Am I right in saying the conclusion of the experiment was: people who spend more time thinking about a problem before acting tend to find it more engaging and were therefore more successful?
I wonder if the quality of the art suffered within the context of the experiment because of the time constraint, even if in the long run those people tended to create better art.
No. People who are confronted with a task that don't search for a solution but for a priblem within it are more creative. The consequence was that some barely produced solutions within the time constraint. Those were more succesfull as artists, the article states, while a quite a few of the other folks dropped out of art. Consequentially I'd like to add: They found the solution to the problem of living as an artist in quitting art - quite reasonably