How Creativity Was Affected by Environmental Factors and Individual Characteristics: A Cross-cultural Comparison Perspective

The purpose of this study was to explore how environmental factors (family environment and school education) and individual characteristics (personality, creative attitudes, and divergent thinking) collectively affect creative achievement of American and Chinese college students. Data were collected from 378 college students in the United States (N = 193) and China (N = 185). Results showed that the US sample had significantly higher means in home resources, high-school education, Conscientiousness, creative achievement, and all four dimensions of the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) than the China sample. In contrast, the China sample scored significantly higher in understanding the importance of creativity. Results indicated creative attitudes and divergent thinking sequentially mediated the effects of parental values on creative achievement for the US sample, whereas Openness mediated the effect of high-school education on creative achievement for the China sample. For both samples, creative attitudes mediated the effect of Openness on divergent thinking. The results suggested cultural differences in the effects of environmental factors on creativity, yet more similar findings in the effects of individual characteristics on creativity between the two samples. The results and implications are discussed.     

The Effects of a Verbal and a Figural Creativity Training on Different Facets of Creative Potential

This study investigated the effects of different types of creativity interventions on different facets of creative potential, also including more school-related creativity demands. In a sample of 77 fourth-graders in the age between 9 and 12 years, we administered a verbal and a figural creativity training, realized in two school lessons over two consecutive days each. As outcome measures, creative potential in both the verbal and the figural domain by means of two well-established divergent thinking tasks was assessed. As additional measures of creative potential, a story completion task and a picture painting task were administered to examine training effects on more school-related types of creative behavior. The verbal training was found to increase both verbal and figural divergent thinking ability, but not creative potential in the story completion and the picture painting task. The figural training yielded significant training effects only regarding the picture painting task. Findings suggest a specific training effect of the figural creativity training, and moreover indicate that the verbal creativity training, rather than stimulating “verbal” creative abilities per se, was more strongly concerned with domain-general creativity processes including ideational fluency, flexibility, and originality that are characteristics of divergent thinking tasks across different domains.     

Autonomous Motivation and Chinese Adolescents’ Creative Thinking: The Moderating Role of Parental Involvement

The relationship between motivation and creativity has long been of interest and many studies have been conducted to demonstrate the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on creativity. The autonomous/controlled distinction of motivation suggested by self-determination theory (SDT) provides a new perspective on the motivation issue. Based on both SDT and the confluence approach of creativity, this study attempted to examine the relationship between autonomous/controlled motivation and creative thinking as well as the moderating role of parental involvement/autonomy support on this relationship. Five hundred and fifty Chinese high school students participated in the study and their autonomous/controlled motivation, parental involvement/autonomy support, and creative thinking were measured. Results indicated that autonomous motivation positively predicted creative thinking, and this relationship was moderated by parental involvement. For both junior and senior high school students, autonomous motivation was more strongly related to creative thinking when there was high maternal involvement. The moderating role of paternal involvement, however, differed between junior and senior high school students and there existed a 3-way interaction effect. Implications of this study for cultivating creativity among Chinese adolescents are also discussed.     

Characteristics of ADHD Related to Executive Function: Differential Predictions for Creativity-Related Traits

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.     

Convergent Thinking Moderates the Relationship between Divergent Thinking and Scientific Creativity

Creativity plays an important role in human society as well as in individual development, and creativity in the domain of science is a specific form. A body of research had demonstrated the role of divergent thinking in creativity. The role of convergent thinking had also been recognized, but more empirical evidence was needed. To investigate the interaction between convergent and divergent thinking on adolescent scientific creativity, the current study tested 588 high school students. The results showed that convergent thinking interacted with fluency/flexibility of divergent thinking on scientific creativity. In particular, divergent thinking predicted creativity in those high in convergent thinking. Findings suggested a threshold-setting effect of convergent thinking, which meant only when convergent thinking capacity reached a certain level, divergent thinking could play a role in scientific creativity. Implications for future research and educational practice were discussed.     

The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Domain-Specific and Domain-General Creativity

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 .52 to .77). These findings add to the nuanced relationship between emotional intelligence and creativity and serve as a call for more work of this nature.     

