Goal Structures in Creative Motivation

Our culture, as reflected in the creativity literature, has focused on products and productivity. We know relatively little about motives related to other creativity goals or to multiple-goal structures. We studied differences in goal structures between high and low creative individuals, across creative and routine situations, in four categories: person, process, situation, product. Creativity potential was assessed with a composite of four scales. Goal structures in creative and routine situations were assessed with a self-report measure. Nearly all subjects used all four goal categories to describe their motivation in both situations. Only about 34% of subjects' motivation was product-related. There were several differences between high and low creatives: (a) high creatives made more use of the full range of goal categories; (b) in creative situations, high creatives put more emphasis on person and less on product; (c) they also put less emphasis on product than low creatives did in either situation; (d) high creatives reported significantly higher motivation than low creatives in both situations.     

Schizotypy and mental health amongst poets, visual artists, and mathematicians

Many researchers have found evidence of an association between creativity and the predisposition to mental illness. However, a number of questions remain unanswered. First, it is not clear whether healthy creatives have a milder loading on schizotypal traits than people who suffer serious psychopathology, or whether they have an equal loading, but other mediating characteristics. Second, most of the existing research has concentrated on artistic creativity, and the position of other creative domains is not yet clear. The present study compares schizotypy profiles using the O-LIFE inventory in a large sample of poets, artists, mathematicians, the general population, and psychiatric patients. Poets and artists have levels of unusual experiences that are higher than controls, and as high as schizophrenia patients. However, they are relatively low on the dimension of introvertive anhedonia. Mathematicians are lower than controls on unusual experiences. The results suggest that artistic creatives and psychiatric patients share a tendency to unusual ideas and experiences, but creative groups are distinguished by the absence of anhedonia and avolition. Moreover, different domains of creativity require different cognitive profiles, with poetry and art associated with divergent thinking, schizophrenia and affective disorder, and mathematics associated with convergent thinking and autism.     

Investigating the interaction between schizotypy, divergent thinking and cannabis use

Cannabis acutely increases schizotypy and chronic use is associated with elevated rates of psychosis. Creative individuals have higher levels of schizotypy, however links between cannabis use, schizotypy and creativity have not been investigated. We investigated the effects of cannabis smoked naturalistically on schizotypy and divergent thinking, a measure of creativity. One hundred and sixty cannabis users were tested on 1 day when sober and another day when intoxicated with cannabis. State and trait measures of both schizotypy and creativity were administered. Quartile splits compared those lowest (n=47) and highest (n=43) in trait creativity. Cannabis increased verbal fluency in low creatives to the same level as that of high creatives. Cannabis increased state psychosis-like symptoms in both groups and the high creativity group were significantly higher in trait schizotypy, but this does not appear to be linked to the verbal fluency change. Acute cannabis use increases divergent thinking as indexed by verbal fluency in low creatives.     

Chronic Effects of Ionizing Radiations and the Hypothesis that Irradiation Produces Aging-Like Changes in Behavior

On the basis of theories and research on cognitive and perceptual processes, several hypotheses concerning psychophysiological differences between high and low creative subjects were made. Thirty male undergraduates were divided into high and low creative groups on the basis of the Remote Associates Test and a version of the Uses Test. Basal alpha index, alpha blocking in response to stimulus onset, and performance on alpha enhancement and suppression in a feedback situation were measured. High creative subjects exhibited a lower alpha index and a greater decrement in alpha due to stimulus onset. High creatives showed immediate acquisition of control in alpha enhancement trials but no improvement across trials, while low creative subjects showed continual improvements and quickly reached the level of control of high creative subjects. High creatives were much better at alpha suppression than at alpha enhancement.     

Critical Thinking Disposition and Scientific Creativity: The Mediating Role of Creative Self-Efficacy

This study explores the relationship between critical thinking disposition and scientific creativity and examines the hypothesized mediating role played by creative self-concept (trait-like creative self-efficacy). A large sample (N = 1,153) of Chinese high school students filled the Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory and revised trait-like creative self-efficacy scale, and then solved Scientific Creativity Test for Adolescent. Structural equation modeling has demonstrated that students’ critical thinking disposition was positively related to their creative self-concept and scientific creativity, and creative self-concept fully mediated the link between critical thinking disposition and scientific creativity. We discuss these findings in terms of the hypothetical role played by creative self-concept for creative functioning.     

不同学业成就中学生创造性思维的差异研究

本研究采用创造力量表对990名不同学业成就中学生的创造性思维进行研究,结果发现:(1)高学业成就组中学生的创造性思维、发散思维和聚合思维显著高于低学业成就组.(2)高低学业成就组中学生创造性思维、发散思维和聚合思维表现出年级差异性.(3)高低学业成就组中学生的创造性思维都随着年级发展而上升,但是两组的高峰期却出现差异,高学业成就组创造力高峰出现在初二和高二,而低学业成就组出现在高一.(4)发散思维的发展趋势上,高学业成就组呈现出曲折上升的趋势,而低学业成就组整体的发展趋势平稳.(5)高低学业成就组中学生聚合思维的发展趋势相似,都呈现出在初中阶段上升到高中阶段趋于稳定,并且在高中阶段两组的水平接近.     

