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sales pitches are often from biased sources, the choices can be overwhelming and impartial help is not equally available to all

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theconversation.com – Grace McCormack, Postdoctoral researcher of Health Policy and Economics, University of Southern California – 2024-10-10 07:32:00

It can take a lot of effort to understand the many different Medicare choices.

Halfpoint Images/Moment via Getty Images

Grace McCormack, University of Southern California and Melissa Garrido, Boston University

The 67 million Americans eligible for Medicare make an important decision every October: Should they make changes in their Medicare health insurance plans for the next calendar year?

The decision is complicated. Medicare has an enormous variety of coverage options, with large and varying implications for people’s health and finances, both as beneficiaries and taxpayers. And the decision is consequential – some choices lock beneficiaries out of traditional Medicare.

Beneficiaries choose an insurance plan when they turn 65 or become eligible based on qualifying chronic conditions or disabilities. After the initial sign-up, most beneficiaries can make changes only during the open enrollment period each fall.

The 2024 open enrollment period, which runs from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, marks an opportunity to reassess options. Given the complicated nature of Medicare and the scarcity of unbiased advisers, however, finding reliable information and understanding the options available can be challenging.

We are health care policy experts who study Medicare, and even we find it complicated. One of us recently helped a relative enroll in Medicare for the first time. She’s healthy, has access to health insurance through her employer and doesn’t regularly take prescription drugs. Even in this straightforward scenario, the number of choices were overwhelming.

The stakes of these choices are even higher for people managing multiple chronic conditions. There is help available for beneficiaries, but we have found that there is considerable room for improvement – especially in making help available for everyone who needs it.

The choice is complex, especially when you are signing up for the first time and if you are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. Insurers often engage in aggressive and sometimes deceptive advertising and outreach through brokers and agents. Choose unbiased resources to guide you through the process, like www.shiphelp.org. Make sure to start before your 65th birthday for initial sign-up, look out for yearly plan changes, and start well before the Dec. 7 deadline for any plan changes.

2 paths with many decisions

Within Medicare, beneficiaries have a choice between two very different programs. They can enroll in either traditional Medicare, which is administered by the government, or one of the Medicare Advantage plans offered by private insurance companies.

Within each program are dozens of further choices.

Traditional Medicare is a nationally uniform cost-sharing plan for medical services that allows people to choose their providers for most types of medical care, usually without prior authorization. Deductibles for 2024 are US$1,632 for hospital costs and $240 for outpatient and medical costs. Patients also have to chip in starting on Day 61 for a hospital stay and Day 21 for a skilled nursing facility stay. This percentage is known as coinsurance. After the yearly deductible, Medicare pays 80% of outpatient and medical costs, leaving the person with a 20% copayment. Traditional Medicare’s basic plan, known as Part A and Part B, also has no out-of-pocket maximum.

Pen, glasses and medicare health insurance card

Traditional Medicare starts with Medicare parts A and B.

Bill Oxford/iStock via Getty Images

People enrolled in traditional Medicare can also purchase supplemental coverage from a private insurance company, known as Part D, for drugs. And they can purchase supplemental coverage, known as Medigap, to lower or eliminate their deductibles, coinsurance and copayments, cap costs for Parts A and B, and add an emergency foreign travel benefit.

Part D plans cover prescription drug costs for about $0 to $100 a month. People with lower incomes may get extra financial help by signing up for the Medicare program Part D Extra Help or state-sponsored pharmaceutical assistance programs.

There are 10 standardized Medigap plans, also known as Medicare supplement plans. Depending on the plan, and the person’s gender, location and smoking status, Medigap typically costs from about $30 to $400 a month when a beneficiary first enrolls in Medicare.

The Medicare Advantage program allows private insurers to bundle everything together and offers many enrollment options. Compared with traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans typically offer lower out-of-pocket costs. They often bundle supplemental coverage for hearing, vision and dental, which is not part of traditional Medicare.

But Medicare Advantage plans also limit provider networks, meaning that people who are enrolled in them can see only certain providers without paying extra. In comparison to traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage enrollees on average go to lower-quality hospitals, nursing facilities, and home health agencies but see higher-quality primary care doctors.

