New perspectives
By Peter Honey (March 2004 Issue)
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Isn’t it wonderful when you are suddenly helped to see something utterly familiar in a new light? I’m happy to report having not just one but two ‘ah-ha’ experiences within the space of a week. First, I read a column in The Times Magazine by Dr Nick Baylis1 that describes a condition I have suffered from all my life (well, for as much of it as I can remember!). It is apparently called choice-overload. The example Baylis cites involves exotic jams. When people were presented with six pots of different-flavoured jam, 30 per cent bought one. However, when people were presented with 24 jams, only 3 per cent bought one. The difference is explained by choice-overload. There are numerous situations in which I become paralysed by choice-overload.
Large exhibitions at which all the stalls are too similar do it to me. Bookshops, too. Whenever I cross the threshold of a bookshop without a list of specific titles to search for, I slowly succumb to choice-overload. There are simply too many books that I know I should read. Browsing merely exacerbates the problem and I invariably leave having bought nothing. The same thing happens to me when I embark on a soup-making session (one of my New Year resolutions is to make soup every weekend). My wife (who, thank goodness, does not suffer from choice-overload) helpfully gets out a number of recipes for my consideration. Uncertainty grips me as I become confused by too many choices; just one recipe, or at the most two, would suffice. So I hurriedly plump for one – not because the recipe has any particular merit, but in order to feel better.
I’m definitely vulnerable to choice-overload – just like the poor cats who were rewarded with food whenever they responded to a triangle and punished with an electric shock whenever they did the same to a circle. The experimenters gradually smoothed the corners off the triangle until it became more like an ellipse and then, slowly, a circle. Cats, understandably under pressure to make the right decision, and faced with too many fine discriminations, had what we’d describe as a nervous breakdown. I’m so glad I can walk out of those bookshops!
Second, I read something Professor Guy Claxton had written about creativity, in which he made a passing reference to Keats’ Negative Capability.2 Now I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t previously come across this phrase – or, if I had, it didn’t register. I had always thought of capabilities as purely positive things. Negative Capability was sufficiently intriguing to warrant some research. Here is the original quotation from John Keats, the poet, who died at the age of 26 in 1821.
Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
Negative Capability is the capacity to live with ambiguity, to adopt a disinterested stance where preconceived certainties are put aside and the imagination is free to discover new possibilities. Guy Claxton is convinced that Negative Capability plays its part in aiding and abetting creativity. Mozart thought so, too.
When I am completely myself … or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these come I know not, nor can I force them.
Guy Claxton also maintains that ‘thinking can get in the way of certain important kinds of learning and the ability to bear confusion’. This interests me very much, partly because I am intrigued by the sort of learning that happens unconsciously and partly because it helps to throw light on an essential difference between two key stages in the learning cycle. As a keen advocate of the do-review-conclude-plan learning cycle, I have long maintained that the essential difference between reviewing and concluding is that the former is a divergent process and the latter a convergent process. Preconceived ideas are the kiss of death to reviewing, and a lack of Negative Capability makes it likely that people will rush too quickly into tidying up and reaching conclusions. The ability to bear confusion, stay with the moment and postpone conclusions is the key to fruitful reviewing.
How often have you, as a trainer or facilitator, hurried people into compiling lists of lessons learned and planning actions with insufficient time for cogitation? I know I have on numerous occasions. Unwittingly, in my anxiety to be focused and business-like (that is, suffering from a lack of Negative Capability), I have succeeded in creating conditions that militate against disinterested reflection.
I now see that a key role of an effective facilitator is to help individuals and groups to develop adequate levels of Negative Capability. The alternative is to continue to condone the rush into activity or explanations as antidotes to ambiguity. The more people are caught up in relentless changes, where uncertainties abound and anxiety flourishes, the more they need help with their Negative Capability.
References
1. Nick Baylis, ‘Dr Feelgood on the science of happiness’, Times Magazine, 29 November 2003.
2. Guy Claxton, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Why Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, HarperPerennial, 1999.
Every month Peter Honey provides a personal perspective of learning and its importance for both our work and social lives. Dr Peter Honey, FRSA,FCIPD, FIMC is a Chartered Psychologist and founder of Peter Honey Publications. He can be contacted on +44 (0)1628 633946, at peterhoney@peterhoney.com or visit www.peterhoney.com
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