If light is a particle, matter must be a wave

Sometimes only the shape of the right question is fixed before any evidence arrives.

In 1924, de Broglie’s doctoral thesis predicted the existence of a phenomenon no one had yet measured. Light had long been believed to be a wave, but physics of the time already accepted that it also behaves as a particle (the light quantum). Only one side was granted. And so, he wrote, matter, long believed to be particles, must also behave as a wave¹. He closed the symmetry with a single equation: a particle with momentum p carries a wavelength λ. There was not yet a single experiment to back it.

Three years later, the prediction was confirmed without being aimed at. Davisson and Germer, in the middle of a different experiment firing electrons at a nickel crystal, saw the electrons draw the same diffraction pattern as X-rays². The electrons were interfering as waves. A symmetry closed by inverting the granted side was later filled in by measurement. This is not an isolated anecdote. Physics holds, as a method, the practice of building theory from symmetry and its breaking³.

What happens if we carry this move straight into the theory of creativity and design? The method runs as follows. Take one asymmetry that the theory grants only on one side, and invert it to close the symmetry. The blind spot lies on the unclosed opposite side. The sister note ai-research-gaps-abduction searched the uncharted regions of AI research through seven frames that reverse premises. This note narrows that move to a single point in creativity and design, digging into just one paired asymmetry, addition and subtraction, with de Broglie’s heuristic. The first statement and formulation of the method are set out in ai-capability-relational-ontology.

The asymmetry creativity theory grants on one side only

First, write out the granted side precisely.

Creativity and design are theorized as addition. Generate a new option, add an element, add a function, multiply the alternatives. The name of creativity has attached to this side of generation. Subtraction is treated otherwise. Remove, withhold, not-make, delete. These are placed downstream of generation, as the work of narrowing, converging, and editing the options already produced. Subtraction itself is not, by convention, taken to generate anything new.

This split is inscribed in the metrics that measure creativity. The fluency Guilford placed at the center of divergent thinking was operationally defined as the number of relevant ideas produced in a fixed time⁴. Torrance’s creativity tests inherited this, and the fluency score is set by the total count of meaningful responses generated⁵. The more ideas, the higher the fluency. Subtraction does not add to the count of ideas. So on the fluency scale, subtraction is either zero or, worse, a negative contribution that reduces the count.

Ideation techniques run on the same scale. One of the rules Osborn gave brainstorming was “quantity is wanted,” making the principle that quantity breeds quality an official rule of ideation⁶. Producing many ideas counts as evidence of good divergence. Not producing, withholding, deliberately leaving space open, becomes under this rule not an achievement but a shortfall. Authoring-tool interfaces, too, arrange operations that add elements as the default. Add a stroke, stack a layer, add a feature. These buttons sit in front of you, and there is nowhere a button that chooses “do not make.” [evidence: circumstantial]

Here lies a side not yet inverted.

Invert it, and subtraction stands on the side of generation

Now invert.

What principled reason is there to split addition and subtraction into generation and non-generation? Both are operations that change the form of the object being made. Addition changes the form by adding elements; subtraction changes it by removing them. In their role of conditioning the object that finally comes to stand, the two hold the same standing. If so, there is no ground to privilege addition alone as generative and cast subtraction as “a secondary work of narrowing options after generation.” Subtraction, with the same standing as addition, brings a new object into being.

From this step follows a conclusion that steps off the naive reading. Absence, negative space, deliberate withholding, and the un-made are not the leftovers of selection. What is denied here is not the claim “subtraction is meaningless.” What is denied is the claim “subtraction is merely an operation that reduces ideas already born, and generates nothing itself.” A negative space that has been cut away is not nothing there; it carries structure into which the receiver inserts meaning. What reception theory in literature called the gap (Leerstelle), in Iser’s term, serves as a precedent for this structure. An indeterminate spot the text leaves unfilled actively moves the reader’s imagination and becomes an apparatus that generates meaning⁷. Absence is not a random void; it works under the constraint that surrounding elements shape. Subtraction is the operation that designs the structure of this absence. “What not to make” becomes a design act of the same standing as “what to make.” [evidence: author's conjecture]

This has the same shape as de Broglie’s step. We inverted the theory’s granted “addition is generation, subtraction is selection” and closed the symmetry. What appears on the closed side is a view of addition and subtraction as two symmetric generative operations.