Medicare Advantage plans also often require prior authorization – often for important services such as stays at skilled nursing facilities, home health services and dialysis.

Choice overload

Understanding the tradeoffs between premiums, health care access and out-of-pocket health care costs can be overwhelming.

Graphic of a person flow lines pointing to text boxes on either side that have smaller arrows to more text boxes holding plan choice descriptions.

Turning 65 begins the process of taking one of two major paths, which each have a thicket of health care choices.

Rika Kanaoka/USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics

Though options vary by county, the typical Medicare beneficiary can choose between as many as 10 Medigap plans and 21 standalone Part D plans, or an average of 43 Medicare Advantage plans. People who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, or have certain chronic conditions, or are in a long-term care facility have additional types of Medicare Advantage plans known as Special Needs Plans to choose among.

Medicare Advantage plans can vary in terms of networks, benefits and use of prior authorization.

Different Medicare Advantage plans have varying and large impacts on enrollee health, including dramatic differences in mortality rates. Researchers found a 16% difference per year between the best and worst Medicare Advantage plans, meaning that for every 100 people in the worst plans who die within a year, they would expect only 84 people to die within that year if all had been enrolled in the best plans instead. They also found plans that cost more had lower mortality rates, but plans that had higher federal quality ratings – known as “star ratings” – did not necessarily have lower mortality rates.

The quality of different Medicare Advantage plans, however, can be difficult for potential enrollees to assess. The federal plan finder website lists available plans and publishes a quality rating of one to five stars for each plan. But in practice, these star ratings don’t necessarily correspond to better enrollee experiences or meaningful differences in quality.

Online provider networks can also contain errors or include providers who are no longer seeing new patients, making it hard for people to choose plans that give them access to the providers they prefer.

While many Medicare Advantage plans boast about their supplemental benefits , such as vision and dental coverage, it’s often difficult to understand how generous this supplemental coverage is. For instance, while most Medicare Advantage plans offer supplemental dental benefits, cost-sharing and coverage can vary. Some plans don’t cover services such as extractions and endodontics, which includes root canals. Most plans that cover these more extensive dental services require some combination of coinsurance, copayments and annual limits.

Even when information is fully available, mistakes are likely.

Part D beneficiaries often fail to accurately evaluate premiums and expected out-of-pocket costs when making their enrollment decisions. Past work suggests that many beneficiaries have difficulty processing the proliferation of options. A person’s relationship with health care providers, financial situation and preferences are key considerations. The consequences of enrolling in one plan or another can be difficult to determine.

The trap: Locked out

At 65, when most beneficiaries first enroll in Medicare, federal regulations guarantee that anyone can get Medigap coverage. During this initial sign-up, beneficiaries can’t be charged a higher premium based on their health.

Older Americans who enroll in a Medicare Advantage plan but then want to switch back to traditional Medicare after more than a year has passed lose that guarantee. This can effectively lock them out of enrolling in supplemental Medigap insurance, making the initial decision a one-way street.

For the initial sign-up, Medigap plans are “guaranteed issue,” meaning the plan must cover preexisting health conditions without a waiting period and must allow anyone to enroll, regardless of health. They also must be “community rated,” meaning that the cost of a plan can’t rise because of age or illness, although it can go up due to other factors such as inflation.

People who enroll in traditional Medicare and a supplemental Medigap plan at 65 can expect to continue paying community-rated premiums as long as they remain enrolled, regardless of what happens to their health.

In most states, however, people who switch from Medicare Advantage to traditional Medicare don’t have as many protections. Most state regulations permit plans to deny coverage, impose waiting periods or charge higher Medigap premiums based on their expected health costs. Only Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and New York guarantee that people can get Medigap plans after the initial sign-up period.

Deceptive advertising

Information about Medicare coverage and assistance choosing a plan is available but varies in quality and completeness. Older Americans are bombarded with ads for Medicare Advantage plans that they may not be eligible for and that include misleading statements about benefits.

A November 2022 report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance found deceptive and aggressive sales and marketing tactics, including mailed brochures that implied government endorsement, telemarketers who called up to 20 times a day, and salespeople who approached older adults in the grocery store to ask about their insurance coverage.