Domain Specificity in Creativity Testing: A Comparison of Performance on a General Divergent‐Thinking Test and a Parallel,Content‐Specific Test

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which domain‐specific components, such as content and type of task, influence divergent thinking and creativity by comparing the performance of 112 ninth‐grade students on two parallel divergent‐thinking tests. The Verbal Forms of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) represented the domain‐independent measures, while two forms of a Creativity in History Test (CHT), whose items corresponded closely to those of the TTCT, served as the content‐specific measures. The results indicated that both content‐specific and task‐specific factors have significant effects on divergent‐thinking and creative performance. Implications concerning the definition of creativity as a construct and its measurement are discussed.     

Exploring the Effect of Perceived Teacher Support on Multiple Creativity Tasks: Based on the Expectancy–Value Model of Achievement Motivation

The present study explores the effect of perceived teacher support on three forms of thinking related to creativity. Tests of convergent thinking (by means of the Remote Associates Test), insight thinking (explored through a brain‐teaser test), and divergent thinking (by means of a verbal creativity test) were given to 512 middle school students in China, along with assessments of their perceived teacher support and creative self‐efficacy. The results of this study indicate that perceived teacher support positively predicts convergent thinking and insight thinking, with creative self‐efficacy playing a partial mediating role between perceived teacher support and convergent thinking. However, no significant relationships were found between perceived teacher support and divergent thinking. The findings partly lend support to the expectancy–value model of achievement motivation that teacher’s behavior influences student performance through self‐belief pathway.     

Students' Divergent Thinking and Teachers' Ratings of Creativity: Does Gender Play a Role?

The differences between genders regarding the properties of divergent thinking and teachers' ratings of students' creativity are the issue of the present research. Data gathered from three previous experimental studies in Greek primary school students (N total = 228) was used for this purpose. In these studies, divergent thinking tasks were assigned to students and teachers' ratings were collected. The results showed that there were indeed differences in performance — except in the subscale of originality — in favor of girls who were more likely to perform better when they had a male teacher. Teachers' ratings of creativity were not related to students' gender but to teachers' gender.     

Do Traditional Admissions Criteria Reflect Applicant Creativity?

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.     

青少年创造性发展及其脑机制研究进展

青少年时期是创造性发展的关键阶段,探明青少年创造性发展规律及其神经机制对于培养和激发个体的创新潜能具有重要意义。本文综述了青少年创造性发展及其脑机制的研究进展,分别对青少年创造性思维发展趋势、影响因素及其相应的脑机制展开综述,并在此基础上进行了展望。总体而言,青少年时期创造性思维发展呈现出两个波峰(11~13岁,15~16岁)的发展趋势;青少年创造性发展受外部原生家庭教养方式和学校教师激励以及内部情绪动机和自我管理能力的影响较大;前额叶对青少年创造性发展具有重要作用,这可能与该脑区涉及执行控制功能有关。针对青少年创造性发展的教育干预以及大脑可塑性可能成为该领域的研究热点;而大样本纵向跟踪多模态脑影像数据库的建立可为相关研究提供重要支持。     

