Search

The term "creativity" can conjure various ideas and meanings. It's no surprise that methods for measuring such a concept vary widely and are not without controversy. This is particularly true among people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who are a unique yet incredibly diverse group of individuals. This article provides an overview of the assessment of creativity among individuals with ASD. Findings among studies that have sought to determine whether individuals with ASD are more or less creative than their neurotypical peers are mixed, yet the authors propose that intentional development of creativity in all youth, including those with ASD, can be beneficial.

The original 90-item Creative Behavior Inventory (CBI) was a landmark self-report scale in creativity research, and the 28-item brief form developed nearly 20 years ago continues to be a popular measure of everyday creativity. Relatively little is known, however, about the psychometric properties of this widely used scale. In the current research, we conduct a detailed psychometric investigation into the 28-item CBI by applying methods from item response theory using a sample of 2,082 adults. Our investigation revealed several strengths of the current scale: excellent reliability, suitable dimensionality, appropriate item difficulty, and reasonably good item discrimination. Several areas for improvement were highlighted as well: (1) the four-point response scale should have fewer options; (2) a handful of items showed gender-based differential item functioning, indicating some gender bias; and (3) local dependence statistics revealed clusters of items that are redundant and could be trimmed. These analyses support the continued use of the CBI for assessing engagement in everyday creative behaviors but suggest that the CBI could benefit from thoughtful revision.

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.

What is the aim of giftedness? Is the goal to narrow in on the gifts of a select few or to nurture everyone's gifts such that they may be exchanged with each other? Drawing from creativity theory, we emphasize the possible interactive element of giftedness. Current paradigms risk ignoring hidden creativities and for potential to remain in the shadows. Is the promise of one possible eminent creator worth thousands of everyday creators? Do we need to make such a choice? By fostering perspective-taking and other collaborative skills, we may try to have it all.

Creativity, and more recently dark creativity, have yet to be studied in relation to moral foundations, especially against the background of dark traits. This study identified moral foundations that predicted creativity, particularly malevolent creativity, after accounting for Dark Triad/Tetrad traits. Data (N = 529, M[subscript age] = 20.10 years, SD = 4.55) on self-reported creativity, personality, and moral foundations were collected. Results indicated that lower concerns for binding foundations (loyalty, authority, and purity) explained creativity, especially malevolent creativity. In contrast, higher concern for individualizing foundations (care and fairness) predicted creativity, whereas lower regard for these morals predicted malevolent creativity. Planned mediations indicated that lower concerns for all foundations explained greater malevolent creativity due to higher dark personality dispositions. Limitations and implications are discussed.

The Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS; Kaufman, J. C. (2012). Counting the muses: Development of the Kaufman domains of creativity scale (K-DOCS). Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(4), 298-308. doi:10.1037/a0029751) is a self-report assessment of five creative domains: Everyday, Scholarly, Performance, Scientific, and Artistic. This investigation was designed to reassess the factor structure of the K-DOCS, examine its measurement invariance across men and women, and develop norms across the five domains. Data on 22,013 American participants who had completed the assessment as part of past or ongoing studies between 2012 and 2020 were collated across multiple samples. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that both five- and nine-factor solutions had superior fit compared to a one-factor solution. The models were also gender invariant, indicating that creative domains were assessed similarly across male and female samples. Norms across gender and age-groups were provided to enable future comparisons in research settings; it is not recommended to use these norms in clinical or diagnostic contexts. The investigation concluded that the K-DOCS is a robust psychometric tool for the self-assessment of creativity across domains.

