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Music is often considered an important domain for creativity. Traditional studies of musical creativity have examined musical improvisation using jazz as a model. While this approach has yielded many valuable insights about creativity’s cognitive and neural mechanisms, it has limited the study sample to those with the means to engage in improvisation within one specific Western style. Here, we introduce a novel tool for assessing musical creativity in the broader sample of individuals with no specialized training. In two experiments (n = 165) we show that this sequencer can be used in people with minimal training to generate a database of sequences composed at the Bohlen-Pierce scale and to evaluate them for creativity. Results show that creativity ratings are predicted by length of melodies, number of distinct pitches used, and information content of pitch intervals. Results also show some external validity with existing creativity tasks. We advocate the use of this sequencer in creativity research, as it provides a theoretically motivated, rigorous tool to examine the iterative process of producing and evaluating musical creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creative problem-solving has been described as an iterative process of divergent and convergent modes of thinking. With this opinion paper, we illustrate how some tasks, commonly used for the neuroscientific investigation of creativity might provide a condensed representation of divergent and convergent thinking, respectively. We have identified the following reasons for this: The specific presentation of stimuli and response alternatives within these tasks (“immediate problem space accessibility”), the restricted time on task for participants in well-established creativity tasks, as well as the challenges to identify specific temporal dynamics of divergent-convergent cycles using standard EEG procedures. Based on two recent studies, we propose that upper alpha band (10–12 hz) modulations in particular may serve a) as a neuro-physiological index to disentangle divergent-convergent cycles within these creativity tasks and b) as a data-driven marker for the task demands related to immediate problem space accessibility. Finally, we argue for a view on divergent and convergent thinking that is less of a dichotomy and more of a continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though prior research suggests that high individual power can increase individual creativity, relatively few studies have examined conditions when this positive relationship is more likely to hold. Drawing from a cognitive resource perspective and a perspective of socialized power motivation, in this study we theorize and test democratic team leadership and an individual’s collectivistic value as two moderating conditions on the relationship between an individual’s within-team individual power and his or her creativity. Using multi-source data from team members and team leaders from thirty-nine work teams, we predicted and found that within-team individual power is more positively related to individual creativity when democratic team leadership is higher. Moreover, the hypothesized positive moderating effect of democratic team leadership is stronger and more significant for individual team members with high collectivistic values. Our findings provide implications for managing employee creativity and for the responsible use of individual power in teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of top-down control in divergent creativity remains heavily debated. An outstanding question about the state dynamics of creativity concerns acute shifts between heightened and lowered creative states. Particularly, do transitions between creative states incur a "switch cost" as observed in other domains of cognition? Prior research showed that asymmetric switch costs are often incurred such that reaction time is asymmetrically slower when participants switch from a task involving more top-down control to a task involving less top-down control. We tested the hypothesis that frequent acute transitions from creativity-cued responding (associated with heightened creative state) to uncued responding (associated with lowered creative state) would incur an asymmetric switch cost such that uncued responding would be disproportionately impacted by state changes. We utilized the "thin slices" verb generation task in a task-switching paradigm. Consistent with the hypothesis of asymmetric switch costs in shifts between creative states, we observed a substantial switch cost when switching from creativity-cued trials to uncued trials, but no switch cost when switching from uncued trials to creativity-cued trials. These findings provide indirect evidence that heightened creative states may require substantially more top-down control than lowered creative states, supporting the theory that divergent creativity requires increased top-down control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adds to creativity research by investigating the connection between employees' ruminations about life-threatening crises and their creative work behavior, with a specific focus on the mediating role of their experiences of personal life-to-work conflict and the moderating role of their resilience in this connection. Cross-sectional survey data (N = 710) gathered from employees who operate in the health-related distribution sector indicate that a key factor that underpins the connection between persistent worries about deadly crises and thwarted creativity at work is that personal life worries spill over into the work domain, but this detrimental effect is less salient if employees can bounce back from difficult situations. For organizations, this investigation reveals a critical conduit, personal life – induced work strain, through which employees' struggles to ban negative thoughts about excruciating crises translate into a lower propensity to develop novel ideas for organizational improvement. It also reveals how organizations can mitigate this risk by making their workforce more resilient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although shared leadership is typically considered a beneficial leadership approach, findings reporting its effectiveness are mixed. By integrating implicit theory and the "Too-Much-of-a-Good-Thing" (TMGT) effect, this study hypothesizes that both too little and too much shared leadership restrict team creativity and employee creativity. We test such double threshold logic across three independent studies. Study 1 results reveal that shared leadership can promote team creativity, but only within a certain range. Results from Study 2 suggest that shared leadership is positively related to employee creativity, but again only within a certain range. Study 3 replicates the findings of Study 1 and Study 2, and reveals that shared leadership is unrelated to employee creativity when team collectivism is high. Together, these findings suggest that there is a double-threshold effect of shared leadership on employee creativity and team creativity, and that the double-threshold effect of shared leadership on employee creativity is moderated by team collectivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews my work in the specific area of teacher creative development and highlights future directions in my own research as well as for possibilities in the field of creativity in education. I emphasize the importance of understanding and promoting creative agency as a multidimensional framework for teacher and student flourishing in school and on the key role of creative metacognition and self-regulation in that developmental process. I consider recent work on creative metaphor generation in multiple modalities, including embodiment, and consider how embodied creative teaching and learning remain understudied areas of huge potential in the field of creativity in education. Last, I present the need for more critical and transformative perspectives and approaches to the study and promotion of creativity in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity evaluation, particularly rating the creativity of products, is an unstable construct subjective to the influence of various individual states and characteristics. However, little research has been conducted on whether and how participants’ physiological states affect rating products. This experimental study aimed to explore how synchrony (i.e. whether individuals’ evaluation time synchronizes with their peak circadian arousal periods during a day) affects the rating of creativity in drawings, whether these effects vary according to drawings’ different creativity levels, and the influence of emotional state on synchrony and creativity rating. A sample of 191 university students rated several drawings of low, medium, and high creativity levels at their optimal or non-optimal times of day, and their subjective emotional valence and arousal were recorded. The results showed that participants exhibited a more positive rater bias when rating low- and medium-creativity-level drawings during their optimal times of day. Emotional arousal, but not valence, mediated the relationship between synchrony and rater bias. These findings highlight the role of synchrony and emotional arousal in rating creative products, contributing to our understanding of how raters’ synchrony states influence creativity evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to transform how we live, work, and play, competencies such as creativity remain fundamentally human. However, the way we learn, develop, and deploy creativity will be impacted by AI. This paper sets out four underpinning propositions that will help to guide the integration of AI and human creativity. These propositions explain not only why AI is not independently creative, but also how AI can support and augment human creativity in areas such as education. It will also highlight implications for the development of creativity in an educational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-cultural differences in individual creativity have been examined extensively, particularly between Western and Eastern cultures, but empirical evidence has been mixed. In an attempt to clarify the inconclusive picture, we meta-analytically synthesized evidence on cross-cultural differences in individual creativity between “Westerners” and “Easterners.” We analyzed 221 effect sizes from 41 studies in a three-level meta-analytic model. We found a statistically significant small-to-medium overall effect (g = 0.329, p < .001), indicating higher creativity among Western individuals. The potential effect of study-, sample-, and assessment-related moderators on West – East differences in creativity was also examined. We found that Western superiority in creativity increased with sample age, showing that cross-cultural differences in creativity were more pronounced in samples with older subjects. Furthermore, our analyses revealed that task framing moderated the effect of culture on creativity: test-like creativity tasks were associated with Western advantages, whereas game-like tasks did not show any West – East differences. The further (statistically less robust) results of this study indicated the importance of creativity-assessment-related factors for cross-cultural differences in creativity. The findings and implications of this study are discussed, particularly in relation to potential (cross-cultural assessment) bias, an issue that is very likely in the context of cross-cultural creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

\nHIGHLIGHTSThis study contrasts the relationship between helicopter parenting, narcissistic traits, and divergent creativity to the relationship between helicopter parenting, narcissistic traits, and convergent creativity in college students. In this study, 113 college students from 19 to 27 years of age completed surveys measuring helicopter parenting, narcissism, and creativity tasks. Both increased levels of student-reported helicopter parenting and increased levels of narcissism predicted decreased divergent and convergent creativity scores. While the relationship between helicopter parenting and divergent creativity was fully mediated by increased narcissism, helicopter parenting and narcissism independently contributed to differences in convergent creativity. Results suggest that helicopter parenting behaviors may impact different aspects of the creative process, but all in negative ways. Increased helicopter parenting was associated with lower divergent and convergent creativity in undergraduate college students.Increased narcissism was associated with lower divergent and convergent creativity scores.The relationship between self-reported helicopter parenting and divergent creativity was fully mediated by increased narcissism.Narcissism did not mediate the relationship between self-reported helicopter parenting and convergent creativity.Increased helicopter parenting was associated with lower divergent and convergent creativity in undergraduate college students.Increased narcissism was associated with lower divergent and convergent creativity scores.The relationship between self-reported helicopter parenting and divergent creativity was fully mediated by increased narcissism.Narcissism did not mediate the relationship between self-reported helicopter parenting and convergent creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "standard" definition of creativity as novel and useful describes creative products, but creativity is constituted by processes. This misalignment contributes to the oft-noted challenges of operationalizing creativity. Here, we distinguish creativity as a process from creativity as an attribute (i.e. "creative-ness"). Operating from a priori premises of creativity theory, we develop a process definition of creativity. Specifically, creativity is defined as internal attention constrained by a generative goal. This definition comprises three criteria: 1) attention is directed internally (toward mental representations); 2) attentional operations (e.g. search, manipulation) are constrained to fit parameters of a to-be-achieved goal state (whether or not a goal is actually achieved); and 3) the goal state is generative (not already precisely held in memory). We illustrate how these three definitional process elements align with insights yielded by creativity neuroscience, clarify ontological distinctions (e.g. from mind-wandering and retrieval), and relate the process definition to process-based models. The process definition provides minimal necessity and sufficiency criteria for whether a process should be considered creativity, but does not exclude the many other perceptual, emotional, etc. elements that can contribute to creativity processes. Researchers should specify whether they are studying creativity-as-process vs. "creative-ness," and consider including process-focused assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contradictions and competing demands are common in everyday problems. To address these problems, individuals need to both recognize and integrate these contradictions during problem-solving to find creative solutions. We propose that recognition and integration take place in the problem construction phase of the creative problem-solving process. During problem construction, individuals work to develop their own understanding of the problem at hand. To do so, they sort through and combine problem representations activated through cues in the problem. We argue that the integration of conflicting and paradoxical elements in their understanding of the problem during problem construction is related to the originality and quality of proposed solutions beyond their initial ability to identify these elements. In a laboratory study, participants solved two different problems. We found that individuals identified more conflicting elements in the problem construction phase, but retained fewer of them in the problem-solving phase. Larger conflict between elements retained for problem solving resulted in more original and higher quality solutions to the problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important step in understanding domain-specific qualities of creativity is determining what patterns exist in self-perceived creativity across domains and how these patterns associate with other characteristics relevant to creativity. In two studies involving high school (Study 1) and undergraduate (Study 2) students, hierarchical cluster analyses revealed four clusters in self-perceived creativity: “I am creative,” “I am not creative,” “I might be creative in math/science,” and “I might be creative, but not in math/science.” In the