Cognitive Abilities and Creative Behaviors: CAB-5 and Consequences

The validity of six indices of divergent production is examined with reference to creative output in eight content domains: visual arts, music, literature, theater, science and engineering, business ventures, apparel design, and video and photographic work. Undergraduates (n = 144) completed Consequences, four scales from the Comprehensive Ability Battery, and a specially developed self-report inventory that produced eight creative content scores and a total score. Correlational analysis determined that Semantic Fluency, Ideational Fluency, Originality and Remote Consequences were substantially correlated with most creative behaviors and were uncorrelated with grade point average. A factor analysis of criteria revealed two underlying patterns of creativity, suggesting that proficiency in one creative domain is predictive of proficiency in several others. The study of creativity has traditionally been propelled by aesthetic, scientific, and economic concerns. While revolutionary breakthroughs in science, technology, and design often command our attention and respect, it is the small, evolutionary innovations that typically have the greatest immediate economic impact (Haustein, 1981). From any vantage point there has always been an interest in the prediction and measurement of creative behavior and aptitude. The available measurement approaches for creativity include cognitive abilities, personality traits, self-reports of creative behavior and peer and teacher ratings of creative works (Hocevar, 1981). The purpose of this study is to assess the validity of an underresearched set of cognitive measures: four subtests of the Comprehensive Ability Battery (CAB-5; Hakstian & Cattell, 1976) and the Consequences test (Christensen, Merrifield, & Guilford, 1958). Our validity strategy was correlational; criteria were eight self-report indices of creative endeavor. The following paragraphs elaborate the underlying theory from which these measures originated and some unresolved issues. Perhaps the largest single breakthrough in the cognitive approach to understanding creativity came from Guilford's (1967) 120-factor structure of intellect model. While commonly used intelligence tests measure convergent forms of thinking, creativity involves divergent thought processes which, according to Guilford, account for 30 of the 120 factors of intelligence. Working through a factor analytic paradigm, Guilford was able to identify over 100 out of 120 factors. Guilford's structure of intellect may be criticized for having fractured intellectual functioning into too narrowly defined units relative to what human faculties are actually engaged in ordinary intellectual endeavors. Nonetheless, the theory did provide a provocative explanation for the nature of creative thought and some interesting measurements of same. Measurements of creative thought (divergent production) involve word fluency, category formation and reformation, ideational fluency original uses for common objects (opposite of functional fixedness). One test, Consequences (Christensen et al., 1958), is of particular concern to this research project and involves a certain amount of social awareness on the part of the examinee in conjunction with divergent production. In a typical test item, examinees are presented with a hypothetical situation, “What would be the consequences if people no longer needed to sleep?” along with a few common responses. Examinees are then given five minutes to write as many consequences of the hypothetical situation as they can think of. Responses are scored by, first, eliminating responses that are redundant with the samples or other responses or that are completely irrelevant Remaining responses are then categorized as obvious and remote. The numbers of obvious and remote responses are counted to produce two scores. Consequences continues to be listed as a research instrument by its publisher. Norms in the manual (Guilford & Guilford, 1980) are only available for 331 engineers who took two forms of the test, 665 ninth-graders, 80 twelfth graders, and a college sample of 87 cases. According to Guilford & Guilford, the consequences scores are closely related to other divergent production measures, remote more so than obvious. The CAB-5 developed by Hakstian & Cattell (1976, 1978) who also worked in the factor analytic mode, consists of 20 subscales that appear to capture the essentials of convergent and divergent thinking in a timed battery of manageable size. The four divergent thinking scales — semantic fluency, ideational fluency, word fluency, and originality — are of particular interest to this project While the usual types of validity and norm-building research have been done with the convergent scales (Hakstian & Cattell, 1976; Hakstian & Woolsey, 1985) little external validation work is available for the divergent scales. Hakstian & Woolsey (1985) found that semantic fluency and ideational fluency were significantly correlated with grades in an introductory psychology course (r = .33 and .30 respectively). The rationale for why divergent production would be related to grades in that course was vague. Norms for the divergent scales are currently available for 216 college and 1098 high school students. While the validation question is framed around a limited set of scales in this research project, it does represent an issue of more general concern. According to Storfer (1990), several researchers have questioned whether measures of divergent production have any external validity with actual creative works. He cited a study where teachers' ratings of their students' creativity were based on logical or convergent measures but had no relationship to divergent measures. In his review of creativity measures, Hocevar (1978) noted a generally low level of interrelationship among personality, cognitive, self-report, and rating measures of creativity; from this trend he opined that self-report measures of creative behavior were perhaps the most defensible indices of creativity. On the other hand, a study of approximately 500 college students showed that those that had won science prizes, or who published or exhibited their work scored higher than others on ideational fluency (Wallach & Wing, 1969). While the latter finding is reassuring, we are not convinced that prizes, publication, or exhibition represent the full range of creative behavior to be found at the college level. Prizes require a propensity to compete among the participants, and a proclivity toward subjectivity, among the judges. As academic researcher know, earth-shattering ideas are not quickly snapped up by scientific journals, and much of what is published is indicative of the evolutionary progress mentioned at the outset of this article. There is reason to assume that there is much valuable creative effort taking place that does not reach wide audiences or that is otherwise shoved into drawers. From a statistical point of view, it is preferable to conduct a criterion related validity study that encompasses a wide (if not complete) range of criterion values and to avoid an extreme groups methodology, such as a comparison of prizewinners and others. The latter has the impact of exaggerating the predictor-criterion effect size. Altogether, Hocevar (1981) identified 15 studies showing a positive relationship between divergent production and other measures of creativity, and 15 other studies that showed no such relationship. With the foregoing theoretical and methological points in mind, the following hypotheses were examined: 1. Consequences and CAB-5 divergent scale scores would be significantly related to several types of creative behavior. 2. Consequences and CAB-5 divergent scale scores would be significantly related to each other. 3. There would be a substantial interrelationship among the various types of creative behavior. Significant findings would dispel the notion among critics of divergent thinking theory (cf. Stolper, 1990) that the prediction of creativity is situationally specific. 4. Divergent measures and indices of creative behavior would not be related to college students' grade point average (GPA). While we recognize that no point is proven by failing to reject the null hypothesis, a null relationship with GPA is expected from the general theory, on the basis of findings concerning teachers' rates cited in Stolper (1990) and our own assumptions that much creative work goes unnoticed in favor of traditional academic demand. An expected null relationship thus adds an element of convergent-discriminant validity analysis to the research plan.     