Past research has demonstrated that the hierarchical value structures of creative individuals differ systematically from their less creative counterparts. However, earlier studies used a global creativity score, which is inconsistent with both creativity's movement toward a domain-specific viewpoint, and Lebedeva et al.'s 2019 study suggests the relationship between values and the frequency of creative behaviors differs by domain. We conducted two studies to determine if different creative domains are associated with distinct value hierarchies in creative ability, self-perception, and achievement. Study 1 (N = 156) examined whether Schwartz's core values demonstrated a different pattern of correlations with verbal versus visual creative performance, assessed with story and drawing tasks. Study 2 (N = 492) examined the pattern of values across a broader set of domains (i.e., artistic, everyday/self, science, performance, and scholarly), assessed using measures of creative self-concept and self-reported creative achievement. The value hierarchies associated with each of the domains were not consistent with each other or with the findings of past studies. The implications of these results for creative domain specificity and motivation are discussed.

Students display resistance in the classroom in numerous ways, often in the form of academic misconduct. Some argue that resistance can reflect cleverness and creativity, rather than apathy. This investigation aimed to develop a psychometric tool to examine classroom resistance as well as identify individual and situational determinants of the same. Data from 853 participants (M[subscript age] = 19.36 years, SD = 1.93) was collected on measures of resistance behaviors in educational contexts and their environmental contributors, creativity, personality, and deception. Further, participants indicated their frequency of resistance across two time periods: kindergarten through middle school, and high school through college. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified a robust three-factor structure for the Classroom Resistance Scale, comprising Test-Oriented Cheating, Blatant Academic Dishonesty, and Unethical Shortcuts. The person-situation analysis indicated that students who engaged in resistance shared some consistent characteristics: they were more likely to be closed to new experiences, unimaginative, more extraverted, and highly influenced by their peers. Moreover, the frequency of classroom resistance increased in higher grades as compared to lower ones. Implications of spillover effects of academic dishonesty into the workplace are discussed, in addition to suggestions for future research.

The concept of "creativity" as a desirable attribute within education is long-standing. The fields of education and creativity have developed, and periodically intersected with, government reports, policies, commentaries, and advice. Recently, an increasing number of countries have emphasized creativity in their official curricula. However, the journey from openly acknowledging the importance of creativity to systematically and purposefully supporting its promotion in the classroom is a long one. The research reported in this article focuses on what might be regarded as the first step in this journey: school curriculum. This article analyzes curricula in 12 countries and asks three key questions: if and how creativity is defined, where is it placed in the curriculum, and what concrete advice is provided for teachers? Despite widespread interest and a productive field of research in creativity, our examination reveals little support for teachers to turn policy into practice.

A critical need exists in engineering education to draw on the non-traditional divergent thinking and risk-taking necessary for making radical technological breakthroughs. Literature suggests that individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) characteristics demonstrate unparalleled creativity and risk-taking potential. While this group of students may offer significant benefits to the advancement of the nation, they are currently significantly underrepresented in engineering programs because of the major academic and emotional challenges that the rigidly structured engineering programs impose on them. Funded by the Division of Engineering Education and Centers of the National Science Foundation, this study is aimed at understanding creative potential and challenges of engineering students with ADHD characteristics. A cohort of 18 female and 36 male undergraduate students were recruited from the School of Engineering at the University of Connecticut (n=54). To quantify the level of ADHD-related characteristics and the creative potential of the participants, the investigators administered Brown ADD Scales for Adults and Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) Figural Form A, respectively. A 40-question instrument was designed and administered to understand the learning styles, the perception of current engineering programs in terms of rewarding creativity and risk-taking, and the difficulties of the participants in engineering programs. It was found that there is a statistically significant positive correlation between the Brown total score and the Creativity Index (r=.45, p=.001). Among Brown subscale scores, attention was found to have the largest correlation with the Creativity Index. There were positive significant correlations with the Creativity Index and all of the Brown subscales except for memory. The Brown scores were found to have positive significant correlations with three of the TTCT sub-categories: fluency, originality, and resistance to premature closure. A negative correlation exists between the GPA and total Brown score, suggesting weaker academic accomplishments of students with ADHD characteristics. GPA showed no correlation with the Creativity Index, suggesting a lack of creativity appreciation in current engineering programs. The Mann-Whitney test on survey questions revealed that students with a higher Brown t-score are significantly more willing to take a chance in which they may fail in order to pursue innovation. This study found that only three of the eighteen students who are formally diagnosed with ADHD are receiving services from the Center of Students with Disabilities CSD. It is expected that the outcomes of this study lead to a paradigm shift in how these individuals are perceived by both our society and our engineering educational system. The knowledge generated through this study will help to identify the academic struggles of this group of students and facilitate development of specialized education programs that foster largely unrecognized talents and unique potential of this underrepresented population.

