中国人整体性思维特征的情境评估法及其应用

创设了新的中国人思维特征的情境评估方法, 初步应用于整体性思维特征与创造力倾向关系的研究并对其信效度进行了检验。新评估法选取体现典型文化意境和中国人思维特征的成语谜语作为材料, 利用虚拟现实技术构建形与意、情境与语境相互转换的成语谜语文化园, 记录被试游览时即景说出的成语建立成语库, 并编码所录成语的思维特征类型以作为被试的整体性思维测量指标。基于测试数据的信效度分析表明整体性思维成语测试系统信效度表现良好。整体性思维与创造力倾向的相关分析表明, 整体性思维与创造力倾向中的好奇性显著负相关。研究首次证实了利用虚拟现实技术来重建传统文化情境以实现对中国人思维特征的情境评估的可行性, 提示基于虚拟现实技术的情境评估法在未来心理学相关研究中的应用价值。     

The selection of creative ideas after individual idea generation: Choosing between creativity and impact

It is commonly assumed that successful innovation depends on creative idea generation: the more ideas are generated, the higher the probability of selecting a very good idea should be. However, research has shown that people do not perform optimally at idea selection and that ideational output may not contribute much to creative idea selection. The present studies aim to explain this phenomenon. We identified the strong tendency of our participants to select feasible and desirable ideas, at the cost of originality, as the main reason for their poor selection performance. Two manipulations of participants' processing of the available ideas (exclusion instructions and quality ratings) had no effect on selection effectiveness. In contrast, explicitly instructing participants to select creative or original ideas did improve selection effectiveness with regard to idea originality, but at the same time decreased participants' satisfaction and the rated effectiveness of chosen ideas. Results are discussed in relation to an effectiveness‐originality trade off.     

Instructions Moderate the Relationship between Creative Performance in Figural Divergent Thinking and Reasoning Capacity

In this study with within-subject design, the “be-creative effect” was investigated using three instructions in figural divergent-thinking tasks: Besides a be-fluent instruction, a be-creative instruction, and a be-creative instruction combined with strategies were applied. In addition, reasoning ability as part of fluid intelligence, self-reported creative ideation, current motivation after reading the instructions, and task-related interest were assessed. Multilevel analysis applying random-intercept-constant-slope models found significant main effects of the instructions on creative performance and fluency. Both be-creative instructions yielded a rise in creative performance in divergent thinking tasks with additional improvement due to supporting strategies. The be-fluent instruction enhanced the quantity of ideas but decreased creative performance. Task-related interest turned out to be a better predictor of creative performance than the self-estimated expected interest prior to working on the task. Moreover, the relationship of creative performance and reasoning ability was moderated by instruction, with no relationship with a be-fluent instruction and small to moderate positive effects with both instructions emphasizing creative ideas.     

Percolating ideas: The effects of caffeine on creative thinking and problem solving

Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychotropic drug in the world, with numerous studies documenting the effects of caffeine on people’s alertness, vigilance, mood, concentration, and attentional focus. The effects of caffeine on creative thinking, however, remain unknown. In a randomized placebo-controlled between-subject double-blind design the present study investigated the effect of moderate caffeine consumption on creative problem solving (i.e., convergent thinking) and creative idea generation (i.e., divergent thinking). We found that participants who consumed 200 mg of caffeine (approximately one 12 oz cup of coffee, n = 44), compared to those in the placebo condition (n = 44), showed significantly enhanced problem-solving abilities. Caffeine had no significant effects on creative generation or on working memory. The effects remained after controlling for participants’ caffeine expectancies, whether they believed they consumed caffeine or a placebo, and changes in mood. Possible mechanisms and future directions are discussed.     

Revisiting Mednick's Model on Creativity‐Related Differences in Associative Hierarchies. Evidence for a Common Path to Uncommon Thought

Fifty years ago, Mednick [Psychological Review, 69 (1962) 220] proposed an elaborate model that aimed to explain how creative ideas are generated and why creative people are more likely to have creative ideas. The model assumes that creative people have flatter associative hierarchies and as a consequence can more fluently retrieve remote associative elements, which can be combined to form creative ideas. This study aimed at revisiting Mednick's model and providing an extensive test of its hypotheses. A continuous free association task was employed and association performance was compared between groups high and low in creativity, as defined by divergent thinking ability and self‐report measures. We found that associative hierarchies do not differ between low and high creative people, but creative people showed higher associative fluency and more uncommon responses. This suggests that creativity may not be related to a special organization of associative memory, but rather to a more effective way of accessing its contents. The findings add to the evidence associating creativity with highly adaptive executive functioning.     