Measuring creative thinking: An activity‐based approach

The primary objective of this exploratory study was to test activity‐based behavioral measures of creative thinking with a sample of Hong Kong fifth‐grade school children, and also to determine the concurrent validity between activity‐based measures of creative thinking and standard divergent thinking tests. Altogether five creative thinking abilities were measured using the behavioral techniques and the children's scores for fluency, flexibility, and originality were compared with those from the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The construct‐related validity among all the different abilities on the behavioral measures was also calculated. Contrary to previous assertions about the lack of creativity among Chinese populations, the Hong Kong children demonstrated their ability to use a number of creative thinking features in order to solve problems. No construct validity was found between the different measures of creativity except between originality and fluency. Possible reasons for this are reviewed. The TTCT and the behavioral techniques were found to have some concurrent validity in relationto fluency and originality on the Verbal Tests. There was no correlation for flexibility. The advantages of using activity‐based measurements of creative behavior are discussed.     

Creativity in Its Social Context: The Interplay of Organizational Norms,Situational Threat,and Gender

Past research has frequently made the assumptions that creativity is an individual, rather than social, behavior; that the factors shaping creative behavior influence everyone in the same way; and that these factors always have the same influence regardless of the situation. This research challenges all 3 of these assumptions. In an experiment, participants (n = 187) assumed the role of members of a business organization with either individualist or collectivist norms that was either under competitive threat or not. Results indicated that, when threat was absent, men exhibited more divergent thinking under individualist than collectivist norms. However, the reverse was true for women when threat was absent and for both sexes when their organization was under threat. Thus, a group norm emphasizing individuality can sometimes enhance divergent thinking performance. However, this influence is moderated by other situational factors such as competitive threat, and, possibly for reasons of differing socialization, does not appear to affect men and women equally.     

Priming divergent thinking promotes logical reasoning in 6- to 8-year olds: But more for high than low SES students

Divergent thinking is a component of creativity. In the following study, we argue that this form of thinking also underlies logical reasoning. A total of 205 early elementary school children in Grades 1 and 2, from high and moderately low SES environments, were given a short-term prime for divergent thinking and simple reasoning problems. Overall, receiving this prime significantly improved logical reasoning at both grade levels. High and low SES students had similar levels of working memory, inhibitory control, performance on the divergent thinking task, and levels of logical reasoning without the prime. However, also consistent with our predictions, only high SES students showed overall improved logical reasoning following the divergent thinking prime, with the SES difference concentrated in the younger students. These results suggest that environmental differences in openness to alternatives and divergent thinking might underlie developing SES differences in levels of logical thinking.     