One common self-assessment of creativity is the Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS). This article provides support for a Turkish translation of the instrument, offering exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to determine whether the factors were consistent across cultures. The participants consisted of two groups. The first group consisted of 1,260 undergraduate students (912 females, 348 males) at a public university in Turkey and was utilized for the principal axis factoring analysis. Horn's parallel analysis, a robust statistical technique, was employed to determine the number of factors to be extracted from a scale. The second group consisted of 1,215 participants (885 females and 330 males) who were utilized for confirmatory factor analysis. Results supported a nine-factor solution as a better fit for this sample than the five-solution originally used by Kaufman. Of the original five factors, four factors were divided into two sub-factors, which were distinct although moderately correlated. Finally, we determined the relationship between K-DOCS factors and college major. We also found good evidence for the construct, discriminant, and convergent validity of the scale. Relationships between K-DOCS factors and college major were largely consistent with predictions, providing additional evidence for the construct validity of the scale.

In this paper, we organize past and present theories and models of creativity by using a new conceptual framework--the creativity matrix--with the aim of highlighting the dimensions of creativity we know a lot about and those we tend to either ignore or find difficult to study. This matrix is formed by bringing together a developmental model of creativity (the 4 C's) and a structural one (the 5 A's). We start by briefly describing these two conceptual frameworks, and then, we proceed to exploring the matrix itself by describing how the 5 A's are dynamically organized at each "level" of the 4 C's. Importantly, our overview of the matrix is informed by existing models and concepts that address one of more of the C's and the A's. This gives us a unique opportunity to take stock of what has been studied so far and, toward the end, consider new avenues for the development of theory and research agendas within creativity studies.

This manifesto, discussed by 20 scholars, representing diverse lines of creativity research, marks a conceptual shift within the field. Socio-cultural approaches have made substantial contributions to the concept of creativity over recent decades and today can provide a set of propositions to guide our understanding of past research and to generate new directions of inquiry and practice. These propositions are urgently needed in response to the transition from the Information Society to the Post-Information Society. Through the propositions outlined here, we aim to build common ground and invite the community of creativity researchers and practitioners to reflect up, study, and cultivate creativity as a socio-cultural phenomenon.

Although the relationship between creativity and ADHD is uncertain, recent studies examining how dimensionally assessed characteristics of ADHD relate to creativity and divergent thinking in adults suggest an occasional positive, linear relationship between the constructs. However, the executive functions proposed to underlie characteristics of ADHD have not been examined in relation to creativity. This study was conducted to determine how different characteristics of ADHD related to executive functioning (as assessed by the Brown ADD Scales) predict different components of figural divergent thinking, intellectual risk-taking, and creative self-efficacy. Undergraduate engineering students (N = 60) completed the Brown ADD Scales, a figural divergent thinking task, and self-report measures of intellectual risk-taking and creative self-efficacy. A series of multivariate regression models demonstrated that several components of divergent thinking (i.e., fluency, originality, and resistance to closure) were predicted by different characteristics of ADHD. Although fluency was predicted by affect only and originality was predicted by activation only, resistance to closure was predicted by activation, effort, and attention. Additionally, intellectual risk-taking was predicted by memory, effort, and activation, whereas creative self-efficacy was predicted by effort. The implications of these results relating to the relationship between ADHD and creativity, as well as for engineering undergraduate education are discussed.