first study, a discriminant function analysis indicated that the “I am creative” and “I might be creative, but not in math/science” clusters were associated with higher openness and extraversion. In the second study, the “I am creative” and “I might be creative, but not in math/science” clusters were similarly associated with higher openness, extraversion, creative self-efficacy, and self-esteem, whereas lower agreeableness and conscientiousness were associated with the “I am creative” and “I might be creative in math/science” clusters. These findings suggest that clusters of self-perceived creativity are described by both overall magnitude (low vs. high) and domain (math/science vs. other domains), and relative associations with different personal characteristics vary across these clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many training programs have aimed to improve creative thinking abilities in various settings. The study of relevant literature revealed a relatively lower number of creativity programs for children than those developed for adults. The current work introduces a new and comprehensive nineweek long creativity intervention program implemented (out of school-setting) in 8- to 11-year-old children of socioeconomically disadvantaged families in Turkey. The intervention program was organized around four main themes (Persona, Object, Surrounding, Experience) and composed of nine activities: collection making, identity box, building a memory-device, designing an object, sensory mapping, designing a space, visual storytelling, exploring an imaginary planet, and solving a social conflict. Children (n = 159) were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, and they took the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking both before and after the intervention. Results showed that children in the experimental group had significantly higher verbal fluency and originality scores at the posttest compared to the control group. These results provide further evidence for the trainability of creativity and introduce a novel, affordable creativity intervention program that is feasible enough to be implemented in and out of the school setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) has breached creativity research. The advancements of creative AI systems dispute the common definitions of creativity that have traditionally focused on five elements: actor, process, outcome, domain, and space. Moreover, creative workers, such as scientists and artists, increasingly use AI in their creative processes, and the concept of co-creativity has emerged to describe blended human–AI creativity. These issues evoke the question of whether creativity requires redefinition in the era of AI. Currently, co-creativity is mostly studied within the framework of computer science in pre-organized laboratory settings. This study contributes from a human scientific perspective with 52 interviews of Finland-based computer scientists and new media artists who use AI in their work. The results suggest scientists and artists use similar elements to define creativity. However, the role of AI differs between the scientific and artistic creative processes. Scientists need AI to produce accurate and trustworthy outcomes, whereas artists use AI to explore and play. Unlike the scientists, some artists also considered their work with AI co-creative. We suggest that co-creativity can explain the contemporary creative processes in the era of AI and should be the focal point of future creativity research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today creativity is increasingly recognized as an essential component of success. The purpose of the study is to test a method of consensus assessment of contemporary dance, which allows a viewer to subconsciously assess the manifestation of creativity in contemporary dance. The sample of participants was formed on the basis of users of Chinese social networks (WeChat, Weibo, Qzone, Youku) and consisted of 46 dancers, 12 choreographers and 123 spectators. The methodology of the experiment is based on the LAVAAN package. The results showed that the presence of creative experience of a rater has a positive effect on the rating score of the creativity component. At the same time, self-proclaimed experts in creativity gave lower points to the creativity in dance videos. It can be argued that the understanding of contemporary dance is much greater for those who have had experience of choreographing dances; simply teaching dance does not necessarily develop the ability to comprehend its meaning. The use of the Likert scale has demonstrated its effectiveness in the analysis of contemporary dance. The results of the study can be useful in the field of choreography, pedagogy, sociology and psychology in the aspect of creativity and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glăveanu & Beghetto recently proposed defining creativity as the experience of novel person-world encounters with features of open-endedness, non-linearity, pluri-perspectives, and future orientation. This comment joins the discussion by bringing the phenomenological concepts of William James and Alfred Schütz into the conversation. They pointed out that, over time, we inhabit different realities, different experiential worlds, among them: the everyday world, the worlds of dreams, play, day- dreaming, music, and scientific theorizing. Each world has distinctive features with respect to the sense of self, sociality, time, typical action, and what is taken for granted. The worlds may affect one other simultaneously and successively in a figure-ground relation including the possibility of sudden reversals. Phenomenological concepts do not isolate the creative process in the mind of the creators. Examples show how encounters in creative worlds typically are embodied, involve interaction with the environment, and often are collaborations in a shared world with others. The process leading to intended products is usually non-linear, going in and out of different worlds with accompanying motives and emotions as central aspects. The process may have two kinds of endpoints, be difficult to determine, or indeterminate. Implications include possible directions for research and applications to education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital sandbox games such as Minecraft can be used to assess and support creativity. Doing so, however, requires an understanding of what is deemed creative in this game context. One approach is to understand how Minecrafters describe creativity in their communities, and how much those descriptions overlap with the established definitions of creativity in the literature. Based on prior work, we used a modified rubric for assessing a creative product in this study. We investigated the evaluation of a total of 52 Minecraft builds (i.e., structures that are created by the Minecrafters) from five YouTube videos. In addition to qualitatively coding the video transcripts, we also used natural language processing (NLP) for automatic coding of our data at scale. Our qualitative analysis of the YouTube transcripts revealed evidence for all but one dimension (i.e., humor) of the creativity rubric we used in our dataset. In addition, two new dimensions of creativity emerged in our qualitative coding process (i.e., realism and effort). Finally, the NLP model that we developed achieved about 80% accuracy in distinguishing the sentences that showed evidence of creativity. This study provides insights for research and educational practices of creativity in Minecraft or similar game or simulation environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dual Pathway to Creativity Model theorizes that creative performance arises from cognitive flexibility, persistence, or a combination of the two. Existing research has only examined these pathways independently, limiting our understanding of the model and of how people generate ideas. We extend the DPCM model by predicting that creative output arises from the generation of response sets containing both highly related (persistence pathway) and unrelated (flexibility) ideas, an idea generation strategy we call Dual Pathway Divergent Thinking (DPDT). In a study of 147 subjects, we propose a serial mediation model: people higher in Openness to Ideas use DPDT as an idea generation strategy which leads to higher nascent creativity which, in turn, leads to higher final creativity. The results provide initial evidence that the two pathways may operate simultaneously as a single idea generation strategy. