Political Correctness Promotes Workplace Creativity According to Cornell Research

A research paper published earlier this year is making headlines for claiming political correctness, which is usually associated with censorship, promotes creativity in mixed-sex workplace groups.

The paper, entitled “Creativity from Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity in Mixed-Sex Work Groups,” was authored by prominent Cornell Industrial and Labor Relations professor Jack Goncalo and three other professors from other schools. In the paper’s abstract, the authors claim to have developed a “theoretical perspective in which creativity in mixed-sex groups is enhanced by imposing a norm to be politically correct (PC)…”

Academic gobbledygook aside, the experiment involved 582 participants working in small mixed-sex groups for ten minutes to produce a number of business ideas, which were then ranked on a “novelty” scale by two people who were unaware of the research’s purpose. Some of the working groups were specifically told to act “polite” or “politically correct” while others received no such instructions. The results showed that the former type of group produced more creative–more novel–business ideas.

The Cornell Chronicle recently published a glowing report on the study and its findings:

These results highlight a paradoxical consequence of the politically correct norm: A term that has been used to undermine expectations and censor offensive language provides a normative foundation upon which demographically heterogeneous work groups can freely exchange creative ideas, Goncalo said.

“[Political correctness] facilitates idea expression by reducing the uncertainty that people tend to experience while interacting with the opposite sex,” he said. “The PC norm, by establishing a clear guideline for how to behave appropriately in mixed-sex groups, made both men and women more comfortable sharing their creative ideas.”

I’m no academic, but I have to disagree with Goncalo’s claims and take issue with the way in which the study was conducted.

First, the standard by which creativity was measured seems quite weak and unrealistic. In the real business world, are ideas considered “novel” by just two random people? The scaling of the groups’ ideas on a novelty scale–and then saying the total scores are indicative of overall group creativity–is a totally hypothetical situation devoid of any realistic business constraints, like consumer interest, investor interest, or capital demand.

Second, the idea that politically correct speech–which is no different from censored speech–promotes creativity and freedom of expression is not just counter-intuitive, it is patently false. PC is predicated on the restraint of words, ideas, and modes of thinking, and reduces the scope and capability of the human mind.

Given any type of constraint, a working group tasked with coming up with ideas might–or necessarily will–come up with “novel” ideas. Just because MacGyver uses everyday objects to solve complex tasks doesn’t mean his solutions are any better, just that they are adapted to the constraints laid upon him. And what if, for example, I tasked every reader to comment on this post without using the letter “e”? Surely, there would be some creative, novel responses.

It seems most academics think that every possible issue that a human or group of humans could possibly ever encounter can be accurately described by the models, formulas, and theories they come up with. Male-to-female interactions have been and will always continue to sometimes go well and sometimes go horribly so long as half of us remain male and half remain female. Forcing PC thinking and communicating might change this, but only for the worse. It removes the honesty, vulnerability, and genuineness that are the essential elements of teamwork and innovation.