The Department of Health and Human Services tightened rules for 2024, requiring third-party marketers to include federal resources about Medicare, including the website and toll-free phone number, and limiting the number of contacts from marketers.

Although the government has the authority to review marketing materials, enforcement is partially dependent on whether complaints are filed. Complaints can be filed with the federal government’s Senior Medicare Patrol, a federally funded program that prevents and addresses unethical Medicare activities.

Meanwhile, the number of people enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans has grown rapidly, doubling since 2010 and accounting for more than half of all Medicare beneficiaries by 2023.

Nearly one-third of Medicare beneficiaries seek information from an insurance broker. Brokers sell health insurance plans from multiple companies. However, because they receive payment from plans in exchange for sales, and because they are unlikely to sell every option, a plan recommended by a broker may not meet a person’s needs.

Help is out there − but falls short

An alternative source of information is the federal government. It offers three sources of information to assist people with choosing one of these plans: 1-800-Medicare, medicare.gov and the State Health Insurance Assistance Program, also known as SHIP.

The SHIP program combats misleading Medicare advertising and deceptive brokers by connecting eligible Americans with counselors by phone or in person to help them choose plans. Many people say they prefer meeting in person with a counselor over phone or internet support. SHIP staff say they often help people understand what’s in Medicare Advantage ads and disenroll from plans they were directed to by brokers.

Telephone SHIP services are available nationally, but one of us and our colleagues have found that in-person SHIP services are not available in some areas. We tabulated areas by ZIP code in 27 states and found that although more than half of the locations had a SHIP site within the county, areas without a SHIP site included a larger proportion of people with low incomes.

Virtual services are an option that’s particularly useful in rural areas and for people with limited mobility or little access to transportation, but they require online access. Virtual and in-person services, where both a beneficiary and a counselor can look at the same computer screen, are especially useful for looking through complex coverage options.

We also interviewed SHIP counselors and coordinators from across the U.S.

As one SHIP coordinator noted, many people are not aware of all their coverage options. For instance, one beneficiary told a coordinator, “I’ve been on Medicaid and I’m aging out of Medicaid. And I don’t have a lot of money. And now I have to pay for my insurance?” As it turned out, the beneficiary was eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare because of their income, and so had to pay less than they thought.

The interviews made clear that many people are not aware that Medicare Advantage ads and insurance brokers may be biased. One counselor said, “There’s a lot of backing (beneficiaries) off the ledge, if you will, thanks to those TV commercials.”

Many SHIP staff counselors said they would benefit from additional training on coverage options, including for people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. The SHIP program relies heavily on volunteers, and there is often greater demand for services than the available volunteers can offer. Additional counselors would help meet needs for complex coverage decisions.

The key to making a good Medicare coverage decision is to use the help available and weigh your costs, access to health providers, current health and medication needs, and also consider how your health and medication needs might change as time goes on.

This article is part of an occasional series examining the U.S. Medicare system.

This story has been updated to remove a graphic that contained incorrect information about SHIP locations, and to correct the date of the open enrollment period.The Conversation

Grace McCormack, Postdoctoral researcher of Health Policy and Economics, University of Southern California and Melissa Garrido, Research Professor, Health Law, Policy & Management, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Hundreds of 19th-century skulls collected in the name of medical science tell a story of who mattered and who didn’t

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theconversation.com – Pamela L. Geller, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Miami – 2024-11-14 07:23:00

Hundreds of 19th-century skulls collected in the name of medical science tell a story of who mattered and who didn’t

Illustration of just one of almost a thousand skulls Morton and colleagues collected.

Crania Americana by Samuel Morton, CC BY

Pamela L. Geller, University of Miami

When I started my research on the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection, a librarian leaned over my laptop one day to share some lore. “Legend has it,” she said, “John James Audubon really collected the skulls Morton claimed as his own.” Her voice was lowered so as not to disturb the other scholars in the hushed archive.

As my work progressed, I uncovered no evidence to substantiate her whispered claim. Audubon had collected human skulls, several of which he then passed on to Morton. But birds and ornithology remained Audubon’s passion.