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study addresses creativity as an employee strategy adopted to deal with challenges and distinguishes between incremental creativity (i.e., minor modifications to existing practices) and radical creativity (i.e., major departures from current practices). We hypothesize that employee self-reported mindfulness and other-rated personal initiative relate to increases in incremental and radical creativity throughout the COVID-19 crisis. We also expect that while increases in incremental creativity relate to increases in employee development and wellbeing, increases in radical creativity only relate to increases in employee development. To test our expectations, we conducted a 2-wave survey study among 642 professionals (and their 245 coworkers) from different occupations in May 2020 (Time 1) and in September 2020 (Time 2), asking respondents to provide retrospective baseline behavior before COVID-19 (Time 0). Latent change score analyses revealed that respondents who increased their incremental creativity after COVID-19, also reported higher development and wellbeing. Respondents who increased their radical creativity, reported higher development. Mindfulness was unrelated to both types of creativity and, unexpectedly, personal initiative related to a T1-T2 decrease in incremental creativity. Additional analyses revealed that mindfulness positively related to T0-T1 change in incremental creativity when personal initiative was high, while this link was negative when personal initiative was low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scoring in creativity research has been a central problem since creativity became an important issue in psychology and education in the 1950s. The current study examined the psychometric properties of 27 creativity indices derived from summed and averaged scores using 15 scoring methods. Participants included 2802 middle-school students. Data included students’ scores on the Creative Scientific Ability Test (C-SAT). The following summed and averaged indices were included in the analysis: fluency, flexibility, creativity quotient, traditional creativity index, originality indices, 26 teachers’ ratings of creativity and appropriateness, and additive and multiplicative indices of originality and appropriateness. Results showed that most summed indices were slightly or largely right-skewed and displayed leptokurtic distributions. Averaged indices showed less skewness with mesocurtic, platycurtic, and leptokurtic distributions. Summed scores had higher variance and reliability than did the averaged scores. Fluency contamination was evident on all the summed indices, with much higher contamination on flexibility and percentile-raking-based originality. Interitem correlations between the indices are compared and contrasted using the equal odds baseline, dual pathway, and the trade-off model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed-methods study examined 220 teachers’ responses from a new instrument, the Imagination, Creativity, and Innovation (ICI) Index. ICI Index scores represented teachers’ predictions of how students would rate their school’s support for student creativity, which was assumed to represent the teachers’ perspective of the actual support for student creativity at the school. Teachers of grades 6–8 (n = 55) had significantly lower ICI Index scores than teachers of grades 3–5 (n = 155; p = .03, g = .35). Regular classroom teachers (n = 151) did not differ significantly from gifted and talented teachers (n = 49) on their ICI scores (p = .065). Qualitative analysis found that, when asked to give examples of products, performances, and services produced by students that were points of pride, most teachers discussed their own creative teaching practices rather than student-initiated projects. Most major content areas were represented, and many responses were interdisciplinary. The most common audience was the school community. Time, including scheduled special periods, was commonly discussed as a support for creativity. Teachers with high ICI Index scores usually wrote about how the school community collaborated to provide creative opportunities to all students, whereas teachers with low ICI Index scores reported that support for student creativity was absent or limited to specific groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergency situations are generally described as combining both threat and time pressure. Creative solutions to deal with such situations are important. The present studies (Ntotal = 1190) investigated how people are able to produce creative solutions in an emergency. Our first study was correlational, and assessed individual creativity and reactions to emergency situations using self-report questionnaires. It was complemented by three experimental studies. In those, critical features of emergency situations were manipulated (i.e., time pressure and/or threat level) to examine their putative impact on individual performance on creative tasks (Alternate Uses Task and Real Life Problem). Three dependent variables systematically qualified individuals’ creative performance: fluency (i.e., the number of ideas proposed), originality (i.e., the average rarity of the ideas proposed), and originality adjusted for fluency (i.e., the rarity of the most original idea proposed). Taken together, the results observed tend to indicate that increasing emergency (i.e., increasing time constraint or threat importance) produced an average reduction in the originality of the ideas proposed. These results complement previously obtained results about the effect of stressful situations on creativity through the distinction made in this paper between two key components of emergency situations, namely time pressure and threat level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity has been conceptualized not just as a measure of artistic ability, but also as an adaptive trait of everyday innovation. We posit the relevance of “everyday creativity” to the field of psychotherapy. Although creativity has been theorized in psychotherapy models of change and the therapy process, little empirical research has examined patients’ and therapists’ creativity in psychotherapy treatments. Moreover, creativity research has been hampered by the vast array of definitions and operationalizations of the construct. Despite a lack of direct evidence, there appears to be substantial overlap between the empirically observed characteristics of creativity and the aims of psychotherapy treatments. First, research on characteristics of creative individuals, by way of personality, cognition, emotion, and psychopathology might overlap with what we know about individuals who benefit from psychotherapy. Second, the therapeutic process might resemble a creative process, suggesting that creativity could be a mediator of treatment outcomes. Third, creativity may be seen as a treatment outcome in that it reflects the achievement of more openminded thinking, cognitive and emotional flexibility, as well as diminished psychopathology. We take a hypothesis-generating stance, suggesting future research that could test a potential mediating/moderating role of creativity in psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this exchange, the authors each address five questions about creativity, and then provide a final synthesizing response. The five questions they address are: (1) What is creativity? Are there different processes, types, or kinds of creativity, and if so, what are they? (2) What are the major obstacles to people thinking and acting creatively? (3) Do you believe that creativity is intrinsically positive? Why or why not? (4) What are the main ways in which schools and parents should develop creativity in young people? (5) Can creativity be measured? If so, how should creativity be measured, and under what kinds of circumstances? Their answers highlight both similarities and differences in their points of view on creativity as a phenomenon and approaches to theorizing about it, studying it, teaching for it, and measuring it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research looks at creativity as a construct resulting from