Here, ‘incubation’ refers to people having insights or new creative ideas after taking a break from consciously thinking about the problem or project they’re working on.
I find this phenomenon fascinating. Is it real? And if it is, how does it work? Are our unconscious minds actually producing these insights and ideas?
I’m exploring the concept, beginning with the book Incubation in Problem Solving and Creativity by Kenneth J. Gilhooly, a researcher in the field. The book summarises the findings of many experiments and also discusses some anecdotal evidence.
For practical reasons, experiments that test incubation tend to ask participants to solve lateral thinking puzzles or perform relatively straightforward tasks designed to measure aspects of creativity, such as coming up with a list of possible uses for an object. (It would be impossible to get enough data for a statistical analysis of the effectiveness of incubation for encouraging major discoveries or creative breakthroughs.)
Chapter 3 of the book argues that there is enough evidence from empirical studies to demonstrate that the incubation effect does provide some benefit for problem-solving and creativity.
There are competing explanations for how incubation works. One hypothesis is that there’s nothing unconscious going on – instead, people who work on a problem for a while can become mentally fatigued and stuck on unproductive lines of thinking. A break is refreshing and makes it easier to find alternative approaches.
However, Gilhooly argues that experiments with ‘immediate incubation’ offer some evidence that our unconscious really is working on the problem during the break. In an immediate incubation scenario, participants are told what task they’ll be asked to tackle, and then they’re immediately given a different activity to do. In this situation, there’s no time to become mentally fatigued or stuck while working on the original task, but the break provided by the different activity still leads to benefits that seem to be caused by incubation.
Chapter 5 explores what the unconscious processes might actually be doing. One explanation is that the unconscious links possibilities together randomly or semi-randomly, and interesting combinations will be captured and will surface to the conscious mind in a process that feels like sudden inspiration.
Chapter 6 specifically considers sleep as a form of incubation. Experiments on the benefits of sleeping on a problem to gain new insight suggest that the incubation effect can be strong. However, it should be noted that most of the studies don’t have large numbers of participants.
The rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep may be particularly useful for generating creative ideas, while slow wave sleep (the deepest stage of non-REM sleep) may help us build our understanding of complex problems.
Advice for my future self
I’d like to experiment with creative incubation for idea generation at some point. Based on my reading of Gilhooly’s book, I think these would be useful guidelines to follow:
- Give myself a specific task (e.g. to generate ideas related to a particular topic)
- For waking incubation, take a break that will encourage mind-wandering, such as walking along a familiar route or doing daily housework
- While experimenting with sleeping incubation, try to follow guidelines for encouraging high-quality sleep. After waking up, spend some time actively thinking about the task again and writing down ideas.
Related
Dorothea Brande’s practice for developing a story idea is a form of creative incubation: The Story Idea as Object, from “Becoming a Writer”