Effects of Interruptions on Creative Thinking

Ubiquitous connectivity has brought about continuous interruptions to our thought processes and tasks. Many people have expressed the concern about potential deterioration of performance and productivity caused by the division of attention and fragmentation of thoughts associated with interruptions in the mass media and on the web. This research offers a novel insight into the effects of interruptions on creative thinking. Drawing on the recent observation that processing disfluency could elevate the construal level that people use to mentally represent objects and conceive ideas, which in turn facilitates creative cognition, we suggest that intermittent low-cognitively demanding interruptions can enhance creative thinking. However, if interruptions impose significant cognitive load on the individual, creative thinking will be impaired. Results from a preliminary experiment largely confirm our propositions.