Why this blind spot is structurally invisible

Granting the inversion, why does the mainstream overlook it? The reason is not “designers slight subtraction.” It is that the very apparatus that measures creativity, elicits ideas, and evaluates outputs encodes addition as the default.

Creativity metrics take a value only under addition. As long as fluency is the count of ideas, the generativity of subtraction never lands on the scale. In fact, in divergent-thinking scoring, participants who produce more ideas also see their total originality score rise. Silvia and colleagues demonstrated this fluency contamination, showing that under the conventional summed method, originality and fluency entangle at correlations of .80 to .90⁸. Benedek and colleagues quantified it, showing that switching to a method that scores only the top ideas drops the correlation below .06⁹. This structure, in which quantity counterfeits quality, is the consequence of a metric that sets addition as the basic unit of measurement. Forthmann and colleagues argued further that this additive scoring design builds into the test the premise that as quantity rises, so does quality¹⁰.

Ideation techniques, too, build the same premise into their aim. Brainstorming is designed to maximize the count of ideas, and withholding or leaving space open does not register as an achievement under that aim. Authoring-tool interfaces line up operations that add elements and do not present “do not make” as a positive choice. Every one of these apparatuses stands by setting addition as the default of measurement and operation. So from inside an apparatus that can measure only through addition, the generativity of subtraction is in principle hard to see. This is a consequence of the apparatus’s design spec simply not counting subtraction, not of any lapse in the user’s attention. [evidence: circumstantial]

Scattered phenomena bound under one view

Whether the inversion is productive is settled by what it explains. Viewing addition and subtraction as symmetric binds scattered phenomena, until now treated separately, under a single figure.

First, minimalism and “less is more.” Both “less is more,” attributed to Mies van der Rohe, and Dieter Rams’s “less but better” (Weniger, aber besser) state in a few words a design ethos in which cutting raises quality¹¹. The mainstream treats this as an aesthetic taste, or a choice of style. Invert it, and cutting is not a taste but one side of a generative operation that brings the object into being.

Second, negative space and emptiness. Kenya Hara positioned whiteness, the interval (ma), and negative space not as void but as an active vocabulary of design that houses the potential to be filled¹². A region with nothing in it becomes a vessel that draws in the receiver’s interpretation. The mainstream treats this separately, as a tradition of Japanese aesthetics. Invert it, and negative space is not a technique proper to a tradition but one instance of the general operation of designing absence.

Third, creativity under constraint. That constraint, far from blocking creativity, promotes it has been shown empirically time and again. Haught-Tromp showed in an experiment that a writing task with a constraint (including a specified word) raised creativity¹³. Acar and colleagues integrated 145 empirical studies and showed the relation between constraints and creativity to be an inverted U, that is, moderate constraint raises creativity most¹⁴. Biskjaer and Halskov argued, from cases in interaction design, that a decision that fundamentally narrows the solution space (a decisive constraint) produces innovative design¹⁵. These line up evidence that reducing options contributes to generation. The mainstream treats this as a phenomenon carrying the caveat “constraints paradoxically help.” Invert it, and it stops being a paradox. A constraint is subtraction that removes elements from the solution space, and if subtraction is generative, then it is a straightforward consequence that constraints help creativity. [evidence: circumstantial]

The mainstream has processed these three separately, as aesthetics, tradition, and paradox. Invert it, and they become separate appearances of a single operation. And the logic that binds the three comes down to one thing. If subtraction is a generative operation symmetric to addition, then cutting, opening space, and narrowing each bring a new object into being. [evidence: author's conjecture]

Stating a prediction that can be falsified

Up to here the discussion has been about a view, and as such cannot be falsified. De Broglie’s step could count as science because it carried a falsifiable prediction, electron diffraction. The symmetry of addition and subtraction, to earn the same standing, must predict something that would not occur under the additive-bias view.

That prediction splits into two tests.

