💥 Why New Ideas Are Always Controversial

The most original ideas court the most varied opinions, and this limits human creativity

The world needs new and unique ideas, but people don’t always make it easy for those ideas to flourish. The more creative you are and the more you try to think outside the box, the more pushback you seem to get.

But why? Most people agree that new ideas are good for society, and some of the best examples of human progress come from groundbreaking rather than incremental changes. But when a novel idea is introduced, people can’t seem to agree on whether it’s a good idea or a terrible one. All too often, a person with a bold idea will leave conversations feeling discouraged and avoid following up on their plan.

Research studies are starting to show that this pattern is widespread. Regardless of how good an idea is, its uniqueness will attract a controversial reaction. So let’s dive into how people actually react in experiments and understand why you should be skeptical when people judge your ideas.

🗳️ Don’t expect consensus on your next big idea

In a 2024 study published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers ran a series of experiments testing how people judge ideas based on their novelty.

In a first experiment, they recruited 1,927 online participants and asked them to rate the novelty of some business ideas from the show Shark Tank. They defined novelty as “the degree to which the pitch was unusual, unique, or unfamiliar” on a scale from 1 (not at all novel) to 7 (extremely novel).

After collecting novelty ratings for each pitch, they took the 250 most novel and 250 least novel ideas and asked a separate group of 1,000 participants to judge how valuable the ideas were.

People simply couldn’t agree on the value of the novel ideas. Value judgments for the highly novel ideas were 7.28% more variable than judgments for the low-novelty ideas. The more unique and unusual the idea, the less people agreed about the quality of that idea.

The researchers tested the same effect from a different angle by looking at audience movie ratings from Sundance Film Festival between 2015-2022. The festival splits movies into categories, and some of those categories such as NEXT and Midnight reflect innovative and imaginative filmmaking that pushes boundaries and blends genres. Other categories such as US Narrative and World Documentary reflect more traditional and less novel types of filmmaking. Replicating the effect from the previous experiment, audience ratings of films were more variable for the novel categories compared to the conventional categories.

In a third experiment, the researchers pulled together a list of 40 sandwich ideas—some more novel, some more conventional—and asked hospitality employees to rate how well each of them would sell as a menu item. Once again, people disagreed significantly more about the novel ideas compared to the conventional ideas.

To understand whether novelty was really a driving force in value ratings, the researchers asked some hospitality workers a different question about the sandwiches: “At a restaurant specializing in sandwiches no one has tried before, how successful would this sandwich be as a menu item?”. By emphasizing novelty as a good thing, the researchers flipped the disagreement pattern on its head. This time, there was substantially more disagreement for conventional sandwiches.

When opinions vary dramatically, it impacts important decisions. In a final experiment, the researchers asked 401 investors whether they would invest in a particular product idea. Before answering the question, investors consulted a graph that hypothetically showed how much a group of experts and colleagues valued the product. Some saw a graph showing a lot of disagreement in reviews while others saw a graph showing more consistency, but the average scores for both were identical (see below for an example).

Investors were 18% more likely to invest in a product if it had low variability reviews rather than high variability reviews, even though average product ratings were the same on both sides. They interpreted high variability as signaling risk, and that made them less likely to see value in the idea.

Across multiple experiments, people struggled to reach consensus over new and exciting ideas and were more consistent in judging conventional ideas. People’s beliefs evolve based on social inputs. Our perceptions of particular ideas don’t just depend on the quality of an idea but also on how people around us perceive the idea. For conventional and incremental ideas, we have a good grasp of what other people are likely to think and what similar ideas in the past were actually like, so we judge them based on pre-existing mental templates. But for completely novel ideas, our opinions are generated from scratch.

You could interpret this in at least two ways: 1) People are more honest about novel ideas since they’re not trying to conform to other people’s opinions; 2) When your idea is novel, you can’t rely on the reviews of a small group of people, because reviews become so variable and unpredictable.

Many conventional and boring ideas have beaten out unique and exciting alternatives purely because the conventional idea attracted less controversy. This isn’t ideal in a culture that values innovation and creativity. People who develop a novel idea should be resilient to other people’s critiques of that idea, and people who are judging new ideas should be aware of their biases and offer their opinions with a larger grain of salt.

⭐️ Takeaway tips

• Don’t be discouraged by other people’s opinions: Far too many inventive thoughts and creative approaches have been thwarted by misleading opinions. Getting feedback on your ideas is important but so is the way in which you use that feedback. One or two pieces of negative feedback shouldn’t be sufficient to discard exciting ideas. If you listen to critical feedback and realize it’s correct, go ahead and improve your idea. On the other hand, if you don’t find feedback convincing and still believe in your idea, you should push ahead with the same force you originally had. The only reliable way to know whether a novel idea will work is to get out there and test it yourself.

• When pitching or suggesting novel ideas, frame them with care: One of the results from the study above showed that framing matters enormously. When people are asked to judge the value of an idea in an environment that cares about innovative thinking, they suddenly start to judge novel ideas more consistently. So instead of pitching a new idea as “how awesome is my innovative idea”, include a qualifier to get people into the right mindset: “Today’s world is craving more originality than ever, so how awesome is my innovative idea”. That way, you’re likely to see a stronger theme in people’s reactions.

• Embrace disagreements and seek diversity in opinion: Conflicting opinions can be frustrating when trying to decide on the best way forward. But instead of letting them demotivate you, look for patterns or reasons behind the conflicts. Why do some people like an idea while others don’t? Do the dislikers have anything in common? Is there anything you can learn from the diverse opinions to improve your idea? Most importantly of all, given that people have highly variable reactions to novel ideas, don’t make big decisions based on the opinions of a small number of people. Seek input from a broad range of people with different backgrounds, expertises, and experiences, and be aware that variability in opinion does not mean your novel idea is a bad one.

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“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.”

~ Francis Bacon

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Erman Misirlisoy, PhD

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