An Empirical Assessment of the GAM Theory of Creativity

ABSTRACT: Therivel (1993, 1998, 1999a, 1999b), in a series of articles, presented the GAM theory of creativity, which postulates that creativity is a function of genetics, assistances, and misfortunes. Two studies were undertaken to determine whether empirical data support this theory. In the first study, a sample of 529 undergraduate students completed a questionnaire designed to assess their creativity and the presence of anecdotal evidence regarding the three components of Therivel's theory. Two subsamples were formed of high creative (n = 40) and low creative (n = 38) individuals, and their scores on the three components were compared. In a second study, college students who were low on creativity but either high (n = 52) or low (n = 47) on academic achievement were identified and compared to the high creative individuals of Study 1 on the three components. In general, the results present at best modest support for Therivel's theory and no difference in applicability of the theory to creativity versus achievement.     

Creative Personality and Anticreative Environment for High School Dropouts

The study examined the possible roles that creativity plays in students dropping out of high school. It used data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS: 88), the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS: 2002), and 87 high school students from a low income area in southeastern Michigan. NELS and ELS questions related to creative personality and anticreative school environment were selected and asked of students. The students’ responses were compared to their scores on measures of creativity (Runco Ideational Behavior Scale, Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, & Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students). The NELS respondents who showed creative personality were identified and examined whether their creativity related to dropping out. The results of logistic regression analyses indicated that the questions selected from NELS and ELS that showed anticreative school environment have a negative correlation with the scores on the creativity measures, which affect students’ dropping out. An understanding of these students and their behavior will help promote creative students’ academic and lifelong success through appropriate classroom restructuring.     

绩效薪酬对雇员创造力的影响:人-工作匹配和创造力自我效能的作用

采用296对上下级匹配数据考察了绩效薪酬对创造力的影响以及人-工作匹配的调节效应和创造力自我效能的中介效应。研究结果表明:绩效薪酬对创造力有倒U形影响;创造力自我效能部分中介了绩效薪酬对创造力的倒U形影响;人-工作匹配调节绩效薪酬与创造力的关系,人-工作匹配度越高,中等强度绩效薪酬的正面效应越强,高强度绩效薪酬的负面效应越弱;绩效薪酬与人-工作匹配的交互效应通过创造力自我效能的完全中介效应影响创造力。     

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.     

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.     

The Indirect Effect of Teachers’ Creative Mindsets on Teaching Creativity

Understanding how teachers’ implicit beliefs promote and inhibit students’ creativity has important implications for fostering creativity in the classroom. This study investigated whether the effect of teachers’ fixed creative mindset on their self‐efficacy for teaching creativity was mediated by their perceptions of students’ potential and the degree to which this indirect effect varied by level of growth creative mindset. A sample of educators (N = 119) completed an online survey containing questions regarding creative mindsets, perceptions of students’ potential, self‐efficacy for teaching creativity, and a set of relevant covariates. A moderated mediation analysis indicated that the more teachers believed creativity to be innate, the less teachers tended to perceive every student to possess creative potential. Consequently, teachers’ confidence in their ability to teach for creativity was diminished. Results from the corresponding tests of simple indirect effects indicated that this negative indirect effect of a fixed creative mindset was lessened by teachers’ growth creative mindset. Taken together, the findings suggest the likely significant role of teachers’ fixed and growth creative mindsets for fostering creativity in classroom.     

学业成就、创造力与跨学科概念图创作能力的关系

为了从知识基础和创造性思维视角探讨跨学科知识整合的条件,以125名高二学生为被试采用相关研究设计考察了学业成就、创造力与跨学科概念图创造能力的关系。结果发现：（1）学业成就与跨学科概念图创作能力正相关;高成就组在命题、交叉和总分维度上的表现优于低成就组;而中成就组在命题和总分维度上的表现优于低成就组;（2）创造力与跨学科概念图创作能力正相关;创造力的流畅性和独创性与跨学科概念图的所有维度正相关;灵活性与概念图创作的命题、交叉、范例和总分正相关;（3）学业成就与创造力能够中等程度地预测跨学科概念图创作不同能力组被试的分布。这表明学业成就和创造力是跨学科知识整合的基础。     

The Contribution of Personality Traits,Motivation, Academic Risk-Taking and Metacognition to the Creative Ability in Mathematics

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which personality traits, motivation, academic risk-taking, and metacognition explain the mathematical creative ability of high school students. The participants were 217 9th-grade students that were exceptionally high achievers. The participants responded to a set of measures about personality traits, motivation, academic risk-taking, metacognition, and creative ability in mathematics. The results revealed that although openness to experience and consciousness were significantly correlated with creative ability in mathematics, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism were not correlated with the creativity scores. Moreover, intrinsic goal orientation followed by openness to experience was the most significant predictor of mathematical creative ability. Academic risk-taking was not significantly correlated with creative ability. Although knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition showed moderate correlations with creative ability in mathematics, they failed to predict creative ability.     