a blend of interacting individual resources and investigates, in a sample of 63 young adults, the extent to which real-world creative production is supported by trait emotional intelligence (EI), through creative thinking, including both divergent thinking (DT) and convergent thinking (CT). This study hypothesizes a parallel mediation model, with trait EI as the independent variable, DT and CT as the mediators, and creative production as the dependent variable. Trait EI is evaluated using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Short Version, DT and CT are assessed by the Alternative Uses Task and the Remote Associates test, respectively, whereas real-world creative production by the Visual Creative Synthesis Task. Results reveal that only DT fully mediated the relationship between trait EI and real-world creativity. These findings suggest that trait EI, encompassing well-being, self-control, emotionality, and sociability, involves a better DT ability, which in turn increases the likelihood of producing a creative invention. The failure of the mediating role of CT is explained considering the different demands of flexibility, exploration of alternatives, and attentional resources between DT and CT. Future directions are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although philosophers have long claimed that reading fiction has the potential to improve imaginative capacities, empirical evidence on this topic is limited. We report an experiment that aims to conceptually replicate and extend previous work by Djikic and colleagues by testing whether reading literary fiction reduces the need for closure, and by testing for the first time whether it enhances openness to experience, cognitive complexity, imaginability, and divergent thinking. We also examined whether a potential fiction-based impact depends on previous exposure to print fiction or nonfiction. In a between-subjects design, N = 111 higher education students were randomly assigned to read either two literary fiction short stories or two nonfictional essays. Outcome variables were assessed after the reading assignments using a battery of questionnaire-based and behavioral indicators. The two groups of readers did not differ on any outcome measure, and results were not influenced by lifetime exposure to written fiction or nonfiction. Taken together, the current findings do not support the assumption that reading literary fiction increases imaginative capacities or related outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity represents a young and promising academic field of research. Over the last 20 years, creativity publications have been steadily increasing in number. Of the 20 most all-time prolific creativity scholars in the European Union (EU), only one has retired. The present paper aims at mapping the EU creativity research. We analyzed over 12,000 Web of Science records dated back to 1968 until December 2020, using two bibliometric tools, SciMAT and VOSviewer. The descriptive analysis lists the most prolific authors and journals on the creativity area, the most cited articles, as well as the authors', institutions', countries', and research areas' bibliometric networks. Moreover, this study presents a thematic analysis and an evolution map of the themes based on keywords. The EU scholars were found to establish collaborations based on geographical, cultural, and, maybe, idiomatic proximity. Engineering, computer science, and education & educational research are the most interconnected areas of research. Innovation, performance, creative cities, the neuroscientific study of creativity, and emotions are relevant topics in the area. A broader concept of the creative and collaborative economy, the impact of technology on developing creativity, and the study of the brain with neuroscientific tools may become promising lines for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific progress on creativity research depends on having properly operationalized measures. In psychological research on creativity, it is common to operationalize creativity as the combination of novelty and appropriateness. However, the operationalization of appropriateness varies widely across researchers, studies, and domains (e.g. technical goodness, significance, elegance, usefulness, and feasibility). We argue that a core distinction between impact (how useful an idea is for solving the problem) and feasibility (how easy it is to realize the idea) underlies the variation. We further claim that this distinction is both possible to capture reliably in practice and psychologically significant. To test these claims, 318 ideas from 5 real-world social innovation problems (e.g. improving accessibility in elections) were rated for novelty, impact, and feasibility by a set of six experts selected for each of the 5 challenges. We find that all three constructs can be measured reliably and are statistically separable. Further, we show that distinguishing impact and feasibility reveals theoretically meaningful patterns of relationships with key psychological processes of creativity – analogy and conceptual combination – that would be difficult if impact and feasibility were conflated. These results demonstrate the theoretical importance of separating appropriateness into impact and feasibility for the psychology of creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have invested a great deal in creating reliable, "gold-standard" creativity assessments that can be administered in controlled laboratory settings, though these efforts have come at the cost of not using ecologically and face-valid tasks. To help fill this critical gap, we developed and implemented a novel, face-valid paradigm that required participants to paint abstract pieces of art, which were later rated for creative quality. We first sought to evaluate whether there was good convergence among creativity ratings provided by independent raters. Next, we examined whether its measure of creativity correlated with (a) existing creativity measures and (b) individual traits (e.g. openness, fluid intelligence) that are typically correlated with indices of creativity. Our findings indicate that our abstract-painting paradigm is feasible to implement (independent ratings of the creativity of the paintings converged well), and that its measure of creativity significantly correlated with some of the gold-standard indices of creativity (thereby providing convergent validity). These findings suggest that having participants engage in abstract painting provides a valid index of creativity, thereby opening new opportunities for future research to index a more-face-valid measure of creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) takes advantage of exponential growth in our technological abilities to offer an array of new forms of entertainment, learning opportunities, and even psychological interventions and assessments. The field of creativity is a driving force in both large-scale innovations and everyday progress, and imbedding creativity assessment in IVR programs has important practical implications for future research and interventions in this field. Creativity assessment, however, tends to either rely on traditional concepts or newer, yet cumbersome methods. Can creativity be measured within IVR? This study introduces the VIVA, a new IVR-based visual arts creativity assessment paradigm in which user create 3D drawings in response to a prompt. Productions are then rated with modern extensions of a classic product-based approach to creativity assessment. A sample of 67 adults completed the VIVA, further scored using item-response modeling. Results demonstrated the strong psychometric properties of the VIVA assessment, including its structural validity, internal reliability, and criterion validity with relevant criterion measures. Together, this study established a solid proof-of-concept of the feasibility of measuring creativity in IVR. We conclude by discussing directions for future studies and the broader importance and impact of this line of work for the field of creativity and virtual reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounts of embodied cognition suggest that environmental scene and motor information can be used in a type of neural simulation when generating creative uses for manipulable objects. A scarce amount of studies suggests that the state of the body