We are proud to announce that UCL School of Management Professor Verena Krause’s research paper entitled “Creative Ideation Activates Disinhibited Reward-Seeking and Indulgent Choices” was recently accepted and published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Across ten experiments, Krause, alongside co-authors Lynne C. Vincent and Jack A. Goncalo, show that a short creative idea generation task led to more indulgent eating, drinking, and exercise choices and behaviours. Participants who generated creative ideas subsequently assembled burgers with higher calorie content, proposed cocktails with higher alcohol content, planned workouts that burned fewer calories, chose candy more often and ate more candy than participants who engaged in control tasks.

The reason behind this, the co-authors argue, is that engaging in creative idea generation activates the uninhibited pursuit of desires and rewards.

Read the full paper or  find out more about Verena Krause’s research.