One is the test of symmetric generativity. Subtractive design moves (cutting, withholding, choosing the un-made) should open the solution space at least as much as additive moves. This is measurable by comparative experiment. Split the same task into a group allowed only operations that add elements and a group allowed only operations that remove them, and compare the diversity and quality of the solutions generated. If addition and subtraction are symmetric generative operations, the solution space the subtractive group opens is no worse than the additive group’s. If the view that only addition is generative is correct, the subtractive group falls systematically short of the additive group. Which way it falls has not yet been measured.

The other is the audit of the apparatus’s additive bias. Current ideation techniques and authoring tools should systematically exhibit an additive bias. This can be tested by an audit of methods and tools. Enumerate the scoring rules of ideation techniques, the unit of measurement of creativity metrics, and the defaults of authoring interfaces, and measure the asymmetry between apparatuses that count addition and those that count subtraction. The demonstration of fluency contamination (cited above⁸⁹) can be read as having partly completed this audit for creativity metrics. That the metric sets addition as its unit of measurement has already been shown numerically. What remains is to extend the same audit to authoring tools and ideation techniques and measure the full shape of the asymmetry. [evidence: author's conjecture]

The point where the analogy becomes literal

Here is where this note grounds most firmly.

The additive bias has already been measured, not as metaphor. Adams, Converse, Hales, and Klotz showed in Nature in 2021, across eight experiments, that when people improve a problem they systematically overlook the advantageous subtractive solution and drift to the additive one¹⁶. In a task to stabilize a Lego structure, in a task to improve prose, in a task to fix an itinerary, unless given a cue to subtract, people reach to add elements. The subtractive solution demands extra cognitive effort. So it is overlooked, never coming to mind. The bias toward addition is real in human problem-solving.

Subsequent work has dug one layer deeper into this bias. Neroni and colleagues showed, with an implicit association test, that people assign positive value to the concept of addition and implicitly feel addition to be safer and more functional than subtraction¹⁷. Juvrud and colleagues reproduced three tasks and showed that this overlooking varies with age, culture, and task¹⁸. The additive bias works below conscious judgment, at the layer of association.

But the target must not be mistaken. What Adams and colleagues measured is the additive bias in problem-solving, not the symmetry of generative operations in design theory. They showed that people overlook the subtractive solution, not that subtraction is a first-class generative operation symmetric to addition. The fact recorded is “subtraction is overlooked”; this note’s claim is “subtraction is generative.” These two are different propositions.

This distinction reproduces de Broglie’s figure exactly. The additive bias has already been measured in one domain (the cognition of problem-solving). This is the “light quantum.” What the symmetry predicts is that on the side of the theory of generative operations, too, subtraction should hold a standing equal to addition. This is the “matter wave.” The demonstrated additive bias was not obtained by aiming at the symmetrization of design theory. That it filled one side without being aimed at overlaps with the figure of electron diffraction down to this point. Only the design that moves the target from the cognition of problem-solving to the theory of generative operations remains as the unfilled side. [evidence: circumstantial]

Where the novelty lies, and where it does not

The more attractive an inversion looks, the more strictly the boundary with prior work must be drawn. Many of this note’s claims already exist in part.

The demonstration of the additive bias already exists (cited above¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸). But the target is the cognition of problem-solving, not the generative operations of design theory. It stops at the description that subtraction is overlooked, and does not step into the theoretical claim that subtraction is a generative operation symmetric to addition.

The demonstration that constraints help creativity also already exists (cited above¹³¹⁴¹⁵). But these treat constraint positively while not formulating constraint (that is, subtraction) as a generative operation symmetric to addition. Constraint is treated as a paradox with a caveat, not raised to one side of a generative operation.

The aesthetics of subtraction also already exists (cited above¹¹¹²). Both minimalism and negative space have spoken of the value of cutting. But these are aesthetic claims, carrying neither the backing of cognitive experiments nor the argument for a formal symmetry with addition. The aesthetic claim that “subtraction is good” is not this note’s novelty.

The demonstration of fluency contamination also already exists (cited above⁸⁹¹⁰). That creativity metrics set addition as their unit of measurement has been shown numerically. But this is argued as a measurement problem internal to the metric, and is not bound into the figure of a systematic asymmetry running through metrics, tools, and evaluation.