and environment play a role in people's ability to devise creative uses for objects. In this theoretically motivated study, we manipulated the environmental context and adopted a previously used body posture manipulation, while participants performed the alternative uses task (AUT) under general instructions or instructions to describe actions toward or away from the body. We show that the environment and body posture interact to shape performance on the AUT. Specifically, body posture facilitates fluent responding under high fixedness environmental contexts. In addition, describing actions away from the body results in more original AUT responses. Further, we replicate previous findings that higher-creative individuals use different "embodied strategies" than less-creative individuals when generating creative uses for objects. We propose that higher-creative individuals differentially access and navigate an abstract "action space" necessary for simulating creative uses of objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automation of creativity measurement is a promising avenue of development, given that classic creativity assessments face challenges such as resource-intensive expert judgments, subjective creativity ratings, and biases in people's self-reports. In this paper, we present a construct validation study for CollaboUse, a test developed to deliver fully automated creativity assessments for individuals and teams, based on the testing logic of the Alternative Uses Task. The CollaboUse can be taken online, with test-takers prompted to think up many, diverse and original ideas in three minutes. A construct validation study has been hosted on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), yielding valid data from N = 103 participants. A comprehensive set of metrics was obtained via automated assessment tools (CollaboUse, Immune Defense, C-Tracer), classic expert ratings of creative performance (Alternative Uses Task, and CollaboUse test responses judged by human experts), as well as self-reports (Creative Achievement Questionnaire, BIG5 Personality Inventory). Results indicate that automated tests as available with the CollaboUse deliver similar results to expert-judged creative performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity is now accepted as a core 21st-century competency and is increasingly an explicit part of school curricula around the world. Therefore, the ability to assess creativity for both formative and summative purposes is vital. However, the fitness-for-purpose of creativity tests has recently come under scrutiny. Current creativity assessments have up to five key weaknesses that create a barrier to their widespread use in educational settings. These are: (a) A lack of domain/subject specificity; (b) Inconsistency, leading to a lack of trust; (c) A lack of authenticity in classroom settings; (d) Slowness (in providing useful results); (e) High cost to administer. The aim of the present study is to explore the feasibility of the automated assessment of mathematical creativity, drawing on tools and techniques from the field of natural language processing, as a means to address these weaknesses. This paper describes the performance of a machine learning algorithm, relative to human judges, demonstrating the practicality of automated creativity assessment for large-scale, school-based assessments. The importance of creativity is recognized in education systems globally. The ability to assess creativity, for both formative and summative purposes, is therefore vital. However, the quality of creativity tests (their validity and reliability) tends to come at a cost. In simple terms, the better the creativity test, the greater the effort, and therefore cost, required to deliver and score that test. The aim of the present study is to explore the feasibility of the automated assessment of mathematical creativity, drawing on tools and techniques from the field of natural language processing. This paper describes how a machine learning algorithm assesses mathematical creativity and compares this to human judges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much modern laboratory research on creative thinking, or in vitro research, is based on the "remote-associates" perspective, which assumes that creative advances arise through bringing together ideas which were previously "remotely associated," that is, not directly linked. That view has provided the foundation for modern theorizing across a broad range of areas, including the role of associative processes in creativity, divergent thinking in creativity, attention in creativity, genius and madness, and the neuroscience of creativity. However, contrary to the remote-associates view, analyses of real-life – in vivo – creative thinking indicate that new ideas arose as variations on or extensions of old ideas, rather than through bringing together unrelated ideas in a far-ranging creative leap. This conflict between the in vitro and in vivo perspectives has resulted in a theoretical quandary for creativity studies – a "creativity quandary." This article examines that quandary. The first section demonstrates the wide reach of the remote-associates view in laboratory research on creativity. The second section examines in vivo creative advances that raise questions for the remote-associates view. The third section presents an alternative conception of creative thinking, based on executive functioning, as a potential resolution of the creativity quandary. Similarities and differences between the present proposal and other recent theoretical analyses of creative thinking are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do people often fail to find new ideas creative? The literature indicates people fail to find creativity due to ideas having characteristics that are incongruent with people's existing perspectives. The current paper identifies a second reason stemming from the need for evaluators to understand what ideas are before determining if those ideas meet evaluation criteria. We propose that to find creativity in early phase ambiguous ideas, people's existing perspectives may not be helpful. People may need to engage in a process of perspective change by searching for and finding alternative fruitful interpretations. Three studies provide evidence that people tended to evaluate ideas as more creative if they spontaneously experienced (Study 1) or were induced to experience (Study 2) a change in perspective when evaluating them. Further, if people were induced not to experience a perspective change, ideas were perceived as less creative (Study 3). These findings add to theory by revealing new aspects of the process of evaluating early phase ideas. They also support practice by identifying why spending more time searching for and potentially finding fruitful interpretations of early phase ideas might help evaluators find creativity, and thereby support rather than squelch innovation. The current research identifies a gap in the prior creativity literature on evaluation, which has focused primarily on how people evaluate later phase ideas. We observe that, unlike later phase ideas, early phase ideas may lead evaluators to undertake an additional, initial stage in the idea evaluation process. Early phase ideas are often ambiguous, abstract, and difficult to communicate, which can mean evaluators might need to interpret these ideas in new ways before rendering judgments. As a result, people may experience variation in the process of evaluating early phase ideas. We show that this variation helps explain creativity assessments. During later phase idea evaluation, the creativity literature notes that evaluators use their existing perspectives to determine if ideas are useful via convergent thinking. In contrast, during early phase idea evaluation when ideas are ambiguous, evaluators' existing perspectives may not help them make sense of ideas, resulting in their viewing these ideas as bizarre and so not creative. It is also possible for evaluators to assimilate ideas into existing perspectives, thereby viewing these ideas as trivial and so not creative. Further still, evaluators may engage in a process of perspective change by searching for (i.e., divergent thinking) and finding (i.e., convergent thinking) a fruitful new perspective with which to appreciate ideas, thereby finding creativity. Our findings suggest