Creativity: Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Selection of Creative Ideas

Creative idea selection—the selection of the most creative idea(s) from available ideas—is an important yet understudied topic. Creative idea selection can be performed by the idea generator (i.e., intrapersonal selection) or by another person (i.e., interpersonal selection). In the current research, we examined whether these two types of selection lead to different levels of performance. Participants generated six creative ideas to solve a societal problem. Thereafter, two selection tasks—intrapersonal selection and interpersonal selection—were performed. During intrapersonal selection, the idea generator selected the most creative idea from his/her own ideas; during interpersonal selection, another person made the selection from the same ideas. We found no effect of intrapersonal and interpersonal selection on creative idea selection performance: People selected ideas of identical creativity, irrespective of whether that idea was from themselves or from others. Moreover, we replicated the earlier finding that people perform suboptimally at creative idea selection, failing to select ideas that were more creative than an average idea, for both intrapersonal and interpersonal selection.     

Creativity,Originality, and Appropriateness: What do Explicit Instructions Tell Us About Their Relationships?

Originality is a necessary part of creativity, but creative things are more than just original. They also solve a problem, or more generally are somehow fitting or appropriate. Yet previous research found an inverse relationship between ratings of originality and ratings of appropriateness. The present investigation employed a different methodology — it focused on the generation of ideas instead of judgments about them — to reexamine the relationships between originality, appropriateness, and creativity. Undergraduate students (N = 170) from two large universities received either realistic or unrealistic divergent thinking tasks. These were given with one of four types of instructions. These asked them to give (a) as many ideas as possible (which is the standard type of instruction for these kinds of tests), (b) only original ideas, (c) only appropriate ideas, or (d) only creative ideas. Brief definitions of originality, appropriateness, or creativity were also provided. Comparisons of the four groups indicated that there were significant differences between the different kinds of tasks, with the realistic set eliciting more appropriate ideas than the unrealistic, but the unrealistic tasks eliciting more original and varied (flexible) ideas. There was an interaction indicating that the magnitude of the impact of the instructions varied across tasks. Correlational analyses indicated that the correlation between the originality and appropriateness scores was the lowest among all possible inter‐index relationships (only 7% shared variance). Future research and practical implications are explored.     

Taking Time to Incubate: The Moderating Role of ‘What You Do’ and ‘When You Do It’ on Creative Performance

We explore how the choices available to individuals planning multi‐task work can facilitate the incubation of ideas and enhance creative performance. Using opportunistic assimilation theory, we hypothesize that two considerations can determine the effectiveness of incubation and creative performance. First, we argue that having the discretion to switch tasks when needed, as well as the timing of this discretionary switch between tasks (i.e., earlier versus later in the work process on the main task) is important. Second, the scope of the intervening task (i.e., in the same knowledge domain as the main task versus in a different domain) can lead to more effective incubation and creativity. Results of a laboratory study indicate that participants who made a discretionary switch to an intervening task later in their work process on the main task benefited significantly more in terms of creative performance than those who chose to switch earlier in their work process or chose not to switch tasks. Additionally, participants who worked on an in‐domain intervening task exhibited significantly higher creativity on the main task than those who worked on an out‐of‐domain intervening task. Furthermore, focus of attention on the main task partially mediated these results.     

Does Cognitive Style Moderate Expected Evaluation and Adolescents' Creative Performance: An Empirical Study

Two studies investigated the effects of cognitive and school environmental factors on adolescents' creative performance. The first study tested the effects of expected evaluation and cognitive style on creativity among 89 high school students. The second study tested the effects of evaluation type and cognitive style on creativity among 92 high school students. Study 1 found main effects of expected evaluation and cognitive style on creativity. The interaction between expected evaluation and cognitive style was statistically significant. Under an experimental condition of expected evaluation, field‐dependent adolescents performed more creatively (i.e., higher originality) than those without expected evaluation. Study 2 uncovered main effects of expected evaluation type and cognitive style on creativity but no interactions between expected evaluation type and cognitive style. Adolescents performed better on the dimension of flexibility in a controlling evaluation condition, compared with adolescents in informational evaluation condition, and field‐independent adolescents showed more fluency and originality than field‐dependent adolescents. Together, this research provides a better understanding of the effects of expected evaluation and cognitive style on adolescents' creative performance. Implications for further research are discussed.     

Reactions to Creative Problem Solving Training: Does Cognitive Style Make a Difference?