Nevertheless, the librarian’s offhanded comment has proven useful – a touchstone of sorts that continues to remind me of the controversy and confusion long surrounding the Morton Collection.

Morton was a physician and naturalist who lived in Philadelphia from 1799 until the end of his life in 1851. A lecture he delivered to aspiring doctors at the Philadelphia Association for Medical Instruction outlined the reasons for his cranial compulsion:

“I commenced the study of Ethnology in 1830; in which year, having occasion to deliver an introductory lecture on Anatomy, it occurred to me to illustrate the difference in the form of the skull as seen in the five great races of men … When I sought the materials for my proposed lecture, I found to my surprise that they could be neither bought nor borrowed.”

He would go on to acquire almost 1,000 human skulls.

Morton used these skulls to advance an understanding of racial differences as natural, easily categorizable and able to be ranked. Big-brained “Caucasians,” he argued in the 1839 publication “Crania Americana,” were far superior to small-skulled American Indians and even smaller-skulled Black Africans. Many subsequent scholars have since thoroughly debunked his ideas.

Certainly, condemnation of Morton as a scientific racist is warranted. But I find this take represents the man as a caricature, his conclusions as foregone. It provides little insight into his life and the complicated, interesting times in which he lived, as I detail in my book “Becoming Object: The Sociopolitics of the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection.”

My research demonstrates that studies of skulls and diseases undertaken by Morton and his medical and scientific colleagues contributed to an understanding of U.S. citizenship that valued whiteness, Christianity and heroic masculinity defined by violence. It is an exclusionary idea of what it means to be American that persists today.

Yet, at the same time, the collection is an unintended testament to the diversity of the U.S. population during a tumultuous moment in the nation’s history.

Pen and ink portrait of a 19th century white man

Samuel Morton wasn’t a lone voice on the fringe of medicine.

‘Memoir of the life and scientific labors of Samuel George Morton’ by Henry S. Patterson, CC BY

Men of science and medicine

As a bioarchaeologist who has studied the Morton Collection for many years, I have sought to better understand the social, political and ideological circumstances that led to its creation. From my work – analyzing archival sources including letters, laws, maps and medical treatises, as well as the skulls themselves – I’ve learned that, over a lifetime, Morton fostered a professional network that had far-reaching tentacles.

He had plenty of help amassing the collection of skulls that bears his name.

The physician connected with medical colleagues – many of whom, like him, received degrees from the University of Pennsylvania – gentleman planters, enslavers, naturalists, amateur paleontologists, foreign diplomats and military officers. Occupational differences aside, they were mostly white, Christian men of some financial means.

Their interactions took place during a pivotal moment in American history, the interlude between the nation’s revolutionary consolidation and its violent civil unraveling.

Throughout this stretch of time, Morton and his colleagues catalyzed biomedical interventions and scientific standards to more effectively treat patients. They set in motion public health initiatives during epidemics. They established hospitals and medical schools. And they did so in the service of the nation.

Not all lives were seen as worthy of these men’s care, however. Men of science and medicine may have fostered life for many, but they also let others die. In “Becoming Object,” I track how they represented certain populations as biologically inferior; diseases were tied to nonwhite people, female anatomy was pathologized, and poverty was presumed inherited.

From person to specimen

Such representations made it easier for Morton and his colleagues to regulate these groups’ bodies, rationalize their deaths and collect their skulls with casual cruelty from almshouse dissecting tables, looted cemeteries and body-strewn battlefields. That is, a sizable portion of the skulls in Morton’s collections were not culled from ancient graves but belonged to those of the recently alive.

It is no coincidence that Morton began his scientific research in earnest the same year Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Men of science and medicine benefited from the expansionist policies, violent martial conflicts and Native displacement that underpinned Manifest Destiny.

line drawing of a skull from three angles, with text beneath about how it was collected from battle

A drawing from Morton’s book of the skull of a Seminole man killed by American troops. A bullet hole is visible on the left side of the man’s head.

‘Crania Americana’ by Samuel George Morton, CC BY

The collection reveals these acts of nation-building as necropolitical strategies – techniques used by sovereign powers to destroy or erase certain, often already vulnerable, populations from the national consciousness. These skulls attest to precarious existences, untimely deaths and trauma experienced from cradle to beyond the grave.

