In their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath refer to a similar concept in the context of influence and persuasion. If we want to influence somebody, say the Heaths, we need to confront that person’s Conventional Wisdom on the topic (which keeps him grounded in the status quo) with the Uncommon Sense of our message. And rather than just telling him why our message makes counterintuitive sense, we need to first shake his hold on his Conventional thinking by such concrete devices as demonstrations, illustrations, and stories. These communication vehicles themselves represent examples of “creative abrasion.” Once the listener has “unlearned” at least parts of his previously received wisdom (so the idea goes), he can then be more open to our contrasting message.
These examples represent everyday applications of one of the foundations of performance improv: The presenting of the players with incongruous situations (e.g., “a Sumo wrestler performing Swan Lake”) that they then must spontaneously and collaboratively resolve in their scene. Many improv workshop games focus on the deliberate creation (and resolution) of improbably coexisting situations and characters. In the Train Wreck game, for example, one character improvises a lengthy line of dialogue on any topic of his choosing (e.g., the proper care and feeding of sunflowers), which his partner interrupts with a wildly inapt response (e.g., “I’m not your real father.”). The players must then make the intrusive line work within the context of the opening speech.
Shake-ups … collisions … the shifting and rubbing of conceptual (rather than tectonic) plates … each of these represents the types of “creative abrasion” necessary for innovation. Yet I somehow feel the concept of creative abrasion itself scraping against a body of thought I’ve been developing in The Daily Improviser: The idea of using a positive, “Yes And” approach to collaborating with others in a joint search for truth.
It seems to me that each of the examples I cited above (as well as the Wright Brothers examples in my previous article) represents a blatant NO response to an existing concept or direction of thought. But haven’t I been advocating the improv-derived Positivity approach as an alternative to the usual lying-on-the-tracks mindset that typifies so much verbal wrangling? How can the throwing down of such conceptual gauntlets square with the idea of conducting a cooperative approach for an agreed-upon truth?
These questions pave the way for an inquiry into an even larger question. As I previously noted in my article on Barbara Fredrickson’s research into what makes people happy, for the most part Negativity is stronger than Positivity. As Fredrickson says, it takes three positive thoughts to counteract a single negative thought. If Positivity is the better way to interact with others, why should this No-to-Yes ratio be so skewed in No’s favor?
Naturally, I have some thoughts on all of the questions I’ve raised above. For once, though - having just created my own version of a Train Wreck - I’m going to leave an article with some loose ends dangling. I’ll revisit these questions later – and in the meantime, I invite readers to offer their own creative ideas (abrasive or otherwise).
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