Commentary: Divergent thinking tests have problems, but this is not the solution.

Commentary on an article by P. J. Silvia et al. (see record 2008-05954-001) which discusses the topic of divergent thinking. It is certainly true, as Silvia et al. (2008) write, that "after half a century of research, the evidence for global creative ability ought to be better" (p. 68). The authors believe--incorrectly, I think--that the reason that divergent thinking tests have not done a better job can be found in the various scoring systems that have been used when assessing divergent thinking ability. I have presented evidence elsewhere that creativity is not a general ability or set of traits or dispositions that can be applied across domains (Baer, 1991, 1993, 1994a, 1994b, 1998). In those studies, I used Amabile's (1982, 1996) Consensual Assessment Technique (which is the basis for the subjective scoring technique proposed by Silvia et al. [2008]) to judge the creativity of a wide range of artifacts. What I found was that there is little correlation among the creativity ratings received by subjects across domains, and what little there is tends to disappear if an IQ test is also given and variance attributable to intelligence is first removed. The evidence presented thus far for Silvia et al.'s (2008) proposed method for scoring responses to divergent thinking tasks has far too many flaws to allow any confidence in its use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expecting innovation: Psychoactive drug primes and the generation of creative solutions.

Many individuals expect that alcohol and drug consumption will enhance creativity. The present studies tested whether substance related primes would influence creative performance for individuals who possessed creativity-related substance expectancies. Participants (n = 566) were briefly exposed to stimuli related to psychoactive substances (alcohol, for Study 1, Sample 1, and Study 2; and marijuana, for Study 1, Sample 2) or neutral stimuli. Participants in Study 1 then completed a creative problem-solving task, while participants in Study 2 completed a divergent thinking task or a task unrelated to creative problem solving. The results of Study 1 revealed that exposure to the experimental stimuli enhanced performance on the creative problem-solving task for those who expected the corresponding substance would trigger creative functioning. In a conceptual replication, Study 2 showed that participants exposed to alcohol cues performed better on a divergent thinking task if they expected alcohol to enhance creativity. It is important to note that this same interaction did not influence performance on measures unrelated to creative problem solving, suggesting that the activation of creativity-related expectancies influenced creative performance, specifically. These findings highlight the importance of assessing expectancies when examining pharmacological effects of alcohol and marijuana. Future directions and implications for substance-related interventions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing creativity with divergent thinking tasks: Exploring the reliability and validity of new subjective scoring methods.

Divergent thinking is central to the study of individual differences in creativity, but the traditional scoring systems (assigning points for infrequent responses and summing the points) face well-known problems. After critically reviewing past scoring methods, this article describes a new approach to assessing divergent thinking and appraises its reliability and validity. In our new Top 2 scoring method, participants complete a divergent thinking task and then circle the 2 responses that they think are their most creative responses. Raters then evaluate the responses on a 5-point scale. Regarding reliability, a generalizability analysis showed that subjective ratings of unusual-uses tasks and instances tasks yield dependable scores with only 2 or 3 raters. Regarding validity, a latent-variable study (n=226) predicted divergent thinking from the Big Five factors and their higher-order traits (Plasticity and Stability). Over half of the variance in divergent thinking could be explained by dimensions of personality. The article presents instructions for measuring divergent thinking with the new method. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creativity in the person who will never produce anything original and useful: The concept of creativity as a normally distributed trait.

Proposes that validation of the concept of a normally distributed trait of creativity requires that characteristics distinguishing eminent creatives from less eminent people, should be positively related in unselected samples. A review of the available evidence does not clearly support the concept. This fact, taken with other evidence, suggests that divergent thinking should not be identified as creative thinking. Suggestions regarding research are made. (100 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Creative leadership: Skills that drive change.

Reviews the book, Creative leadership: Skills that drive change by Gerard J. Puccio, Mary C. Murdock, and Marie Mance (2007). The introduction and opening chapter provide the overarching theme of the book, which is to connect the constructs of creativity and leadership and to make a case why the two go hand-in-hand. Both constructs involve dealing with change. The main focus of the book is the creative problem solving (CPS) approach to generating optimal problem solutions. Much of the book is spent illustrating the benefits of applying divergent and convergent thinking skills to each of the six process steps in the CPS model. The book is an easy, enjoyable read with plenty of empirical support for many of the propositions and tenets put forth. Puccio, Murdock, and Mance do a good job of pointing out that creative leadership is not just for the chosen few, but rather can be practiced by anyone. Plenty of practical advice is offered with numerous real-world examples. The book is a good choice even for individuals without any formal education in creativity or leadership. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Commentary: Divergent thinking is not synonymous with creativity.