Intellectual Creativity and the Teacher

ABSTRACT Teachers must be trained to recognize the creative student, and we now have some useful materials for this purpose. Four characteristics of intellectual creativity are universality, diversity, its nature as a process, and its dependence on large inputs of information. The creative person is as complex as the creative process, and often possesses contradictory or inconsistent traits. We can encourage creativity through subject-matter instruction, but this requires that teachers be trained to recognize and develop creativity, and be innovative themselves. Teachers need freedom to experiment with the involved concepts of divergent thinking if these are to be developed more fully in school classrooms.     

The Relationship Between Nonclinical Schizotypy and Handedness on Divergent and Convergent Creative Problem-Solving Tasks

Previous research indicated a relationship between hemispherical dominance, the extent of schizotypal tendencies, and creativity. Little research has been conducted to assess the degree of schizotypy in nonclinical samples. The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which measures of multidimensional schizotypy and predominant handedness could predict measures of creativity, as assessed by both divergent and convergent tasks. One hundred and twenty-six participants participated in a quasi-experiment involving tests of predominant handedness, schizotypal tendencies, and divergent and convergent thinking. Results suggest that individuals who scored high on a test for schizotypal tendencies performed better on divergent problem-solving tasks, as opposed to low scoring individuals who performed better on convergent problem-solving tasks. Furthermore, results suggest that there was relationship between handedness on divergent and convergent thinking. There was, however, a relationship between handedness (right hemisphere) on the degree of schizotypal tendencies with left-handed individuals demonstrating greater schizotypal tendencies.     

Creativity: Hot and cold

Cognitive theorists have frequently distinguished between two types of thinking, one associated with control and reason, and the other with emotional expression A similar distinction was made by Freud between secondary and primary process thinking This paper has investigated whether corresponding styles of creativity can be discovered A study was reported in which two types of behaviour appeared a permissive, expressive type, and a controlled, coping type Both of these correlated positively with self-reported creativity A second study contrasted the correlates of originality on tests of divergent thinking with originality on projective tests. Two clusters emerged, one representing competent, stable, resourceful personalities who scored high on divergent thinking tests of originality, the other representing impulsive, emotionally expressive, imaginative persons who scored high on projective test originality It was concluded that there are two creativity styles corresponding to the two types of cognitive process, and these styles were labelled “cold” creativity and “hot” creativity. Both styles play a part, in varying proportions, in any creativity process Performance on the divergent thinking tests of originality is more closely related to cold than hot creativity and, therefore, the distinction does not correspond with that between convergent and divergent thinking Nor does it correspond with differences between scientific and artistic interests and creativity.     

Contemporary Studies on the Concept of Creativity: the East and the West

This article reviews contemporary studies on the concept of creativity across two cultures—Eastern (Asian) cultures and Western (American and European) cultures — by examining two bodies of literature. One is on people's implicit theories of creativity across different cultures and the other is on cross‐cultural studies of creativity. Studies on implicit theories of creativity in the East suggest that many Asians have similar but not identical conceptions of creativity to many people in the West. Cross‐cultural studies of creativity reveal that Easterners and Westerners differ, on average, in their divergent‐thinking performance and creative expressions. A view of creativity as relatively culture‐specific is presented and the appropriateness of using divergent‐thinking tests to measure creativity is discussed.     

A meta-analytic investigation of the relationship of state and trait anxiety to performance on figural and verbal creative tasks

Extensive research suggests when and how anxiety has debilitating or facilitating effects on routine cognitive tasks or motor tasks. However, research examining anxiety's relation to performance on creative tasks such as divergent thinking and artistic tasks is less conclusive despite a rather substantial literature. The authors' meta-analytic investigation of 59 independent samples finds that anxiety is significantly and negatively related to creative performance. In addition, the findings provide insights into factors such as task complexity, type of task (i.e., figural or verbal), and type of anxiety (i.e., state or trait) that moderate the relationship between anxiety and creativity-all of which are consistent with the idea that anxiety and creativity present competing cognitive demands. In addition to identifying gaps in the literature such as the need for research using a two-component model of anxiety in relation to creativity, the authors' results have practical implications for those seeking to increase individual creativity.