Errors in Creative Thought? Cognitive Biases in a Complex Processing Activity

The generation of new ideas is a complex demanding activity involving multiple processing operations. As is the case in other forms of complex cognition, biases in process execution can induce errors that limit peoples' ability to generate viable new ideas. In the present effort, the nature of these biases, and their impact on creative thought, are examined. It is noted that these biases arise from multiple sources including knowledge, limitations in processing capacity, patterns of information use, and the strategies applied in process execution. The implications of these observations for enhancing creative performance are discussed along with potential strategies for error remediation.     

Causal Analysis to Enhance Creative Problem-Solving: Performance and Effects on Mental Models

In recent years, it has become apparent that knowledge is a critical component of creative thought. One form of knowledge that might be particularly important to creative thought relies on the mental models people employ to understand novel, ill-defined problems. In this study, undergraduates were given training in the use of causal relationships in applying mental models in creative problem-solving. A pre-post design was used to assess the effects of this training on mental models and creative problem-solving. It was found that causal analysis training resulted in the acquisition of better mental models (in terms of subjective and objective attributes) and better solutions (in terms of quality, originality, and elegance) to problems calling for creative thought among high-ability participants. The implications of these findings for understanding the role of mental models in creative problem-solving are discussed.     

An Analysis of Early vs. Later Responses on a Divergent Production Task Across Three Time Press Conditions

Traditional assessments of divergent production have employed standard time press conditions of three minutes for measures of fluency, flexibility, and originality. Recent studies have provided evidence that the traditional time press condition may impede both fluency and quality of responses and that differences in divergent production responses have been found under a variety of creative prompting conditions. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of three time press and three creative prompt conditions on early vs. later trial originality scores for three divergent production stimuli. The participants were 91 undergraduate students enrolled in Educational Psychology courses who were randomly assigned to one of six experimental groups. The six groups were counterbalanced across the three vignette tasks in time press requirements and creative prompting. Aggregate differences were found in which there was a higher frequency of originality scores for the latter portions of trials as compared with the early portion of trials for all time press and prompting conditions.     

六祖惠能的积极心理学思想蕴涵

六祖惠能的禅宗思想中蕴涵着丰富且深邃的积极心理学思想,其旨在解脱心灵、远离尘世烦恼的终极目标及其蕴含的生命的大智慧与当代积极心理学思想高度契合。其积极心理学思想主要包括积极心理品质、积极认知、积极人生态度、积极自我以及积极关系等方面,这些思想对当代社会仍具有很大的现实价值。因此,通过对惠能的积极心理学思想的研究,可加强传统心理学思想与现代主流心理学的融合,既继承与发扬中国传统文化,促使学者关注传统心理学文化; 又推动了积极心理学在中国的发展,使得当代中国人更好地理解和践行积极心理学思想,从而更好地生活。     

Tradeoffs Between Ideas and Structure: Individual Versus Group Performance in Creative Problem Solving

The present effort was intended to assess how situational variables influence the relative performance of groups and individuals on creative problem-solving tasks. More specifically, a priming manipulation was used to increase the number of alternatives available for problem solving while training was used to provide groups with shared mental models bearing on the problem. It was found that having more ideas available led to better individual performance. Group performance, however, was enhanced by training appropriate to problem content that allowed for elaboration and refinement of ideas. These findings indicate that interventions intended to enhance creativity may have different effects at the individual and group level. The need to consider multiple levels of situational influences in attempts to understand creative achievement is discussed.     

Knowledge Discovery as an Aid to Organizational Creativity

Computers can play an important role in the creative process. With the abundance of data and increasing speed of computers, creativity can now be stimulated and enhanced with knowledge mined from available data. The process is known as knowledge discovery or data mining. Knowledge discovery is the process of discovering interesting associations among data in the database. Users in the creativity process can feed on the discovered associations to generate creative solutions. The objective of this paper is to present knowledge discovery as an aid to creativity. The paper first presents the concept of knowledge discovery and then discusses the various techniques in knowledge discovery. Mednick's associative theory of creative thought serves as the theoretical foundation for this research.     

What could be My Next Job? Using Flat Information Structures to Generate Creative Future Career Ideas

In a dynamic labor market, it is important to help people combine information and generate creative solutions to cope with complex career challenges. In the present research, we apply the theory of information structure to creative career idea generation and hypothesize that flat information structures—that is, structures in which the information is disorganized—are more conducive to creativity than hierarchical information structures—that is, structures in which information is organized in higher‐order categories. In two experimental studies, participants had to combine career information related to self and work preferences that was presented either in flat or hierarchical structures. We found that flat information structures, compared with hierarchical information structures, led to future career ideas that were more creative on average. Our results suggest that cognitive flexibility explains the effect of information structure on the creativity of career ideas. Theoretical implications and suggestions for career management practices are discussed.     