Commentary on an article by P. J. Silvia et al. (see record 2008-05954-001) which discusses the topic of divergent thinking. On several occasions I have suggested that a modified scientific method be used in studies of creativity (Runco, 1994a, 1999, 2006). This is a fairly contrarian suggestion because it implies a less-than-maximally objective perspective. Yet creativity will never be fully understood using the traditional scientific approach. This is in part because creativity requires originality, and the novelty that signifies originality is typically unpredictable, or at least not predictable with much precision. Perhaps more important for a modified scientific approach is the fact that creativity depends on affect, intuition, and other processes which cannot be accurately described using only objective terms. Yet at the same time, we should be as objective as possible. And although I am intrigued by generalizability theory, as described by Silvia, Winterstein, Willse, Barona, Cram, Hess, Martinez, and Richard (2008), I am concerned about their decision to use subjective scoring of divergent thinking tests. Their rationale is weak, to be blunt about it, and they have overlooked some critical research on the topic. In this commentary, I could describe the attraction of generalizability theory, but Silvia et al. do a more than adequate job of that. So instead, I will try to fill some gaps in their review of the research on divergent thinking. I also have a few questions with several of their claims and methods. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rational versus intuitive problem solving: How thinking “off the beaten path” can stimulate creativity.

We compared the effects of rational versus intuitive problem solving on creativity. We argued that the relative effectiveness of these approaches depends upon an individual's typical thinking style such that individuals will be more creative when they adopt a problem-solving approach that differs from their typical style of thinking (e.g., individuals who avoid rational thinking will exhibit higher creativity when they are instructed to rely on rational problem solving). We tested this hypothesis in a sample of undergraduate students generating creative ideas in response to a real-world problem. In support of our hypothesis, we found that problem-solving approach and individual differences in thinking style interact such that creativity is highest when individuals use a nontypical problem-solving approach. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The functional neuroanatomy of major depression: an fMRI study using an emotional activation paradigm

An important issue regarding the neural basis of major depression is whether the functional brain changes associated with the affect disturbance seen in this syndrome are similar to those that accompany transient sadness in normal subjects. To address this question, we carried out an fMRI study using an emotional activation paradigm. Brain activity associated with passive viewing of an emotionally laden film clip aimed at inducing a transient state of sadness was contrasted with that associated with passive viewing of an emotionally neutral film clip in patients suffering from unipolar depression and in normal control subjects. Results showed that transient sadness produced significant activation in the medial and inferior prefrontal cortices, the middle temporal cortex, the cerebellum and the caudate in both depressed and normal subjects. They also revealed that passive viewing of the emotionally laden film clip produced a significantly greater activation in the left medial prefrontal cortex and in the right cingulate gyrus in depressed patients than in normal control subjects. These findings suggest that these two cortical regions might be part of a neural network implicated in the pathophysiology of major depression. Taken together, these results strongly support the view that activation paradigms represent an extremely useful and powerful way of delineating the functional anatomy of the various symptoms that characterize major depression.     

Creativity, divergent thinking, and openness to experience.

Test scores of divergent thinking obtained between 1959 and 1972 were correlated with a variety of personality measures administered since 1980. In this sample of 268 men, divergent thinking was consistently associated with self-reports and ratings of openness to experience, but not with neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, or conscientiousness. Both divergent thinking and openness were also modestly correlated with Gough's (1979) empirically derived Creative Personality Scale. Several other personality variables mentioned in the literature were also examined; those that were associated with divergent thinking were also generally correlated with openness. These data suggest that creativity is particularly related to the personality domain of openness to experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The functional neuroanatomy of episodic memory: the role of the frontal lobes, the hippocampal formation, and other areas