In the specific case of Native Americans, skeletal analysis testifies to the violent effects of U.S. military campaigns and forced removal. Native skulls that Morton labeled “warriors” have evidence of unhealed fractures and gunshot wounds. Children’s skulls bear the marks of compromised health; such pathology and their young ages at death are evidence of long-standing malnutrition, poverty and deprivation or stress.

To effectively transform subjects into objects – human beings into specimens – collected crania were ensconced in the institutional spaces of medical school lecture halls and museum storage cabinets.

There, Morton first numbered them sequentially. These numbers along with information about race, sex, age, “idiocy” or “criminality,” cranial capacity and provenance were inked on skulls and written in catalogs. Very rarely was the person’s name recorded. If used as teaching tools, Morton drilled holes to hang the skulls for display and notated them with the names of skeletal elements and features.

As dehumanizing as this process was, the Morton Collection does contain evidence of resilience and heterogeneous lives. There are traces of people with mixed-race backgrounds such as Black Indians. Several people may have also bent gender to navigate dire conditions or in keeping with social norms, such as native Beloved Women, who were active in warfare and political life.

stone monument in a graveyard

In contrast to those whose skulls ended up in his collection, Samuel Morton’s own grave was memorialized with a monument.

Pamela L. Geller

What these bones mean today

As anthropologists now recognize, it is through the repatriation of the remains of the people in the Morton Collection to their descendants, among other types of reparations, that current practitioners may begin to atone for the sins of intellectual forebears. Indeed, all institutions housing legacy collections must contend with this issue.

There are other, valuable lessons – about diversity and suffering – that the Morton Collection has to impart in today’s interesting times.

The collection demonstrates that the American body politic has always been a diverse one, despite efforts of erasure by men like Morton and his colleagues. Piecing together the stories of past, disenfranchised lives – and acknowledging the silences that have made it difficult to flesh them out – counters past white nationalism and xenophobia and their current resurgence.

The collection, I believe, also urges the repudiation of violence, casual cruelty and opportunism as admirable attributes of masculinity. Valorizing men who embody these qualities has never served America well. Particularly in the mid-1800s, when Morton amassed skulls, it led to a nation divided and hardened to suffering, an unfathomable death count and the increasing fragility of democracy.The Conversation

Pamela L. Geller, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Miami

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Weight loss plans are less effective for many Black women − because existing ones often don’t meet their unique needs

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theconversation.com – Loneke Blackman Carr, Assistant Professor of Community and Public Health Nutrition, University of Connecticut – 2024-11-13 07:24:00

People who are obese or overweight are at higher risk of developing several chronic diseases.
andreswd/E+ via Getty Images

Loneke Blackman Carr, University of Connecticut and Jameta Nicole Barlow, George Washington University

The popularity of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro continue to reflect Americans’ desire to slim down. While these new drugs have offered a solution for people struggling with obesity, many eligible patients – especially Black adults – cannot afford the high price.

These drugs are also not a one-stop solution for better health, as healthy eating and regular exercise are also key to losing weight. But current weight loss interventions based on lifestyle changes largely fail to meet the needs of Black women.

As community health researchers, we wondered why scientists have been unable to craft a lifestyle-based weight loss solution that works for Black women.

So we reviewed 10 years of research on weight loss interventions based on lifestyle changes. We found that only a few studies focused on Black women, and those that did often resulted in only small amounts of weight loss and were inconsistent in how they approached weight loss. Why is that?

Missing the mark for Black women

Obesity increases the risk of developing weight-related conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer. Nearly 60% of Black women in the U.S. are obese, placing them at greater risk of developing these conditions.

Lifestyle interventions focusing on healthy diet and increased physical activity are proven to help most people lose weight, typically resulting in a 5% to 10% weight reduction that also reduces the risk of chronic disease. However, these lifestyle interventions usually result in only a 2% to 3% weight loss in Black women.

