
“Tortured” artists are actually less creative, study suggests
In a new study published in the INFORMS journal Management Science, economists Kathryn Graddy, of Brandeis University, and Carl Lieberman, of Princeton University, focus on one specific source of an artist’s misery: the death of loved ones. Their paper, “Death Bereavement, and Creativity,” centers on the psychological notion of “flow,” a person’s most creative state, and how it is interrupted by the loss of a parent, spouse, child, or friend as grief occupies the mind.