Because it allows direct mapping of synaptic activity during behavior in the normal subject, functional neuroimaging with the activation paradigm, especially positron emission tomography, has recently provided insight into our understanding of the functional neuroanatomy of episodic memory over and above established knowledge from lesional neuropsychology. The most striking application relates to the ability to distinguish the structures implicated in the encoding and the retrieval of episodic information, as these processes are extremely difficult to differentiate with behavioral tasks, either in healthy subjects or in brain-damaged patients. Regarding encoding and retrieval, the results from most studies converge on the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in these processes, with a hemispheric encoding/retrieval asymmetry (HERA) such that the left side is preferentially involved in encoding, and the right in retrieval. However, there are still some questions, for instance, about bilateral activation during retrieval and a possible specialization within the prefrontal cortex. More expected from human and monkey lesional data, the hippocampal formation appears to play a role in both the encoding and the retrieval of episodic information, but the exact conditions which determine hippocampal activation and its fine-grained functional neuroanatomy have yet to be fully elucidated. Other structures are activated during episodic memory tasks, with asymmetric activation that fits the HERA model, such as preferentially left-sided activation of the association temporal and posterior cingulate areas in encoding tasks and preferentially right-sided activation of the association parietal cortex, cerebellum, and posterior cingulate in retrieval tasks. However, this hemispheric asymmetry appears to depend to some extent on the material used. These new data enhance our capacity to comprehend episodic memory deficits in neuropsychology, as well as the neural mechanisms underlying the age-related changes in episodic memory performances.     

A dimensional analysis of creativity and mental illness: Do anxiety and depression symptoms predict creative cognition, creative accomplishments, and creative self-concepts?

The link, if any, between creativity and mental illness is one of the most controversial topics in modern creativity research. The present research assessed the relationships between anxiety and depression symptom dimensions and several facets of creativity: divergent thinking, creative self-concepts, everyday creative behaviors, and creative accomplishments. Latent variable models estimated effect sizes and their confidence intervals. Overall, measures of anxiety, depression, and social anxiety predicted little variance in creativity. Few models explained more than 3% of the variance, and the effect sizes were small and inconsistent in direction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discernment and creativity: How well can people identify their most creative ideas?

How well can people judge the creativity of their ideas? The distinction between generating ideas and evaluating ideas appears in many theories of creativity, but the massive literature on generation has overshadowed the question of evaluation. After critically reviewing the notion of accuracy in creativity judgments, this article explores whether (1) people in general are discerning and (2) whether some people are more discerning than others. University students (n = 226) completed four divergent thinking tasks and then decided which responses were their most creative. Judges then rated the creativity of all of the responses. Multilevel latent-variable models found that people's choices strongly agreed with judges' ratings of the responses; overall, people were discerning in their decisions. But some people were more discerning than others: people high in openness to experience, in particular, had stronger agreement between their decisions and the judges' ratings. Creative people are thus doubly skilled: they are better at generating good ideas and at picking their best ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creativity map: Toward the next generation of theories of creativity.

What is creativity and how should it be studied after more than 60 years of research? In this paper I call for more terminological clarity in creativity research, especially regarding the distinction between creative potential and creative behavior. The former concerns cognitive abilities and processes and personality dispositions facilitating creative expression. The latter refers to observable behavior, communicated ideas, or products that result from the interaction between individual potential and situational or cultural influences. Much research has focused on different attributes of creative potential, such as creative personality or divergent thinking abilities. I argue that future work in this area will have to specifically address domain-specific creative potential as well as the interaction between attributes of creative potential and situational or social attributes. The interaction of personal potential and social environment will determine whether creativity is expressed and how it is expressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation.

Reviews the book, Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation by R. Keith Sawyer (2006). Explaining Creativity is a refreshing analysis of creativity within a broad range of creative domains that are often neglected in scientific treatments of creativity. The book is divided into five parts. In the first part, Sawyer reviews previous conceptions of creativity, such as "creativity comes from the unconscious," and "everyone is creative" and claims many such conceptions are myths. The second part of the book reviews individualist approaches to creativity. In the third part of the book, Sawyer reviews evidence from sociology, culture, and history to show how researchers from various perspectives all converge on the importance of context for recognizing creativity. The fourth part reviews the creative process of performance-based, collaborative artistic forms of creativity, such as installation art, screenwriting, sitcom writing, jazz improvisation, and comedy improvisation. The fifth section shows how science and business creativity are also embedded in a social context and can be even more reliant on collaboration than artistic creativity. The book then ends with tips for being more creative. A complete textbook on creativity should be comprehensive, present all the evidence and viewpoints, and be critical of everything. This is not such a book. Nonetheless, this is one of the first books to go beyond the psychological study of creativity and to synthesize various different levels of analysis to understand diverse creative behaviors. To this end, the book is highly recommended to nearly anyone that wants to have a more complete understanding of how creativity operates in today's world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creators and producers.

Addresses J. G. Nichols's (see record 1973-02491-001) heuristic analysis on creativity. Consistent with Nichols's comments, evidence from R. B. Ammons (1962) and G. A. Haven (1965) suggests that creative productivity can be developed through human engineering and is learned behavior, rather than a result of a personality trait or habitual divergent thinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creative ability, creative ideation and latent classes of creative achievement: What is the role of personality?

