You may have heard or read the following phrase: “no one is as smart as all of us put together. This Japanese saying, very popular nowadays, is often used in environments where creativity must be combined with group work.

Specifically, it is usually pronounced by the courageous person in charge of energizing a brainstorming session or , a very popular work tool both in companies and in educational environments. In the brainstorming, the person in charge of making these work groups dynamic will try to keep all the members of the team motivated for the sake of collective productivity, while ensuring that none of the members’ ideas are ridiculed.

A collective brain

Many brainstormers think of brainstorming as a kind of collective brain , a prodigy capable of offering the best possible response to any problem thanks to the teachings of each participant. These people think: “I’m sure that, despite all the efforts invested in it, the experience is worthwhile and we can generate the best possible idea together… right?”.

The truth is that, although some people embellish the concept of brainstorming (“a source of wisdom generated organically by the common people”, etc.) it seems that group work does not have to encourage creativity. In fact, there is reason to believe that we come up with more ideas when we work alone than when we work as a group, even though we misleadingly believe that the method followed in brainstorming enhances our creative side.

Why does this happen? Basically, because our brain is not prepared to work like this .

Brainstorming, or questionable group creativity

The relative ineffectiveness of brainstorming seems to be explained by a bottleneck phenomenon, i.e. each contribution made by each member of the group “slows down” the rest in their elaboration of plans: this means, on the one hand, that people do not stand out for coordinating very well when thinking of a solution together, and on the other hand, that thinking of a solution and at the same time listening to colleagues is costly in terms of productivity. In a group, ideas are presented sequentially, which forces us to constantly readjust our discourse, while a single person is capable of shuffling several ideas in an orderly manner, discarding those that seem unimportant from the beginning, and giving a clear answer.

Furthermore, it has also been proposed that the anxiety produced by the presence of others, who judge both us and our interventions, can act as a brake on a task that has to be characterised precisely by encouraging disinhibition and creativity. The creation of a relaxed atmosphere, one of the premises of the method, is compromised by our tendency to direct attention towards aspects of the social that are totally venal or, at least, not related to the work to be dealt with.

In spite of all this, we still think that the group exhibition of ideas enhances our inventiveness and, in general, allows us to reach good solutions. Some psychologists refer to this under the concept of the illusion of group effectiveness . This delusion can be due to three possibilities. The first consists of a memory failure in which people attribute to themselves ideas that have been contributed by other participants (source), which could be good for self-esteem. The second reason is that during group work, each participant has the opportunity to rest while someone else speaks, which decreases the probability of being blocked, without this having to mean a better final result (source). The third component of this illusion could be the fact that, when comparing our performance with the average group performance, we most likely believe that we feel at the same level as the rest even if we make little effort (in terms of creativity or productivity) and that this generates well-being (source).

Not everything is but

Of course, this does not mean that brainstorming is not an interesting option in some cases. The effectiveness of this type of method is difficult to measure, and statistical analyses are blind to the subjective appreciation of the ideas that are born from the brainstorming. Brainstorming may not be the right way to generate many ideas in a group setting, but it may influence the quality of these ideas.

It is even possible that it has a therapeutic effect on the members of a group or that, who knows, it even improves the work climate at a given time by breaking with routine and promoting mutual understanding. In this type of question, as always, the experience of each person should be taken into account.

A little mind trap

The illusion of group effectiveness is another example that, within the psychology of organizations, rationality does not always prevail. Brainstorming, despite not being much more effective than other forms of group work, has in this kind of mental trap a help that makes it reach organizations to stay.

So you know: if you have ever wondered why various people with different interests, different ways of thinking and different responsibilities can come to appreciate a method like brainstorming despite its questionable effectiveness, the answer might be that they simply love to do it .