Creativity at the Crossroads: Pragmatic Versus Humanist Claims in Education Reform Speeches

Obama's, and other policymakers’, speeches claim that creativity—the ability to derive novel, excellent and relevant ideas and products—is a valuable student asset for the 21st century, but why? Two types of rhetorical appeals to long-held educational values in these speeches are examined: pragmatic claims about student creativity focus on economic recovery, which implies a need to teach and research the link between creativity, academic success and workforce preparation. In contrast, humanist claims about student creativity emphasize a teaching and research agenda of promoting self-realization, cultural identity formation, and aesthetic learning principles, which include empathy and emotional awareness in addition to cognitive aspects of creative thinking and problem solving. These rhetorical appeals are examined in light of education reform and directions in art education.     

A Confucian Interpretation of Creativity

This article explores a Confucian interpretation of creativity with reference to two classics—Analects and Mencius. A Confucian understanding of creativity centers on yi (appropriateness) and is motivated by shu (empathy) for the purpose of broadening dao (Way). Confucian creativity is manifested in two main ways: novelty through original interpretations of the objective world; and appropriateness through flexible responses to concrete circumstances synchronically and diachronically. Two major implications for research on creativity are highlighted. The first is that a Confucian approach to creativity extends the existing research on personal creativity by foregrounding the moral and interpersonal elements. Secondly, Confucian creativity synthesizes novelty and appropriateness, thereby challenging the essentialization of creativity and creative abilities of East Asians. A Confucian conception of creativity transcends a narrow focus on specific creative acts to a broader consideration of the agents, relationships, socio-cultural contexts and related moral issues.     

AN ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INFORMATION SOURCES AND CREATIVITY IN SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS

The literature is replete with analyses of creativity as related to personality traits and organizational constraints. Based on Mednick's (1962) associationist position, it was felt that information use patterns play a key role in an individual's process of creativity. In order to test this idea, 29 academic and 36 industrial physical scientists and engineers were categorized as either creative and productive; productive, but not creative; or noncreative and nonproductive on the basis of peer evaluation. Their information seeking and receiving behavior and attitudes were then measured and related to the criterion group membership. Two significant results emerged; First, consistent with the associationist position, variety of exposure to information content, in terms of scientific disciplines from which the information was received, was significantly different for the three groups, with the creative group having the greatest variety. Second, group membership can, with a fairly high probability, be predicted based on information seeking behavior and attitudes.     

Teachers’ Perceptions of Creativity in the Classroom

Teachers’ implicit understandings of creativity may not align with current research-based understanding of creativity and characteristics associated with creative students. Even teachers who say they value creativity may actually find creative characteristics undesirable. Participating teachers (n = 371) rated student characteristics on a scale of very undesirable to very desirable. Participants also completed a brief self-assessment of personal creativity and rank-ordered a set of educational objectives based on what they perceived as most important. Results indicated that teachers found student characteristics associated with creativity less desirable than those characteristics contraindicative to creativity (d = 2.70). No effects were found based on the grade level (d = 0.07) and small effects were found for subjects taught (η² = 0.023). Similarly, no effects were found for the teachers’ level of experience (η² = 0.004) or age (η² = 0.002). Teachers’ level of personal creativity was related (r = .248) to how desirable they rated student characteristics associated with creativity, but the importance with which teachers ranked creative thinking had small effects (η² = 0.04) on how desirable they found characteristics associated with creativity. These results generally confirm previous studies and suggest that teachers’ grade level, subject, experience, and age have no effect on their perception of creative characteristics. However, some evidence suggests that teachers who are more creative find student characteristics associated with creativity more desirable in class.     

Using Daily Creativity Planning to Promote Creative Behavior

Research has demonstrated that on the path from a creative idea to a creative outcome, high creativity motivation and self-efficacy do not necessarily lead to creative behavior. The present study proposed and examined the notion that daily creativity planning could promote creative behavior and contribute to the cultivation of creativity. A total of 77 middle school students (39 students in the experimental group and 38 in the control group) participated in this study, for which a quasi-experimental design was administered. The experimental group conducted a two-week daily planning for creative activities, while the control group did not conduct any intervention. The results showed that students' creativity motivation and creative self-efficacy were at relatively high levels overall and were positively and moderately correlated with creative behavior. Daily planning could effectively facilitate students' creative behavior. These findings point to a promising and simple creativity enhancement strategy for cultivating students to develop the habit of making creative plans in their daily lives.