Silvia and colleagues (Silvia, Kaufman, & Pretz, 2009) highlighted the advantages of latent class analysis when studying creative achievement. The current study replicates and expands Silvia and colleagues' (2009) findings on creative achievement in a sample of 656 students, of which 223 were also assessed on creative ability and ideation, as well as a broad range of personality traits. A latent class analysis identified three groups of noncreative people, average creative achievers with high interpersonal competence, and high creative achievers; the adequacy of this class solution was further supported by mean differences in divergent thinking, creative ideation, and personality in the expected directions. In a multinomial regression model, hypomania was identified as stable, significant predictor of creative achievement class membership. Overall, creative ability, ideation and achievement were shown to be only loosely interrelated, complicating the evaluation of personality's role in creative competence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Animal models of prefrontal-executive function.

Executive function allows us to interact with the world in a purposive, goal-directed manner. It relies on several cognitive control operations that are mediated by different regions of the prefrontal cortex. While much of our knowledge about the functional subdivisions of the prefrontal cortex comes from the systematic assessment of patients with brain damage, animal models have served as the predominant tool for investigating specific structure–function relationships within the prefrontal cortex, especially as they relate to complex executive behaviors. These studies generally involve the targeted disruption of neural circuits combined with behavioral testing using carefully designed cognitive paradigms. In this review, I will describe a broad range of such experiments conducted in rats and monkeys that together reveal the distinct contributions of dorsal, medial, and ventral prefrontal cortex to different aspects of executive function. The effects of lesions and local pharmacological manipulations have provided valuable insights into the neural underpinnings of executive function and its neurochemical modulation. Despite the challenges associated with establishing a precise homology between animal models of prefrontal function and the human brain, such models currently offer the best means to systematically investigate the cognitive building blocks of executive function. This helps define the neural circuits that lead to a range of neurological and psychiatric disorders and facilitate the development of effective therapeutic strategies to ameliorate the associated cognitive impairments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual versus experimental creativity: Which works best on convergent and divergent thinking tasks?

David Galenson's research on creativity has identified two unique creative methods: conceptual and experimental. These methods have different processes, goals, and purposes. To determine whether (a) college students use one method more than the other, and (b) if one method is superior to the other, the authors randomly assigned 115 college students to use the conceptual creative method, the experimental creative method, or their own creative method (i.e., how they would solve a creative problem without instruction) while completing two types of convergent and divergent thinking tasks. Participants using the experimental creative method performed better than the other groups on both types of convergent thinking tasks, with most participants using the experimental creative method unaware of this increase in performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Towards a neurobiology of creativity in nonhuman animals.

We propose a cognitive and neurobiological framework for creativity in nonhuman animals based on the framework previously proposed by Kaufman and Kaufman (2004), with additional insight from recent animal behavior research, behavioral neuroscience, and creativity theories. The additional information has lead to three major changes in the 2004 model—the addition of novelty seeking as a subcategory of novelty recognition, the addition of specific neurological processing sites that correspond to each of the processes, and the transformation of the model into a spectrum in which all three levels represent different degrees of the creative process (emphasis on process) and the top level, dubbed innovation, is defined by the creative product. The framework remains a three-level model of creativity. The first level is composed of both the cognitive ability to recognize novelty, a process linked to hippocampal function, and the seeking out of novelty, which is linked to dopamine systems. The next level is observational learning, which can range in complexity from imitation to the cultural transmission of creative behavior. Observational learning may critically depend on the cerebellum, in addition to cortical regions. At the peak of the model is innovative behavior, which can include creating a tool or exhibiting a behavior with the specific understanding that it is new and different. Innovative behavior may be especially dependent upon the prefrontal cortex and/or the balance between left and right hemisphere functions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Commentary: The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking already overcome many of the perceived weaknesses that Silvia et al.'s (2008) methods are intended to correct.

Commentary on an article by P. J. Silvia et al. (see record 2008-05954-001) which discusses the topic of divergent thinking. Silvia et al.'s (2008) primary motivations for exploring and proposing their subjective scoring method are their perceived deficiencies of current divergent thinking tests. First, scores on divergent thinking tests frequently correlate highly with general intelligence. Second, the scoring of divergent thinking tests has changed little since the 1960s. Third, the necessity of instructing people to be creative prior to taking divergent thinking tests is integral to obtaining useful responses and needs to be reaffirmed. Fourth, and finally, the problems posed by uniqueness scoring--confounding with fluency, ambiguity of rarity, and the seeming "penalty" imposed on large samples--need to be addressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)