Errors in Creative Problem-Solving: Identify,Deliberate, and Remediate

It is often assumed creative performance is error free. Even a cursory inspection of eminent, creative, individuals indicates errors permeate creative efforts. In the present effort, the impact of error management on creative problem-solving is examined. Undergraduates, 136 in all, were asked to work through 10 potential problem solutions where half the solutions evidenced errors and half did not. Participants were asked to identify potential errors, deliberate on these errors, and remediate, or fix, errors prior to providing solutions to a problem calling for creative thought. It was found the number of errors correctly identified, and the quality of error remediation was positively related to the quality, originality, and elegance of problem solutions. More extensive deliberation, however, was found to be especially important for the production of original problem solutions. The implications of these observations for understanding the importance of error management in creative problem-solving are discussed.     

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.     

The use of schemata in the acquisition and transfer of knowledge

A learning model based on “memory schemata” is presented. The model assumes that knowledge substructures in memory are shared by multiple representations of information from diverse contexts. These substructures, or schemata, are collections of concepts and associations that occur together repeatedly and act as unitary, higher-order concepts. When knowledge is represented in terms of a schema, associations from the schema to additional concepts specify the detailed information for that context. This organization of knowledge entails both costs and benefits for the acquisition and retention of new information that utilizes a schema. The use of a familiar encoding structure facilitates memory access at storage and retrieval time. Multiple uses of the shared structure produce interference among concepts from the various contexts. The predictions of the model were tested in two transfer experiments in prose learning. Experiment l demonstrated the simultaneous effects of both facilitation and interference in the learning of diverse information conforming to a single schema. Recall of information from the schema was a non-monotonic function of schema strength. In Experiment 2 facilitation was preserved while interference was eliminated by increasing the discriminability among competing contexts. Results from both experiments confirmed the predictions of the model.     

Differential effects of cognitive inhibition and intelligence on creativity

There are different conceptions about how cognitive inhibition is related to creativity. Creativity has either been associated with effective inhibition, or with disinhibition, or with an adaptive engagement of inhibition. In this study, we examined the relationship of cognitive inhibition, assessed by means of the random motor generation task, with different measures of creativity. We also analyzed whether this relation is mediated by intelligence. We generally found a positive correlation of inhibition and creativity measures. Moreover, latent variable analyses indicate that inhibition may primarily promote the fluency of ideas, whereas intelligence specifically promotes the originality of ideas. These findings support the notion that creative thought involves executive processes and may help to better understand the differential role of inhibition and intelligence in creativity.     

The roles of associative and executive processes in creative cognition

How does the mind produce creative ideas? Past research has pointed to important roles of both executive and associative processes in creative cognition. But such work has largely focused on the influence of one ability or the other—executive or associative—so the extent to which both abilities may jointly affect creative thought remains unclear. Using multivariate structural equation modeling, we conducted two studies to determine the relative influences of executive and associative processes in domain-general creative cognition (i.e., divergent thinking). Participants completed a series of verbal fluency tasks, and their responses were analyzed by means of latent semantic analysis (LSA) and scored for semantic distance as a measure of associative ability. Participants also completed several measures of executive function—including broad retrieval ability (Gr) and fluid intelligence (Gf). Across both studies, we found substantial effects of both associative and executive abilities: As the average semantic distance between verbal fluency responses and cues increased, so did the creative quality of divergent-thinking responses (Study 1 and Study 2). Moreover, the creative quality of divergent-thinking responses was predicted by the executive variables—Gr (Study 1) and Gf (Study 2). Importantly, the effects of semantic distance and the executive function variables remained robust in the same structural equation model predicting divergent thinking, suggesting unique contributions of both constructs. The present research extends recent applications of LSA in creativity research and provides support for the notion that both associative and executive processes underlie the production of novel ideas.     

Bias and Bias Remediation in Creative Problem-Solving: Managing Biases through Forecasting

Although scholars have identified many variables that contribute to creative problem-solving, less attention has been given to variables that might lead to failure in creative problem-solving. One set of variables that might lead to poor performance in creative problem-solving efforts may be found in various decision biases. In this study, the impact of simple and complex decision biases on the production of original, high-quality, and elegant solutions to a creative problem-solving task was examined in a sample of 227 undergraduates attending a large southwestern university. In addition, the value of forecasting instruction as a technique for reducing these decision biases was examined. It was found that both simple and complex decisions biases resulted in problem solutions of lower originality, quality, and elegance. Training in viable forecasting strategies resulted in the production of higher quality problem solutions. The implications of these findings for improving creative problem-solving performance are discussed.     

Process-Based Measures of Creative Problem-Solving Skills: V. Overall Prediction

Prior studies have shown that process-based measures of creative problem-solving skills can be developed that evidence some predictive validity and contribute to our understanding of creative thought. These studies, however, have focused on a single process. Because multiple processes are involved in creative thought, there is a need to examine their joint impact. To address this issue, 137 undergraduates were asked to work on 2 creative problem-solving tasks and complete a battery of measures examining relevant abilities and processing skills. Solution quality and originality scores obtained from the creative problem-solving tasks were regressed on these measures. It was found that the measures of process application were effective predictors of solution quality and originality, yielding significant gains in prediction when added to ability tests. The implications of these findings for the assessment of creative potential are discussed.     