The Amusement Park Theory of Creativity, which represents both domain-specific and domain-general perspectives of creativity, calls for more research on how individual difference constructs are related to creativity at all ends of the domain-specificity and general spectrum. Toward this goal, this study examined emotional intelligence (using the Emotional Intelligence Scale) in relationship with both a domain-general measure (the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults) and a domain-specific measure (Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale) in a sample of 281 Chinese undergraduates. Although emotional intelligence demonstrated no relationship with divergent thinking, it did positively predict all five domains of creativity on the self-report measure (ranging from 0.52 to 0.77). These findings add to the nuanced relationship between emotional intelligence and creativity and serve as a call for more work of this nature.

Background: Creativity is increasingly recognized as an important skill for success in the field of engineering, but most traditional, post-secondary engineering education programs do not reward creative efforts. Failing to recognize creativity or creative efforts can have particularly negative effects for those students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), who may exhibit enhanced divergent thinking ability yet struggle in the traditional educational environment. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study was conducted to investigate how ADHD characteristics, academic aptitude, and one important component of creativity (divergent thinking) contribute to academic performance in engineering programs and how traditional markers of academic performance and ADHD characteristics predict divergent thinking. Design/Method: Undergraduate engineering students (n = 60) completed measures of ADHD symptoms and divergent thinking. Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores and grade point average (GPA) were collected from university records, and hypotheses were tested using a series of multivariate regression models. Results: Verbal SAT scores were the only positive predictor of overall GPA and engineering GPA. ADHD characteristics did not significantly predict overall GPA but negatively predicted engineering GPA. ADHD characteristics were the only positive predictor of divergent thinking ability. Conclusions: ADHD characteristics negatively predict academic performance (i.e., GPA) in engineering programs but are more predictive of divergent thinking ability than traditional markers of academic performance.

This report reviews the literature on noncognitive and other background predictors (e.g., personality, attitudes, and interests) as it pertains to graduate education. The first section reviews measures typically used in studies of graduate school outcomes, such as attrition and time to degree. A review of qualities faculty members and administrators say they desire and cultivate in graduate programs is conducted. There appears to be a divergence between the qualities faculty members say are important and the measures researchers typically use in validity studies. The second section reviews three categories of noncognitive variables that might predict outcomes (general personality factors, quasi-cognitive factors, and attitudinal factors) and the definitions, measures, correlates, and the validity of those measures. The role of background factors, both environmental and group, is part of this review.

Academic learning and creativity should be overlapping goals that can be simultaneously pursued in programs of advanced academics. However, efforts aimed at nurturing creativity and academic learning sometimes are represented as two related but separate paths; this separation is unnecessary and can undermine the development of creative and academic potential. The idea that programs of advanced academics have "two paths" (one for creativity and one for academic learning) needs to be replaced with a new metaphor, and appropriate pedagogical strategies need to be developed to support that new metaphor. In order to facilitate this process, educators will need to broaden their traditional conceptions of learning and creativity to include interpretive perspectives on learning and creativity. A new metaphor, "intellectual estuary," illustrates the notion that streams of creative and academic interpretations can converge and thrive when educators in programs of advanced academic simultaneously support learning and creativity. Possible pedagogical strategies that utilize intellectual estuaries include exploratory talk and Socratic seminars.

Empirical studies on the relationship between affect and creativity often produce conflicting results. This inconsistency has led us to believe that the relationship between affect and creativity may be better understood by looking at potential moderators. Our study looked specifically at trait affect and self-perceived creativity. Using the Affect Infusion Model (AIM) theory with problem clarity as the potential moderator, we hypothesized that when individuals are faced with problems that lack clarity, trait affect has greater sway over their self-perceived creativity. Our results provided evidence that problem clarity moderated the relationship between positive trait affect and self-perceived creativity; the positive relationship between positive trait affect and self-perceived creativity is stronger when problem clarity is low and weaker when problem clarity is high. No moderating effect was found in the relationship between negative trait affect and self-perceived creativity.

