Cannabis Chronicles: Are Cannabis Users More Creative?

By Robert Lundahl

LOS ANGELES, CA–A recent study by Emily LaFrance of Washington State University Graduate School of Psychology indicates cannabis users are more creative, and that there may be a reason for that.

The study measures creativity or enhanced creativity using cannabis in three ways.

The first is "self-reported creativity," i.e. do cannabis users feel more creative? The second objectively measures performance on creative tasks.

Third, LaFrance's study looks at personality traits.

Here it gets interesting because previous studies have indicated that both cannabis users and creative people share certain, and perhaps unsurprising, personality traits–like openness to new experiences. 

Let’s go back to the first question.

PHOTO : LUNDAHL

LaFrance’s study indicates cannabis users subjectively report the feeling and perception of enhanced creativity.

On the objective, performance-related testing, cannabis users performed better on one specific objective test, proving that, yes, cannabis users are more creative.

As LaFrance herself indicates, shared personality traits offer a more complex and nuanced perspective. 

In controlled studies, cannabis users demonstrated higher creativity than non-users, but the higher creativity, according to LaFrance, is due more to personality differences than to cannabis use alone. 

Cannabis users are more willing to try new things. 

While the personality trait "openness to experience" has been linked to being more creative, it has also been linked to being more likely to try cannabis. When the authors statistically controlled for the difference between cannabis users and non-users in the category "openness to experience" the differences between cannabis users and non-users, relative to creativity, disappeared.

LaFrance and her team conclude that cannabis users did demonstrate higher creativity than non-users but the reason may have more to do with the underlying personality traits than the cannabis itself.

Many of the tests related to cannabis and creativity had previously been conducted from the 1970s to the 1990s during a time when cannabis had been federally illegal, and no states yet had legalized. Many of those tests had been presumed to indicate that in self-reporting, cannabis users felt they were more creative than their results on objective tests proved, so LaFrance sought to update the research and the record in this area, to challenge or eliminate any “skew” for social or political context or opinions.

Perhaps this is yet one more example of how what we think we know can get in the way of what we actually know, an embedded political/social bias which may have colored much cannabis related research and even basic assumptions in the past. 

An audio podcast interview with Emily LaFrance is available for listening courtesy BTR Today and Joe Virgillito. Emily LaFrance on Cannabis & Creativity. http://www.btrtoday.com/listen/thedailybeat/week-of-112017-7/ 

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Robert Lundahl, Writer
Robert Lundahl is an Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker. He is the Principal with Agence RLA, LLC. Robert can be reached at this email address: robert@studio-rla.com; Skype: robertundahlfilms.