that recognizing early phase new ideas as creative can involve a similar kind of thinking as generating creative ideas, namely a perspective change process of seeking out and finding alternative perspectives. Therefore, the evaluation of early phase creative ideas, much like the generation of creative ideas, can be a cognitively effortful activity. An additional implication is that the process people enact during idea evaluation, separate from any characteristics of the ideas themselves, influences how creative those ideas appear to be. Taken together, the results from the current study advance our understanding of why recognizing creative ideas can be hard, what might help, and why thinking about creativity as a process of changing perspectives can be useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies suggest that internally oriented cognitive processes are central to creativity. Here, we distinguish between intentional and unintentional forms of mind wandering and explore their behavioral and neural correlates. We used a sample of 155 healthy adults from the mind-brain-body dataset, all of whom completed resting-state fMRI scans and trait-level measures of mind wandering. We analyzed intentional and unintentional mind wandering tendencies using self-report measures. Next, we explored the relationship between mind wandering tendencies and creativity, as measured by a divergent thinking task. Finally, we describe patterns of resting-state network connectivity associated with mind wandering, using graph theory analysis. At the behavioral level, results showed a significant positive association between creativity and both intentional and unintentional mind wandering. Neuroimaging analysis revealed higher weighted degree connectivity associated with both forms of mind wandering, implicating core regions of the default network and the left temporal pole. We observed topological connectivity differences within the default network: intentional mind wandering was associated with degree connectivity in posterior regions, whereas unintentional mind wandering showed greater involvement of prefrontal areas. Overall, the findings highlight patterns of resting-state network connectivity associated with intentional and unintentional mind wandering, and provide novel evidence of a link between mind wandering and creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consensual assessment technique (CAT) represents one of the most popular evaluation techniques used by researchers to assess creative artifacts. In this paper we discuss how the prototypical use of the CAT, while useful for identifying unambiguous examples of creative artifacts, can inadvertently kill the curiosity of researchers interested in interpreting and understanding more ambiguous, contested, and divergent examples of creative expression. More specifically, we open the article by briefly describing the CAT and how it can simultaneously help and hinder researchers in making judgments about the creativity of artifacts in and across domains. We then introduce a methodological elaboration on the CAT, called the Divergent, Open-Ended, and Generative (DOG) approach to interpreting creative artifacts. Next, we present a secondary analysis of CAT data to illustrate the DOG approach and how it can extend insights about creativity when used in conjunction with the CAT. We close with a discussion of implications for creativity theory and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1998, Plucker and Runco provided an overview of creativity assessment, noting current issues (fluency confounds, generality vs. specificity), recent advances (predictive validity, implicit theories), and promising future directions (moving beyond divergent thinking measures, reliance on batteries of assessments, translation into practice). In the ensuing quarter century, the field experienced large growth in the quantity, breadth, and depth of assessment work, suggesting another analysis is timely. The purpose of this paper is to review the 1998 analysis and identify current issues, advances, and future directions for creativity measurement. Recent advances include growth in assessment quantity and quality and use of semantic distance as a scoring technique. Current issues include mismatches between current conceptions of creativity and those on which many measures are based, the need for psychometric quality standards, and a paucity of predictive validity evidence. The paper concludes with analysis of likely future directions, including use of machine learning to administer and score assessments and refinement of our conceptual frameworks for creativity assessment. Although the 1998 paper was written within an academic climate of harsh criticism of creativity measurement, the current climate is more positive, with reason for optimism about the continued growth of this important aspect of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an update on the blind-variation and selective-retention theory of creativity (BVSR), beginning with an overview of its historical development. That brief narrative is then followed by a more extensive summary of recent enhancements in BVSR's conceptual foundations, including formal definitions of creative, sighted, and blind variations. These enhancements show that BVSR follows as a direct corollary of the three-criterion definition of personal creativity (i.e., the multiplicative function of originality, utility, and surprise). After treating the various types of BVSR as well as the diverse processes and procedures that can generate blind variations, discussion turns to a concise treatment of BVSR's research implications, which entail both theoretical extensions and empirical investigations. The article closes with an evaluation of the theory's current status. Whatever BVSR's limitations, it still captures an essential feature of creativity that is not sufficiently treated by any theoretical alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier studies have concluded that the religious sphere is less open to creativity than are other areas of human activities. Also, it has been suggested that artistic freedom and creative expression are unwelcome in the domain of religious iconography. In the present study, we address this subject with regard to children's artistic expression of the divine (n = 1703) in five different cultural and religious environments: Japanese (Buddhism and Shinto), Iranian (Islam), Russian-Buryat (Buddhism, shamanism), Russian Slavic (Christian Orthodoxy) and French-speaking Swiss (Catholic and reformed Christianity). The Consensual Assessment Technique was used to access the creativity. The results globally supported the previous research on the positive role that domain knowledge plays in creativity. It is likely that the exposure to knowledge in the religious domain through education would not negatively impact on children's creativity in the domain of pictorial representations of the divine, at least in secularized societies. Results also revealed that a child's creative expression could be a function of his or her age. Obviously, with age and knowledge of the religious domain, older children would go more often beyond the simplistic or conventional representations of the divine. As for gender, no effect was found in four out of five samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article was stimulated by a review of instruments assessing creative and innovative social environments seventeen years ago. This stands alone as the only published, comprehensive, comparative review of multiple instruments aimed at this conceptual space. Although this review provided an important contribution to the literature, there are a number of critical conceptual issues that should be considered when reviewing assessments of this kind. This article raises these issues and points out their relevance when developing, evaluating, or applying instruments – and applies these issues to the instruments included in the review. Further, the aim was also to provide updated information on the Situational Outlook Questionnaire, as there were a few potential misunderstandings contained within the Mathisen and Einarsen review. Finally, numerous criteria are offered for those creating or choosing to use measures of the work environment, climate, or culture that promotes organizational creativity