This paper reviews the relationship between creativity and equitable thinking and the individual differences in personality, demographic, and experiential factors that influence both concepts as they affect each other. Given the nationwide push to increase equity in public schools, interventions beyond teaching about equity are becoming progressively more vital to school improvement. The work suggests that schools may be able to increase equitable thinking and, accordingly, community equity by employing creative thinking strategies in classrooms.

What are the personal characteristics that distinguish the creative scientist from the less creative scientist? This study used the concept of implicit theory in a four-part study of scientists and graduate students in science. In the first part, we collected 1382 adjective words that describe the personal characteristics of the creative scientist from 354 scientists. In the second part of the study, 542 additional scientists assessed these adjectives. We determined that the personal characteristics of the creative scientist fit into four factors: personality, thinking ability, research ability, and uniqueness. In the third part of the study, we found that the concepts of thinking ability and uniqueness would positively predict 221 graduate students' self-perceived creativity, and research ability would positively predict their creative motivation. The last part of the study involved having 283 creative scientists and 264 less creative scientists from 30 research institutions rated by three colleagues on the above four factors. A logistic regression found that thinking ability was best able to identify creative scientists while personality best predicted less creative scientists.

College admissions decisions have traditionally focused on high school academic performance and standardized test scores. An ongoing debate is the validity of these measures for predicting success in college; part of this debate includes how success is defined. One potential way of defining college success is a student's creative accomplishments. We tested the hypothesis that traditional admissions criteria fail to capture adequately the creativity of applicants by asking 610 college applicants to complete several creativity tasks. These included divergent thinking, caption-writing, an essay, and self-report measures of creativity in numerous domains. Creativity scores were compared to data from the college application, including high school rank, standardized test scores, and admissions interview scores. Results showed that traditional admissions criteria were only weakly related to creativity. Indeed, students who report the highest creative self-efficacy can be perceived as weaker applicants according to traditional criteria. Findings are discussed in light of the goals of higher education to increase diversity of the student body and the abilities of its students.

In this response, we commend Sternberg's Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model yet urge him to consider an ACCEL-S model that more fully incorporates society's integrative role in giftedness. ACCEL-S builds on the highly complex and contextual view of giftedness proposed by Sternberg and transforms it into a participatory framework. Within it, the skills associated with giftedness shape but are also shaped by social context; they generate meaningful forms of collaboration as well as grow out of them. The concept of giftedness itself is transformed from a person-centric one to a distributed model in which being gifted is a relational instead of purely personal achievement. [This article responds to Robert Sternberg's "ACCEL: A New Model for Identifying the Gifted" (EJ1148989).]

Creativity is sexy, but are all creative behaviors equally sexy? We attempted to clarify the role of creativity in mate selection among an ethnically diverse sample of 815 undergraduates. First we assessed the sexual attractiveness of different forms of creativity: ornamental/aesthetic, applied/technological, and everyday/domestic creativity. Both males and females preferred ornamental/aesthetic forms of creativity in a prospective sexual partner than applied/technological and everyday/domestic forms of creativity. Secondly, we assessed the simultaneous prediction of general cognitive ability, personality, divergent thinking, self-perceptions of creativity, and creative achievement on preferences for different forms of creativity in a prospective sexual partner. The results were generally consistent with assortative mating. The most robust predictors of a preference for applied/technological forms of creativity in a potential sexual partner were intellectual interests and creative achievement in applied/technological domains. In contrast, the most robust predictor of a preference for ornamental/aesthetic forms of creativity was openness to experience. The results suggest that openness to experience and its associated aesthetic, perceptual, and affective aspects are the primary characteristics influencing the sexual attractiveness of a creative display. Further, the results demonstrate the importance of also taking into account individual differences in personality, interests, and creative achievement when considering the sexual attractiveness of different manifestations of creativity.