Thinking within the box: The relational processing style elicited by counterfactual mind-sets

By comparing reality to what might have been, counterfactuals promote a relational processing style characterized by a tendency to consider relationships and associations among a set of stimuli. As such, counterfactual mind-sets were expected to improve performance on tasks involving the consideration of relationships and associations but to impair performance on tasks requiring novel ideas that are uninfluenced by salient associations. The authors conducted several experiments to test this hypothesis. In Experiments 1a and 1b, the authors determined that counterfactual mind-sets increase mental states and preferences for thinking styles consistent with relational thought. Experiment 2 demonstrated a facilitative effect of counterfactual mind-sets on an analytic task involving logical relationships; Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that counterfactual mind-sets structure thought and imagination around salient associations and therefore impaired performance on creative generation tasks. In Experiment 5, the authors demonstrated that the detrimental effect of counterfactual mind-sets is limited to creative tasks involving novel idea generation; in a creative association task involving the consideration of relationships between task stimuli, counterfactual mind-sets improved performance.     

The Creative Brain: Corepresenting Schema Violations Enhances TPJ Activity and Boosts Cognitive Flexibility

Cognitive flexibility is one of the essential mental abilities underlying creative thinking. Previous findings have shown that cognitive flexibility can be enhanced by schema violations, and it has been suggested that active involvement is needed for schema violations to facilitate cognitive flexibility. The possibility that identification with an actor performing a schema violation (i.e., corepresenting an active schema violation) can enhance cognitive flexibility was investigated in 2 studies. In the first study, under conditions of high or low identification, participants watched an actor preparing a sandwich. The way the actor made the sandwich followed either a schema violation or contained the normal schema of preparing a sandwich. When identification was high, watching a schema-violation-enhanced cognitive flexibility as compared to watching the corresponding normal event. No effect of schema violation occurred under conditions of low identification. As little is known about the neural correlates of schema violations, in the second study the brain activity during schema violations was explored by means of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Participants were instructed to identify with an actor and brain activity was measured while participants watched the actor performing a schema violation or the corresponding normal schema. Activity in the temporal parietal junction (TPJ), a brain region that is associated with violation of expectations, was higher in the schema-violation condition than in the normal schema condition. These findings enhance the theoretical understanding of the effects of schema violations and may provide important practical implications in various settings where creative thinking is needed.     

Creative Behavior through Basic Inferences: Evidence from Person-Computer Interactions

This article reviews the contributions of basic reasoning mechanisms to the generation of creative ideas. The investigated reasoning mechanisms are deduction, induction, abduction, specialization/generalization, and elementary memory associations. The article claims that if we measure creativity by outcomes, that is, by the quality of the resulting ideas, then these basic forms of reasoning can be considered at least mildly creative. The claim is backed by references to computer programs which have generated creative outcomes, and by the outcomes of computer based reasoning activities shown in the article. Limitations of this approach to creativity are also discussed, particularly, difficulties in the recognition of creative ideas.     

Thinking About Applications: Effects on Mental Models and Creative Problem-Solving

Many techniques have been used to train creative problem-solving skills. Although the available techniques have often proven to be effective, creative training often discounts the value of thinking about applications. In this study, 248 undergraduates were asked to develop advertising campaigns for a new high-energy soft drink. Solutions to this problem were evaluated for quality, originality, and elegance. Prior to preparing these advertising campaigns, participants were provided with training in strategies for thinking about the potential applications of creative problem-solutions. It was found that training people to think about the uses of ideas and preparation for idea implementation contributed to the acquisition of stronger mental models and production of advertising campaigns evidencing greater quality, originality, and elegance. The implications of these findings for creative though and creative education are discussed.     

Evaluative Aspects of Creative Thought: Effects of Appraisal and Revision Standards

Recent research has begun to stress the influence of evaluation on creative thought. The authors begin this article by arguing that the evaluation of new ideas is a complex process involving forecasting, appraisal, and revision, where different standards might be applied to different ideas during appraisal and revision. The influence of appraisal and revision standards on creative problem solving was examined by asking 148 undergraduates to appraise and revise highly original, original, and nonoriginal ideas generated for an advertising campaign under conditions in which the standards to be applied stressed the generation of new ideas or under conditions in which the standards to be applied stressed efficiency of current operations. It was found that better plans for these advertising campaigns were obtained when generative, or innovative, criteria were applied to less original ideas and when implementation efficiency, or operating, criteria were applied to more original ideas. It was concluded that evaluation may serve to remediate deficiencies in ideas but that the standards applied must vary with the nature of the idea and the context in which it is to be implemented