Creative Problem Solving (CPS), a well‐documented methodology for developing creative‐thinking skills, has often been the focus of studies that have examined the impact of creativity training. The purpose of the present study was to extend this line of research in two ways. The first objective was to evaluate participants' reactions to specific elements of a CPS course. Here participants were asked to rate the CPS components, stages, principles, and tools for enjoyment and future value. The second objective was to examine whether participants' reactions to the CPS training varied in accordance to their cognitive style preferences. The inventory used to measure cognitive style is called FourSight. FourSight identifies respondents' preferences in terms of four key elements of the creative process: problem identification (i.e., Clarifier), idea generation (i.e., Ideator), solution development (i.e., Developer), and implementation (i.e., Implementer). Eighty‐four participants were enrolled in various graduate and undergraduate courses in CPS. Participants completed FourSight at the beginning of their respective course and at the conclusion they responded to a survey in which they evaluated various aspects of CPS for enjoyment and value. Overall evaluation of the CPS courses indicated that participants associated the greatest enjoyment and future value with tools, principles, and stages that were primarily orientated towards divergent thinking. Analysis of participants' reactions in light of their FourSight preferences revealed two distinct types of reactions to the course content. One form of response was labeled true‐to‐type, for example, individuals who expressed high Clarifier preferences found learning the Gather Data stage of CPS to be more enjoyable than those with low Clarifier preferences. The second type of reaction was referred to as a complementary relationship. This type of relationship between the course and the participant's style seemed to indicate a desire to develop a skill that is perhaps outside of one's style preference. For example, participants with strong Ideator preferences were more likely to associate higher levels of future value with the Prepare for Action component of the CPS process. The implications of these and other findings are discussed.     

The Adaptable Mind in Design: Relating Personality,Cognitive Style,and Creative Performance

This study examined domain-specific relationships between creative personality traits, cognitive styles, and creative performance in design. Design students (n = 39) completed the Adjective Check List (ACL) and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) to gauge personality and cognitive style, respectively. The ACL was scored using Domino's Creativity Scale (ACL-Cr) to identify creative personality traits. The sample also completed a design task that was evaluated for creativity using the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT). Findings indicated that participants showing flexibility between cerebral, limbic, right, and left modes of thinking had significantly higher mean scores on creative personality than did those who exhibited a more entrenched cognitive style. Creative personality traits (ACL-Cr) significantly predicted creative performance on the design task. While cognitive style (HBDI) did not predict creative performance, flexibility between styles was significantly correlated to the creative personality. In sum, individuals exhibiting adaptable thinking appear to possess the flexibility necessary to design creatively and potentially transform the domain with original and imaginative solutions.     

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.     

Mild Affective Shifts and Creativity: Effects on Idea Generation,Evaluation, and Implementation Planning

This study investigated the impact of mild shifts in affective tone (i.e., pleasant vs. unpleasant) and arousal (i.e., high vs. low) on three creative processes. Undergraduates read short stories designed to induce affective shifts and then were asked to generate solutions to a complex business problem. Shifts in affective tone and arousal interacted to influence idea generation and implementation planning, but not idea evaluation. The strongest creative performance was exhibited by participants who experienced a stable and pleasantly toned, low-arousal (i.e., relaxed) state and by those who shifted to an unpleasantly toned, high-arousal (i.e., angry) state. In contrast, those who shifted to an unpleasantly toned, low-arousal (i.e., sad) state or a pleasantly toned, high-arousal (i.e., happy) state tended to exhibit poorer creative performance. These results demonstrate the need to revisit the popular conception that organizations should promote intense levels of pleasant affect to enhance employee creativity.     

Divergent Thinking As a Function of Time and Prompting to “Be Creative” in Undergraduates

This study examined divergent thinking in undergraduates as a function of gender, time, and test instruction conditions. Differences were examined in male and female undergraduates when tested on a divergent thinking test with or without prompting to “be creative” and with or without time limitations imposed. Subject groups were assigned to one of the following four conditions: standard instructions/four minute time limit; standard instructions/no time limit; creative instructions/four minute time limit; and creative instructions/no time limit. The no time limit condition resulted in significantly higher mean traditional fluency and flexibility divergent production scores. Males were found to have significantly higher mean divergent production scores on fluency. This study supported previous research findings regarding the lack of enhanced traditional divergent production scores for females resulting from creative instructions.     

Do Employees Know How Their Supervisors View Them? A Study Examining Metaperceptions of Job Performance

This study investigated employees’ views about how their supervisors would rate their job performance (i.e., employees’ metaperceptions). Two hundred forty employees from a high-tech firm provided self- and metaperception job performance ratings, and their supervisors also provided ratings of the employees’ performance. The study produced several notable findings, including that metaperceptions were more strongly related to supervisory ratings than were self-ratings, that meta-accuracy was stronger for task versus contextual performance, and that employees who engaged in more impression management behavior exhibited higher meta-accuracy. Discussion focuses on the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

TREATMENT ACCEPTABILITY AND “FAKING GOOD”: ARE STAFF TELLING US WHAT THEY THINK WE WANT TO HEAR?