Given all this, this note’s novelty is strictly limited to the following two points.

First, the theoretical symmetrization. Where much of the existing discussion that grants the additive bias and grants the value of constraint and negative space keeps subtraction in the position of a caveat or an aesthetic, this note raises subtraction to a first-class generative operation symmetric to addition, and places absence and the un-made as structure not reducible to filtering. Second, the methodological audit. It sets up an audit that measures the additive bias of creativity metrics, ideation techniques, and authoring tools not as a problem internal to the metric but as a systematic asymmetry running through the apparatus.

For these two points, within the range of published searches, no prior work explicitly making them was found. Even the nearest, Adams et al. 2021, stops at the description of the additive bias and does not advance to the symmetry of generative operations. That the search may not be exhaustive remains possible, however. [primary verification needed]

And these two points are not settled facts. They are a falsifiable hypothesis awaiting two confirming experiments: the comparative experiment on symmetric generativity, and the audit of the apparatus’s additive bias. [evidence: author's conjecture]

One question left open

De Broglie’s symmetry closed with electron diffraction. This note’s symmetry has not yet closed.

On the problem-solving side the additive bias has been measured, and one side’s light quantum is in hand. On the side of the theory of generative operations, too, subtraction should stand equal to addition, the symmetry says. But to say is not to show. Whether subtractive design moves open the solution space at least as much as additive ones, how that comparative experiment could be run, how the diversity and quality of the generated solutions could be measured, lies beyond this note’s reach. If confirmed, the view that only addition is generative is falsified. If not, the view that subtraction is, after all, a downstream work of selection survives.

The scale that measures creativity is still ruled in the count of ideas. On that scale, the negative space that was cut and the thing that was not made pass by as zero. In that one point, passing by as zero, lies this hypothesis’s claim to being a hypothesis. Which way it falls has not yet been measured.

Related Notes

• unlearning-expertise-reversibility — A sister note applying the same move to expertise, placing unlearning as the dual of acquisition
• undiscovery-knowledge-loss — A sister note applying the same move to science, placing the loss of knowledge as the dual of discovery

References

Method sources, and works whose existence was confirmed as evidence for each claim, are given with DOI/URL. Items whose bibliography is unconfirmed, or whose text was not reached, are flagged [primary verification needed].

Method (the heuristic of symmetry completion)

• de Broglie, L. (1924). Recherches sur la théorie des quanta. Doctoral thesis, University of Paris. (Direct access to the original PDF is [primary verification needed]; the framing and committee are confirmed across secondary sources.)
• Davisson, C. & Germer, L. H. (1927). The Diffraction of Electrons by a Crystal of Nickel. Physical Review 30(6):705–740. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.30.705
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/symmetry-breaking/

The additive bias shown on one side (the photon)

• Adams, G. S., Converse, B. A., Hales, A. H., Klotz, L. E. (2021). People systematically overlook subtractive changes. Nature 592:258–261. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03380-y
• Klotz, L. E. (2021). Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less. Flatiron Books. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250791450/subtract/
• Neroni, M. A., Crilly, N., Brandimonte, M. A. (2024). Unveiling the Associative Mechanisms Underlying the Additive Bias. The Journal of Creative Behavior 58(3):388–411. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.660 (Text behind a paywall, [primary verification needed].)
• Juvrud, J., Myers, K., Nyström, M. (2024). People overlook subtractive changes differently depending on age, culture, and task. Scientific Reports 14:1571. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-51549-y

The additive bias in creativity metrics (part of the audit)

