There may be a literal link to an incandescent lightbulb flashing on, and creativity:

The researchers first wanted to see if light bulbs actually were unconsciously linked to enlightenment in people’s minds. In a preliminary experiment, 73 college students watched as words were flashed across a computer screen. They viewed 10 words associated with insight – such as create, conceive, and envision -10 other words and 20 non-words. They were then asked to respond as quickly and as accurately as possible if what they were shown was a word or non-word.

 Then they controlled for the bulbs themselves:

The students had either a bare, unshaded incandescent 25-Watt light bulb or an overhead fluorescent light turned on in the room. Volunteers exposed to the light bulb responded quicker to words linked to insight than other words, supporting the notion that light bulbs were indeed connected to insight in their minds.

 To see if light bulbs could actually promote insights, Slepian and his colleagues next gave college students spatial, math and verbal problems to solve and had either a bare light bulb or an overhead fluorescent light turned on in the room partway into the problem. The volunteers either solved the problems faster or more often with the light bulb than with the fluorescent light.

Thus the left’s push for compact fluorescents literally is dumbing down America.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Geekery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.