virtual-reality exercise in which the
laws of physics didn’t apply. In
this virtual world, things fell up
instead of down. When com-
pared with another group that
performed an exercise in which
the laws of physics functioned
normally, those who had the
physics-warping experience
were able to come up with
more creative answers to the
question “What makes sound?”
Damian has a theory she’s
researching: that all kinds of
unusual experiences can boost
creativity. For example, people
often report having break-
throughs after magic-mushroom
trips or extreme adventures.
“The idea behind this is that
once you’ve experienced things
that violate norms and rules
and expectations, you’re more
open to more things like that,”
Damian told me. “You expe-
rienced that the world doesn’t
have to work by your rules, so
you can break the rules.”
Of course, more weirdness is
not always better. If something
too jarring happens to you, just
dealing with it might use up allyour mental capacity. It might
be weird for, say, a grizzly bear
to invade your yard and destroy
your car. But rather than bask-
ing in your newfound creativ-
ity afterward, you’re probably
going to be calling your insur-
ance company.
Regardless, trying to think
about your weirdness in a posi-
tive way—a process called cog-
nitive reappraisal— can help
you cope with the adversity
that often comes with being an
outlier. Reframing what makes
you weird as being what gives
you strength can, ultimately,
make you happier.Unusual perspectives
can also boost the decision-
making power of the broader
group you’re a part of. Solo-
mon Asch’s famous experi-
ments in the 1950s revealed
the occasional ludicrousness
of conformity. When told to
match a line with one of three
other lines (two of which were
obviously different sizes), par-
ticipants selected a wrong
option about one-third of the
time when others in the group,
confederates working with the
researcher, gave that wrong
answer too. The experiment
has become a classic example
of how willingly people follow
a crowd. When one participant
was later asked why he con-
formed in this way, he said he
was worried about being seen
as “peculiar.” That is, he didn’t
want to be considered weird.
But less well known is a
variation of the experiment
in which Asch introduced
another variable—this time,
one of the confederates gave
the right answer while the rest
of the crowd tried to mislead
the participant. Having just
one person who broke with
the majority reduced confor-
mity among the responses byabout 80 percent. Perhaps the
participants in those trials felt
as though they and the dis-
senter could at least be weird
together. Interestingly, they
were less likely to conform
even if the dissenter disagreed
with the crowd but was still
wrong. The dissenter appeared
to give the participants permis-
sion to disagree.
The liberating effect of dis-
senting viewpoints has been
replicated in other studies,
and it underscores the value of
having a diverse array of people
around to poke holes in prevail-
ing ideas. The reason minority
views are so potent, accord-
ing to research on persuasion,
is that people tend to scrutinize
them more carefully. When we
hear a dissenting view, we think
more critically about what’s
being said, prompting a con-
sideration of different sides
of an issue. Majorities, mean-
while, spur us to think only
about data that support the
majority perspective. As Char-
lan Nemeth and Jack Goncalo
put it in the book Rebels in
Groups, “Minorities stimulate
more originality while majori-
ties stimulate more conven-
tionality of thought.”
Unfortunately, though, when
people stop being “weird,”
these benefits go away. When
people who were once in the
minority become the major-
ity, research shows that they
tend to become more closed-
minded. Weirdness has its
perks, but nothing is weird
forever.Olga Khazan is a staff writer
at The Atlantic. This article
is adapted from her forth-
coming book, Weird: The
Power of Being an Outsider
in an Insider World.PEOPLE WHO
ARE ON
THE PERIPHERY
OF SOCIETY
TEND TO BE
FREER TO
INNOVATE AND
CHANGE SOCIAL
NORMS.