• Guilford, J. P. (1967). The Nature of Human Intelligence. McGraw-Hill. (Text access [primary verification needed]; the fluency definition is confirmed via secondary sources.)
• Torrance, E. P. (1966). Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: Norms-Technical Manual. Personnel Press. (Text access [primary verification needed]; the scoring definition is confirmed via secondary sources.)
• Osborn, A. F. (1953). Applied Imagination. Charles Scribner’s Sons. (The relevant page within the original is [primary verification needed]; the rule is confirmed via secondary sources.)
• Silvia, P. J. et al. (2008). Assessing Creativity With Divergent Thinking Tasks. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 2(2):68–85. https://doi.org/10.1037/1931-3896.2.2.68
• Benedek, M. et al. (2013). Assessment of Divergent Thinking by Means of the Subjective Top-Scoring Method. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 7(4):341–349. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033644
• Forthmann, B., Szardenings, C., Dumas, D. (2021). On the Conceptual Overlap between the Fluency Contamination Effect and the Chance View on Scientific Creativity. The Journal of Creative Behavior 55(1):268–275. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.445 (Text behind a paywall, [primary verification needed].)

Constraint and negative space (the phenomena bound together)

• Haught-Tromp, C. (2017). The Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis: How Constraints Facilitate Creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 11(1):10–17. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000061
• Acar, O. A., Tarakci, M., van Knippenberg, D. (2019). Creativity and Innovation Under Constraints: A Cross-Disciplinary Integrative Review. Journal of Management 45(1):96–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206318805832
• Biskjaer, M. M. & Halskov, K. (2014). Decisive Constraints as a Creative Resource in Interaction Design. Digital Creativity 25(1):27–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2013.855239
• Hara, K. (2007). Designing Design. Lars Müller Publishers. / (2010). White. Lars Müller Publishers.
• “Less is more” (slogan attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) / Rams, D., “Weniger, aber besser (less but better)” (attributions confirmed via secondary sources; a primary source is [primary verification needed]).

The structure of absence (a precedent)

• Iser, W. (1978). The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original Der Akt des Lesens, 1976, Fink. Text access [primary verification needed].)
• Jansson, D. G. & Smith, S. M. (1991). Design Fixation. Design Studies 12(1):3–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/0142-694X(91)90003-F (Fixation on prior examples as one source of the bias toward additive search. Text behind a paywall.)

Items flagged for primary verification ([primary verification needed])

Items whose bibliography is unconfirmed, or whose text was not reached, are collected here.

• de Broglie (1924): direct access to the original PDF (the framing and committee are consistently confirmed across secondary sources).
• Guilford (1967), Torrance (1966), Osborn (1953): direct access to the texts (the fluency definitions and brainstorming rule are consistently confirmed across secondary sources; the exact pages in the originals are unconfirmed).
• Neroni et al. (2024), Forthmann et al. (2021): text details (only abstract and bibliography reached, behind a paywall).
• Iser (1978): direct access to the text (the gap concept and bibliography are consistently confirmed across secondary sources).
• The slogans “less is more” and Rams’s maxim: a primary source (the attributions are consistently confirmed across secondary sources; the primary utterance is unconfirmed).
• The absence of prior work explicitly stating “subtraction = a first-class generative operation symmetric to addition” (not found within the range of published searches, but the exhaustiveness of the search is not guaranteed).

Footnotes

1. de Broglie, L. (1924). Recherches sur la théorie des quanta. Doctoral thesis, University of Paris. The defense took place in 1925, with Langevin, Perrin, Cartan, and Mauguin on the committee. It extended the wave-particle duality of light to matter and gave the relation between momentum and wavelength. Direct access to the original PDF is [primary verification needed] (the framing and committee are consistently confirmed across secondary sources). ↩

2. Davisson, C. & Germer, L. H. (1927). The Diffraction of Electrons by a Crystal of Nickel. Physical Review 30(6), 705–740. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.30.705 Demonstrated electron diffraction and confirmed (initially without aiming at it) de Broglie’s matter-wave hypothesis. ↩

3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/symmetry-breaking/ An overview of how symmetry and its breaking function as a heuristic for constructing theory. ↩

4. Guilford, J. P. (1967). The Nature of Human Intelligence. McGraw-Hill. In the Structure of Intellect model, ideational fluency is operationally defined as the total number of relevant ideas produced per trial. Direct access to the text is [primary verification needed] (the definition is consistently confirmed across secondary sources and a contemporary review). ↩