Our review suggests that lifestyle-based weight loss has been stymied among Black women because they often aren’t included in this research. Because their lived experiences aren’t considered in these studies, these interventions might not meet their specific needs. Of the 138 studies we assessed, Black women made up at least half of the participants in only eight studies.

Research on why lifestyle interventions are often less effective for Black women is lacking. However, some studies highlight the effects of race and gender on their daily lives as potential factors.

Person sitting on couch, pinching skin between eyebrows
The ‘strong’ Black woman is compelled to ignore her physical and emotional needs to take care of others.
PixelsEffect/E+ via Getty Images

The superwoman role

Black women exposed to the persistent stress of navigating everyday racism and sexism face the additional burden of what researchers call the superwoman role. Not only do Black women have to weather their own experiences of race- and gender-based inequalities, they’re also expected to be invulnerable, hyperindependent and suppress their emotions in order to seem strong to their family and community. Many minimize their vulnerabilities and overstress their capabilities in order to fulfill an overwhelming obligation to take care of other people.

Many famous names have spoken about the effects of being the strong superwoman. Actress Taraji P. Henson has pointed to how the need to display strength can lead to ignoring the physical and emotional needs of Black women.

Rapper Megan Thee Stallion spoke about the emotional toll of the superwoman role after being shot by rapper Tory Lanez. “As a Black woman … people expect me to take the punches, take the beating, take the lashings, and handle it with grace. But I’m human.”

The superwoman role levies a heavy tax on Black women, leaving little room to prioritize their health. To cope with the stress, some engage in emotional eating or binge eating. The constant demands of playing multiple caregiver roles can also disrupt physical activity.

Naturally, these challenges make it difficult to adopt healthier eating habits and a consistent exercise routine. Even when working toward weight loss, some Black women continue to gain weight.

Improving weight loss for Black women

Lifestyle interventions that fully integrate the lived experiences of Black women into treatment may be key to improving weight loss. We argue that Black Feminism and Womanism, which focus on the experiences of women of color, can guide researchers to rebuild and reframe weight loss interventions to be more effective for Black women.

Black Feminism and Womanism are approaches guiding Black women and girls to surviving and thriving, specifically by always considering the role that gender and race play in different issues. These frameworks focus on multiple areas of health and wellness, including physical, mental and emotional health, arguing that self-care and wellness practices are acts of social change.

Focusing on the full context of Black women’s lives can lead to better overall health. Obesity, specifically, is influenced by multiple factors, and treating obesity requires a focus on holistic health and well-being. This includes addressing Black women’s economic needs, incorporating faith practices central to Black life, attending to emotional and mental health, and building an environment that makes acquiring healthy food and engaging in daily exercise an easy choice.

Three people walking down a tree-lined trail, smiling at each other
Lifestyle changes are easier to incorporate when they’re tailored to your everyday life.
FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images

Current weight loss interventions vary widely in which elements of Black women’s lives they focus on. For example, some emphasize spirituality, while others concentrate on emotional health. Approaches to weight loss that respond to individual needs and move away from one-size-fits-all will be critical to addressing the various aspects of Black women’s lives that affect their wellness.

If health care providers and researchers begin listening to and working with Black women to redesign weight loss interventions, they will likely find that their efforts at addressing obesity among Black women are more effective.The Conversation

Loneke Blackman Carr, Assistant Professor of Community and Public Health Nutrition, University of Connecticut and Jameta Nicole Barlow, Associate Professor of Writing, Health Policy & Management and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies,, George Washington University

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Can AI chatbots boost human creativity?

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theconversation.com – Jaeyeon Chung, Assistant Professor of Business, Rice University – 2024-11-13 07:26:00

AI chatbots can give helpful suggestions.

Carol Yepes/Moment via Getty Images

Jaeyeon Chung, Rice University

Think back to a time when you needed a quick answer, maybe for a recipe or a DIY project. A few years ago, most people’s first instinct was to “Google it.” Today, however, many people are more likely to reach for ChatGPT, OpenAI’s conversational AI, which is changing the way people look for information.

Rather than simply providing lists of websites, ChatGPT gives more direct, conversational responses. But can ChatGPT do more than just answer straightforward questions? Can it actually help people be more creative?