What, if any, benefit might there be to applying creativity research to cooking? The purpose of this paper was to address this question. Specifically, we draw on concepts and theories from creativity research to help clarify what is meant by creative cooking. This includes exploring creative cooking through the lens of the 4-C and Propulsion models of creativity. We close with a brief discussion of why applying creativity research to cooking is both beneficial and an area in need of further work.

In this commentary on the papers in the special issue, I discuss how many of the standard questions and debates in the field of creativity research tend to focus on the individual creator. The welcome recent resurgence of interest in questions of context, interaction, culture, and audience--as on full display in this special issue--is cause to reflect not merely on these specific points but on how the deeper philosophy can resonate in how we study creativity and approach life itself.

To study implicit concepts of creativity in computer science in the United States and mainland China, we first asked 308 Chinese computer scientists for adjectives that would describe a creative computer scientist. Computer scientists and non-computer scientists from China (N = 1069) and the United States (N = 971) then rated how well those adjectives described creative computer scientists using a 5-point Likert Scale. Factor analysis revealed that the concept of a creative computer scientist had four dimensions: (1) smart/effective, (2) outgoing, (3) creative thinking and (4) unsociable. Differences in the implicit concepts across disciplines, ethnicity, gender, age, and working experience were analyzed. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of the domain specificity of creativity.

This brief essay argues for the importance for more work on how creativity predicts positive outcomes, with a particular emphasis on expanding our definitions of these positive outcomes. The way that creativity may lead to increased equity and social justice is used as an example of these type of potential research questions.

In this article, I highlight some of Arthur Cropley's work that has been the most influential to me as a scholar. Cropley's work has continually pushed the boundaries by exploring what creativity is and isn't, squashing myths, and not making assumptions. I specifically discuss Cropley's research and theory on the importance of convergent thinking, on the role of creativity in science and engineering, and on the potential for evil with creativity.

This study examines whether and why emotional intelligence may result in enhanced creativity in the workplace. Using a time-lagged data set collected from employees in three firms, we examined a mediation model where emotional intelligence is indirectly related to creativity serially, through generosity and vigor. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate a sequential mediation model where emotionally intelligent employees display a high level of generosity; these acts of generosity nurture a sense of vigor, which in turn fosters creative behaviors. We discuss the implications for research on emotional intelligence, generosity, vigor, and creativity.

Various factors influence the development of creative potential, including everything from individual differences to the kinds of experiences and opportunities that creators experience throughout the lifespan. When it comes to nurturing creativity in the classroom, the learning environment is one of the most important factors--determining, in large part, whether creative potential will be supported (or suppressed). In short, classroom context matters. It is one thing to recognize that the classroom environment impacts the development of creative potential, it is quite another to understand just what it takes to develop an optimally supportive creative learning environment. This is because many of the features of optimal learning environments are quite subtle and even counterintuitive. In this paper, we discuss insights from the research on how teachers might establish a creativity-supportive learning environment in their classroom.

Over the years, researchers have focused on ways to facilitate creativity in the workplace by looking at individual factors and organizational factors that affect employee creativity (Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, [Woodman, R.W., 1993]). In many cases, the factors that affect creativity are examined independently. In other words, it is uncommon for researchers to look at the interaction among individual and organizational factors. In this study, it is argued that to get a true understanding of how to maximize creativity in the workplace, organizational researchers must look at the interaction between organizational factors and individual factors that affect employee creativity. More specifically, the current study looked at an individual's perceptions about his or her ability to be creative (i.e., individual factor) and perceptions of requirements for creativity in the workplace (i.e., an organizational factor). The results indicated that individuals who have a high belief about their ability to be creative (an individual factor) were most creative when they also perceived requirements for creativity in the workplace (an organizational factor). Furthermore, individuals who had low perceptions of creative ability were still able to perform creatively when they had high perceptions of requirements for creativity. This suggests that, to maximize creativity, organizations should focus on both individual and organizational factors that affect employee creativity.