and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within Hong Kong educational reforms, creativity is defined as the ability to generate original ideas and solve problems, with schools implementing creativity development in accordance with their own needs. This study tested the hypothesis that Hong Kong Chinese students' adherence to Confucian cultural beliefs and their functions of personal cognitive resource affect their creativity. Based on the Creative Inventions Test, an instrument with demonstrated construct validity in the Hong Kong Chinese context, students (N = 324) from one secondary school in Hong Kong created four inventions with each evaluated by non-expert judges for originality and practicality, and extent of knowledge fixation. To estimate their adherence to Confucian cultural beliefs, students also completed a simplified version of the Eastern-Western Perspective Scale and, finally, a subset from the Thinking Styles Inventory. Path models showed that knowledge fixation and social conformity are significant negative predictors of originality and practicality. Furthermore, adherence to Confucian beliefs and executive thinking styles contribute indirectly and negatively to originality and practicality. We conclude that the development of creativity in Hong Kong is influenced by the tensions that exist between students' Confucian cultural beliefs and social conformity and executive thinking, hence demanding a reimagining of the education reform in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity often requires envisioning novel connections and combinations among elements in space, e.g., to invent a new product or generate a work of art. A relationship between spatial cognition and creativity has been demonstrated at both the behavioral and neural levels, but the exact neurocognitive mechanisms that bridge this connection remain unclear. The present study tested whether individual differences in functional activation in spatial cognition-implicated brain regions (specifically focusing on premotor and superior parietal cortex) during mental rotation were associated with figural creativity in a composite object creation task. Functional activation in premotor and superior parietal cortex during a classical spatial task (mental rotation; MRT) has previously been causally linked with dissociable components of spatial cognition: superior parietal activity with abstract spatial representation, and premotor activity with active spatial manipulation. The present findings indicate that individual differences in functional activation of both superior parietal cortex and premotor cortex during MRT were associated with individual differences in figural creativity. The present data thus provide new evidence of a correlation between the activity in spatial cognition-implicated brain regions and figural creativity, and suggest initial insights into particular components of spatial processing (both representation and manipulation) that may be related to creative ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the influential role of organizational context for creativity, this study examines the cross-level effects of 2 prevalent contextual elements – HR systems and relational climates – on individual and team creativity. We have conducted a multilevel multi-source study through hierarchical linear modeling on a sample of 282 employees nested in 69 teams and 38 firms. The results show that the interplay hypotheses regarding potentially creativity-facilitating contexts were not supported. However, findings suggest that relational climates represent more effective positive predictors of creativity at both levels, above and beyond the effects of HR systems. Therefore, given their very prominent role in enacting the HR context and co-creating the climate in place, line managers should strive to consider individual and team creativity in relational settings and promote an appropriate work context categorized by relational climates. Treating creativity at 2 different levels (individual and team), and accounting for a cross-level interplay focused on the context of those important performance outcomes, have important theoretical implications for creativity and HRM research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the standard definition, creative ideas must be both novel and useful. While a handful of recent studies suggest that novelty is more important than usefulness to evaluations of creativity, little is known about the contextual and interpersonal factors that affect how people weigh these two components when making an overall creativity judgment. We used individual participant regressions and mixed-effects modeling to examine how the contributions of novelty and usefulness to ratings of creativity vary according to the context of the idea (i.e., how relevant it is to the real world) and the personality of the rater. Participants (N = 121) rated the novelty, usefulness, and creativity of ideas from two contexts: responses to the alternative uses task (AUT) and genuine suggestions for urban planning projects. We also assessed three personality traits of participants: openness, intellect, and risk-taking. We found that novelty contributed more to evaluations of creativity among AUT ideas than projects, while usefulness contributed more among projects than AUT ideas. Further, participants with higher openness and higher intellect placed a greater emphasis on novelty when evaluating AUT ideas, but a greater emphasis on usefulness when evaluating projects. No significant effects were found for the risk-taking trait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent meta-analytic work has highlighted lower creativity in schizophrenic patients as compared to control participants, but the cognitive and affective underpinnings of this difference still need to be fully understood. To this purpose, we adopted a multi-measure approach and compared a group of schizophrenic outpatients and a group of demographically-matched controls (N = 34) on the Alternative Uses Test (AUT) and the Remote Association Test (RAT), assessing divergent and convergent thinking respectively. The participants’ cognitive status, affective status, and response inhibition skills were also appraised. The results showed a significantly worse performance in patients vs. control participants in both tests of creativity. Performance was also negatively correlated with patients’ symptoms, being lower in more severe clinical conditions. The difference between groups in the RAT was no more significant when controlling for individuals’ cognitive functioning, in line with previous studies in healthy populations. In contrast, the difference in AUT fluency remained significant even when controlling for cognitive and affective measures. Our findings suggest that creativity reduction in schizophrenic patients involves both convergent and divergent thinking, and that the latter aspect is not simply the consequence of a general cognitive or inhibitory impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluating creativity of verbal responses or texts is a challenging task due to psychometric issues associated with subjective ratings and the peculiarities of textual data. We explore an approach to objectively assess the creativity of responses in a sentence generation task to 1) better understand what language-related aspects are valued by human raters and 2) further advance the developments toward automating creativity evaluations. Over the course of two prior studies, participants generated 989 four-word sentences based on a four-letter prompt with the instruction to be creative. We developed an algorithm that scores each sentence on eight different metrics including 1) general word infrequency, 2) word combination infrequency, 3) context-specific word uniqueness, 4) syntax uniqueness, 5) rhyme, 6) phonetic similarity, and similarity of 7) sequence spelling and 8) semantic meaning to the cue. The text metrics were then used to explain the averaged creativity ratings of eight human raters. We found six metrics to be significantly correlated with the human ratings, explaining a total of 16% of their variance. We conclude that the creative impression of sentences is partly driven by different aspects of novelty in word choice and syntax, as well as rhythm and sound, which are amenable to objective assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]