Treatment acceptability refers to how acceptable various treatment alternatives are to individuals who are subjected to and who implement those treatments. While treatment-acceptability research increases in popularity, some have questioned its usefulness. In particular, Schwartz and Baer (1991) question whether staff might be telling us what we want to hear, analogous to the phenomenon of test-takers “faking good” while taking personality tests. In this study, we sought to investigate the possibility of such bias in treatment-acceptability ratings. Direct-care staff at a large residential facility were presented with a clinical vignette and five treatment options to rate. They also received three different types of instructions (standard, “fake good,” and “prompted honesty”) designed to determine whether biases in ratings would appear. Results indicate that, under these conditions, staff do not fake good, i.e., there were no differences across instructional conditions. Collapsing across conditions, staff did differ in their ratings on the five treatment alternatives. Reasons for current results and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Effects of explicit instructions to "be creative" on the psychological meaning of divergent thinking test scores.

The Alternate Uses Test was administered to 50 undergraduate males instructed to produce creative (i.e., novel and worthwhile) uses and to 55 comparable subjects simply instructed to produce as many uses as possible. All uses were rated for creativity. An index of self-assessed creative thinking ability correlated significantly more strongly (p less than .05) with the number of creative uses produced in the qualitatively-oriented condition than with the number of creative or total uses produced in the standard, quantitatively-oriented condition. The correlation between self-rated creative ability and creative uses production in the qualitatively-oriented condition remained significant (p less than .001) after indices of achievement motivation and general verbal aptitude were partialled out. The results were interpreted as demonstrating the value of coordinating informative divergent thinking test instructions with qualitative scoring criteria.     

Sex differences in instructions to "be creative" on divergent and nondivergent test scores

Harrington (1975) found that both the magnitude and meaning of male subject scores on the Alternate Uses Test were altered by explicit instructions to “be creative,” and argued for the necessity of such instructions, plus qualitative scoring criteria, in the employment of tests of creativity. The present study elaborated upon this study by including female subjects, more than one test of divergent thinking and a test of nondivergent thinking. Instructions to be creative increased the proportion of creative responses output for both males and females, and sharpened correlations with Adjective Check List personality scales. Instructions did not alter performance on the nondivergent test. These results were interpreted to mean the instructions elicited strategies particularly relevant to divergent thinking and ruled out nonspecific effects such as those due to motivation. A reliable sex-difference in ideational fluency was also observed: instructions to be creative facilitated the total number of responses output for the male subjects. This supports a hypothesis that the instructions disambiguate I he test situation differently for men and women, suggesting the need to isolate individual conceptions of creativity in order to maximize test performance.     

Beyond Idea Generation: The Power of Groups in Developing Ideas

Brainstorming research has claimed that individuals are more creative than groups. However, these conclusions are largely based on measuring creativity by the number of ideas generated, and researchers have tended to neglect other important components of creativity, such as the quality of developed ideas. These studies aim to address this gap in the literature and investigate how well individuals and groups develop ideas. The first study compared collaborative groups, nominal groups (i.e., groups composed of individuals working separately), and individuals on developing an original design for a language-learning game. No differences were revealed between conditions on the game ratings. In the second study, one idea was preselected and given to the participants for further development. Groups received higher ratings in the marketability and overall categories than both nominal groups and individuals, and higher ratings in the fun category than individuals. The qualitative data showed that groups discussed a wider range of topics and topics related to marketability more than individuals did. Thus it appears that there are benefits to developing ideas in a collaborative group rather than individually. Possible explanations for the present findings are explored.     

The Importance of the Default Mode Network in Creativity—A Structural MRI Study

Anecdotal reports as well as behavioral studies have suggested that creative performance benefits from unconscious processes. So far, however, little is known about how creative ideas arise from the brain. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the neural correlates of creativity by means of structural MRI research. Given that unconscious and less controlled processes are important in creative thinking, structural brain research may find a positive correlation between well‐established creativity measures and cortical thickness in brain structures of the default mode network (i.e., the counterpart of the cognitive control network). Individuals performed the Alternative Uses task by which an individual's cognitive flexibility and the average uniqueness and average creativity of a participant's ideas were assessed. We computed optimized voxel‐based‐morphometry (VBM) to explore the correlation between inter‐individual differences in creativity and inter‐individual differences in gray matter volume. For all creativity measures, a positive correlation was found between creative performance and gray matter volume of the default mode network. These findings support the idea that the default mode network is important in creativity, and provide neurostructural support for the idea that unconscious forms of information processing are important in creativity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.