The "Learn to Think" (LTT) Intervention Program was developed for raising thinking abilities of primary and secondary school students. It has been implemented in more than 300 schools, and more than 200,000 students took part in the experiment over a 10"year span. Several longitudinal intervention studies showed that LTT could promote the development of students' thinking ability, learning motivation, and learning strategy as well as raise academic performance in primary schools. This article describes a study of the influence and the delayed effects of LTT on the scientific creativity of secondary school students. One hundred and seven students were selected from a secondary school, 54 of them participated in the LTT every 2 weeks and the rest had not. The intervention lasted 2 years, and the delayed effect was explored half a year after terminating the intervention. The Scientific Creativity Test for Secondary School Students was used four times from pre-test to delayed post-test. The results indicated that the LTT did promote the development of scientific creativity of secondary school students, and the effects on the scientific creativity were not necessarily immediate, but tended to be long-lasting. (Contains 7 tables and 7 figures.)

The article integrates the seven papers of the two special issues with a special focus on discussing the differences in people's beliefs about creativity between the Chinese and American cultures: How it is conceived, evaluated, and nurtured. It uses three metaphors to capture major differences in these aspects, and highlights areas with profound cultural variations in conceptions and creative education for future research.

Creativity has become a hot topic in education. From President Barack Obama to Amazon's Jeff Bezos to "Newsweek" magazine, business leaders, major media outlets, government officials, and education policy makers are increasingly advocating including student creativity in the curriculum. But without a clear understanding of the nature of creativity itself, such well-meaning advocacy may do more harm than good; educators may experience calls for teaching creativity as just another guilt-inducing addition to an already-overwhelming set of curricular demands. Here are five fundamental insights that can guide and support educators as they endeavor to integrate student creativity into the everyday curriculum. (Contains 4 resources.)

Organizational innovation involves reconciling many contradictions or paradoxes. Dividing the process of innovation into phases ranging from Activation to Validation and examining each phase in terms of the six Ps of creativity offers a framework for making sense of these contradictions. The Innovation Phase Assessment Instrument (IPAI) was designed to assess organizations according to such an approach. The scale was administered to 454 student volunteers and an analysis of their responses indicated that the IPAI is highly reliable and has substantial construct validity. At a practical level, it can be used for assessing the strengths/weaknesses of organizations in a differentiated way and for making recommendations for improving their capacity for innovation. It is also a source of research questions for examining creativity and innovation in an organizational context.

It has been argued that creativity evolved, at least in part, through sexual selection to attract mates. Recent research lends support to this view and has also demonstrated a link between certain dimensions of schizotypy, creativity, and short-term mating. The current study delves deeper into these relationships by focusing on engagement in creative activity and employing an expansive set of personality and mental health measures (Five Factor Model, schizotypy, anxiety, and depression). A general tendency to engage in everyday forms of creative activity was related to number of sexual partners within the past year in males only. Furthermore, schizotypy, anxiety, and Neuroticism were all indirectly related to short-term mating success, again for males only. The study provides additional support for predictions made by sexual selection theory that men have a higher drive for creative display, and that creativity is linked with higher short-term mating success. The study also provides support for the contention that certain forms of mental illness may still exist in the gene pool because particular personality traits associated with milder forms of mental illness (i.e., Neuroticism & schizotypy) are also associated directly with creativity and indirectly with short-term mating success. (Contains 4 figures and 4 tables.)

The Creative Solution Diagnosis Scale (CSDS) is a 30-item scale based on a core of four criteria: Relevance & Effectiveness, Novelty, Elegance, and Genesis. The CSDS offers potential for the consensual assessment of functional product creativity. This article describes an empirical study in which non-expert judges rated a series of mousetrap designs using the 30-item CSDS. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed a simple structure that corresponded closely to the "a priori" theoretical model of functional creativity, resulting in a revised 24-item CSDS. Non-expert judges were able to use the scale with a high degree of reliability and internal consistency. The revised CSDS paves the way for further research into the use of non-expert judges as a possible replacement for more costly, harder-to-obtain experts when measuring product creativity using the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT). (Contains 7 tables.)

