THINKER'S ALMANAC - April 28

What counterintuitive lesson about creativity does Dr. Seuss’ book ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ teach us?

Subject: Creativity - The Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis

Event:  Article “Introducing the Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis of Creativity” is published, 2016

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom. -Leonardo Da Vinci

On May 25, 1954, Life magazine published a story criticizing the boring books used to teach students how to read.  Primers like Fun with Dick and Jane did not have captivating narratives, and despite the title, there wasn’t anything “fun” about them.  In response to the article, William Spaulding, director of Houghton Mifflin’s educational division, challenged Theodore Geisel -- better 

known as Dr. Seuss -- to write a story that would captivate young readers.  Spaulding’s challenge included a requirement that the book's words be limited to 225 distinct words from a list of 348 words from the standard first-grade vocabulary.

Geisel took the challenge, and nine months later he presented Spaulding his book, The Cat in the Hat, which was published in 1957.  Although Geisel exceeded the word limit by eleven words, Spaulding was pleased with the book, which sold over a million copies in its first three years of publication.  

Later Geisel took on another challenge when Bennett Cerf, co-founder of Random House, bet him $50 dollars that he couldn’t write a children’s book using no more than 50 words. Geisel won the bet, creating a story with 49 monosyllabic words and one three-syllable word, “anywhere.” The book is the classic Green Eggs and Ham, published on August 12, 1960 (1).

In an article published on this day in 2016 in The Cut, an online magazine, Melissa Dahl presented research that examines human creativity when constrained by limiting factors, such as Dr. Seuss’ 50 word limit.  Based on her research, cognitive psychologist Catrinel Haught Tromp has formed what she calls the Green Eggs and Ham hypothesis, which presents the counterintuitive idea that creativity is actually enhanced, rather than limited by constraints.

In Tromp’s study, she tasked 64 undergraduates to create two-line rhymes for greeting cards.  For half of the two-line rhymes, the participants were given a constraint:  their message must include at least one of the following words:  shirt, vest, dog, frog, doll, kite, drum, or harp.  Some of the participants completed their rhymes with the constraint first, while others did not receive the constraint until half way through their writing.  After all the rhymes were composed, they were judged by three independent judges.  The judges’ evaluation determined that the more creative rhymes were the ones that had been composed with the imposed constraint.  In addition, the judges’ evaluation

revealed that even when the constraint was removed, students wrote more creative rhymes than other students who began writing their rhymes without any constraints (2).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the Green Eggs and Ham hypothesis, and what evidence is there that its counterintuitive conclusion is valid?

Challenge - Single Syllable Story, Sonnet, or Speech:  Try writing a composition of at least 100 words with the following creative constraint:  Every word must be only a single syllable.  Write whatever form you want, but use words only single-syllable words. 

Sources:

1-Mikkelson, David. “Did Dr. Seuss Write ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ on a Bet?” Snopes 25 Feb. 1999.

2-Dahle, Melissa.  “Introducing the Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis of Creativity.”  The Cut. 28 April 2016.