5. Torrance, E. P. (1966). Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: Norms-Technical Manual. Personnel Press. Fluency is scored as the total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant responses generated in reply to a stimulus. Direct access to the text is [primary verification needed] (the definition is consistently confirmed across secondary sources). ↩

6. Osborn, A. F. (1953). Applied Imagination. Charles Scribner’s Sons. One of the four rules of brainstorming is “quantity is wanted,” holding that quantity breeds quality. The exact page within the original is [primary verification needed] (the rule and principle are consistently confirmed across secondary sources). ↩

7. Iser, W. (1978). The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Johns Hopkins University Press. Original Der Akt des Lesens (1976, Fink). Argued that the gaps (Leerstellen) of a text mobilize the reader’s imagination and carry the generation of meaning. Direct access to the text is [primary verification needed] (the concept and bibliography are consistently confirmed across secondary sources). ↩

8. Silvia, P. J. et al. (2008). Assessing Creativity With Divergent Thinking Tasks. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 2(2), 68–85. https://doi.org/10.1037/1931-3896.2.2.68 Demonstrated fluency contamination, with additive originality scores correlating .80–.90 with fluency. ↩ ↩² ↩³

9. Benedek, M. et al. (2013). Assessment of Divergent Thinking by Means of the Subjective Top-Scoring Method. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 7(4), 341–349. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033644 Quantified fluency contamination as dropping below .06 under top-scoring. ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. Forthmann, B., Szardenings, C., Dumas, D. (2021). On the Conceptual Overlap between the Fluency Contamination Effect in Divergent Thinking Scores and the Chance View on Scientific Creativity. The Journal of Creative Behavior 55(1), 268–275. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.445 Argues that additive scoring builds a “quantity breeds quality” premise into the test. Text access is behind a paywall, [primary verification needed]. ↩ ↩²

11. “Less is more” is a slogan attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (the origin is said to be an 1855 poem by Robert Browning). Dieter Rams’s “Weniger, aber besser (less but better)” is a maxim tied to his “ten principles of good design.” Direct access to a primary source for the slogans is [primary verification needed] (the attributions are consistently confirmed across secondary sources). ↩ ↩²

12. Hara, K. (2007). Designing Design. Lars Müller Publishers; and (2010). White. Lars Müller Publishers. Developed whiteness, the interval, and negative space as an active design vocabulary that houses potential rather than void, defining emptiness as “a vessel of the potential to be filled.” ↩ ↩²

13. Haught-Tromp, C. (2017). The Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis: How Constraints Facilitate Creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 11(1), 10–17. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000061 Showed experimentally that a constrained writing task raises creativity. ↩ ↩²

14. Acar, O. A., Tarakci, M., van Knippenberg, D. (2019). Creativity and Innovation Under Constraints: A Cross-Disciplinary Integrative Review. Journal of Management 45(1), 96–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206318805832 Integrated 145 studies and found an inverted-U relation between constraint and creativity. ↩ ↩²

15. Biskjaer, M. M. & Halskov, K. (2014). Decisive Constraints as a Creative Resource in Interaction Design. Digital Creativity 25(1), 27–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2013.855239 Argued that a decisive constraint narrowing the solution space produces innovative design. ↩ ↩²

16. Adams, G. S., Converse, B. A., Hales, A. H., Klotz, L. E. (2021). People systematically overlook subtractive changes. Nature 592, 258–261. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03380-y Demonstrated across eight experiments that people systematically overlook advantageous subtractive solutions and drift to addition. Klotz elaborates this in the trade book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less (2021, Flatiron Books). ↩ ↩²

17. Neroni, M. A., Crilly, N., Brandimonte, M. A. (2024). Unveiling the Associative Mechanisms Underlying the Additive Bias. The Journal of Creative Behavior 58(3), 388–411. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.660 Showed with an implicit association test that people implicitly assign positive value to the concept of addition. Text access is behind a paywall, [primary verification needed]. ↩ ↩²

18. Juvrud, J., Myers, K., Nyström, M. (2024). People overlook subtractive changes differently depending on age, culture, and task. Scientific Reports 14, 1571. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-51549-y Reproduced Adams et al.’s tasks and showed the overlooking varies with age, culture, and task. ↩ ↩²