The propulsion theory of creative contributions is a theory that focuses on how a creative act or product builds on and adds to knowledge in various fields. In this article, we apply the propulsion theory of creative contributions not to creative discoveries or inventions, but rather to late-career decisions about future directions in which one can steer one's career. We consider eight different kinds of career decisions one can make--replication, redefinition, forward incrementation, advance forward incrementation, redirection, reconstruction/redirection, reinitiation, and synthesis. Each offers a viable option for closing out a creative career.

Most theories of giftedness include creativity as a central component. Creativity assessment has a key role, therefore, in measuring giftedness. This article reviews the state of the creativity assessment, from divergent thinking tests (including the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) to the consensual assessment technique to rating scales and self assessments. Despite the many flaws present in every type of creativity measurement, there are compelling reasons for including creativity as part of a gifted assessment battery.

Self-evaluations or self-perceptions of creativity have been used in the past both as predictors of creative performance and as criteria. Four measures utilizing self-perceptions of creativity were assessed for their usefulness as criterion measures of creativity. Analyses provided evidence of domain specificity of self-perceptions. The scales correlated with self-report measures of creativity, but not with objective measures. Self-perceptions of creativity had strong to moderate relationships with personality and creative self-efficacy. These results suggest that although self-perceptions of creativity may provide some information about creativity, researchers should be cautious when using this measure as a criterion.

The Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) is a common creativity assessment. According to this technique, the best judges of creativity are qualified experts. Yet what does it mean to be an expert in a domain? What level of expertise is needed to rate creativity? This article reviews the literature on novice, expert, and quasi-expert creativity ratings. Although current research indicates that novices may be poor choices to be CAT raters, quasi-experts may represent a compromise between ideal scientific rigor and practical time and budget restrictions. Certain guidelines are suggested to make the selection of experts more streamlined, including paying attention to which domain is being assessed.

Assessing creative potential using a comprehensive battery of standardized tests requires a focus on "how" and "why" an individual responds in addition to "how well" they respond. Using the "intelligent testing" philosophy of focusing on the person being tested rather than the measure itself helps psychologists form a more complete picture of an examinee, which may include information about his or her creative potential. Although most aspects of creativity are not present in current individually based IQ and achievement tests, one exception is divergent production. Although still poorly represented, some subtests show great potential for tapping into divergent production, and hence provide some insight into creativity. The research on the relationship between measures of intelligence and creativity is discussed in this article. The authors also propose a way to use individually administered cognitive and achievement batteries to extract information about an individual's divergent production and general creative potential. (Contains 2 tables and 2 notes.)

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which non-cognitive constructs (personality, thinking styles, motivation, and psychological well-being) would predict self-reported creativity across different domains among 266 college students. Consistent with hypotheses, openness, legislative thinking styles, and intrinsic motivation were significant predictors of overall self-reported creativity and across several domains. Extraversion was also a key predictor. Some other relationships consistent with past research (such as disagreeableness and math/science creativity) were also noted. (Contains 4 tables.)

Creative polymathy at the very highest levels is rare, but this is largely the result of a long period of training usually necessary to become proficient in any field. We explain why creative polymathy is not ruled out by arguments for the domain specificity of creativity and argue that consideration of multiple levels of creativity (Big-C, Pro-c, little-c, and mini-c) leads to the conclusion that creative polymathy may actually be fairly common. We introduce a hierarchical model of creativity (the APT Model) to help understand some constraints on and possibilities for creative polymathy, suggest different ways creative polymathy may be expressed, and offer guidelines for recognizing and nurturing creative polymathy in students. (Contains 1 table.)