I study new technologies and consumer interaction with social media. My colleague Byung Lee and I set out to explore this question: Can ChatGPT genuinely assist people in creatively solving problems, and does it perform better at this than traditional search engines like Google?

Across a series of experiments in a study published in the journal Nature Human Behavour, we found that ChatGPT does boost creativity, especially in everyday, practical tasks. Here’s what we learned about how this technology is changing the way people solve problems, brainstorm ideas and think creatively.

ChatGPT and creative tasks

Imagine you’re searching for a creative gift idea for a teenage niece. Previously, you might have googled “creative gifts for teens” and then browsed articles until something clicked. Now, if you ask ChatGPT, it generates a direct response based on its analysis of patterns across the web. It might suggest a custom DIY project or a unique experience, crafting the idea in real time.

To explore whether ChatGPT surpasses Google in creative thinking tasks, we conducted five experiments where participants tackled various creative tasks. For example, we randomly assigned participants to either use ChatGPT for assistance, use Google search, or generate ideas on their own. Once the ideas were collected, external judges, unaware of the participants’ assigned conditions, rated each idea for creativity. We averaged the judges’ scores to provide an overall creativity rating.

One task involved brainstorming ways to repurpose everyday items, such as turning an old tennis racket and a garden hose into something new. Another asked participants to design an innovative dining table. The goal was to test whether ChatGPT could help people come up with more creative solutions compared with using a web search engine or just their own imagination.

two adults and two small children play with an arrangement of cardboard boxes in a brightly lit room with hard flooring

ChatGPT did well with the task of suggesting creative ideas for reusing household items.

Simon Ritzmann/DigitalVision via Getty Images

The results were clear: Judges rated ideas generated with ChatGPT’s assistance as more creative than those generated with Google searches or without any assistance. Interestingly, ideas generated with ChatGPT – even without any human modification – scored higher in creativity than those generated with Google.

One notable finding was ChatGPT’s ability to generate incrementally creative ideas: those that improve or build on what already exists. While truly radical ideas might still be challenging for AI, ChatGPT excelled at suggesting practical yet innovative approaches. In the toy-design experiment, for example, participants using ChatGPT came up with imaginative designs, such as turning a leftover fan and a paper bag into a wind-powered craft.

Limits of AI creativity

ChatGPT’s strength lies in its ability to combine unrelated concepts into a cohesive response. Unlike Google, which requires users to sift through links and piece together information, ChatGPT offers an integrated answer that helps users articulate and refine ideas in a polished format. This makes ChatGPT promising as a creativity tool, especially for tasks that connect disparate ideas or generate new concepts.

It’s important to note, however, that ChatGPT doesn’t generate truly novel ideas. It recognizes and combines linguistic patterns from its training data, subsequently generating outputs with the most probable sequences based on its training. If you’re looking for a way to make an existing idea better or adapt it in a new way, ChatGPT can be a helpful resource. For something groundbreaking, though, human ingenuity and imagination are still essential.

Additionally, while ChatGPT can generate creative suggestions, these aren’t always practical or scalable without expert input. Steps such as screening, feasibility checks, fact-checking and market validation require human expertise. Given that ChatGPT’s responses may reflect biases in its training data, people should exercise caution in sensitive contexts such as those involving race or gender.

We also tested whether ChatGPT could assist with tasks often seen as requiring empathy, such as repurposing items cherished by a loved one. Surprisingly, ChatGPT enhanced creativity even in these scenarios, generating ideas that users found relevant and thoughtful. This result challenges the belief that AI cannot assist with emotionally driven tasks.

Future of AI and creativity

As ChatGPT and similar AI tools become more accessible, they open up new possibilities for creative tasks. Whether in the workplace or at home, AI could assist in brainstorming, problem-solving and enhancing creative projects. However, our research also points to the need for caution: While ChatGPT can augment human creativity, it doesn’t replace the unique human capacity for truly radical, out-of-the-box thinking.

This shift from Googling to asking ChatGPT represents more than just a new way to access information. It marks a transformation in how people collaborate with technology to think, create and innovate.The Conversation

Jaeyeon Chung, Assistant Professor of Business, Rice University

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