Taking the U.S. Patent Office Criteria Seriously: A Quantitative Three-Criterion Creativity Definition and Its Implications

Although creativity has recently attracted considerable theoretical and empirical research, researchers have yet to reach a consensus on how best to define the phenomenon. To help establish a consensus, a definition is proposed that is based on the three criteria used by the United States Patent Office to evaluate applications for patent protection. The modified version uses the criteria of novelty, utility, and surprise. Moreover, creativity assessments based on these three criteria are quantitative and multiplicative rather than qualitative or additive. This three-criterion definition then leads to four implications regarding (a) the limitations to domain-specific expertise, (b) the varieties of comparable creativities, (c) the contrast between subjective and objective evaluations, and (d) the place of blind variation and selective retention in the creative process. These implications prove that adding the third criterion has critical consequences for understanding the phenomenon. Creativity is not only treated with superior sophistication, but also paradoxes that appear using the most common two-criterion definition readily disappear when the third criterion is included in the analysis. Hence, the conceptual differences between two- and three-criterion definitions are not trivial.     

Opening the Closed Mind: The Effect of Exposure to Literature on the Need for Closure

The need for cognitive closure has been found to be associated with a variety of suboptimal information processing strategies, leading to decreased creativity and rationality. This experiment tested the hypothesis that exposure to fictional short stories, as compared with exposure to nonfictional essays, will reduce need for cognitive closure. One hundred participants were assigned to read either an essay or a short story (out of a set of 8 essays and 8 short stories matched for length, reading difficulty, and interest). After reading, their need for cognitive closure was assessed. As hypothesized, when compared to participants in the essay condition, participants in the short story condition experienced a significant decrease in self-reported need for cognitive closure. The effect was particularly strong for participants who were habitual readers (of either fiction or non-fiction). These findings suggest that reading fictional literature could lead to better procedures of processing information generally, including those of creativity.     

The Hierarchical Personality Structure of Aspiring Creative Writers

Empirical studies of personality traits in creative writers have demonstrated mixed findings, perhaps due to issues of sampling, measurement, and the reporting of statistical information. The goal of this study is to quantify the personality structure of aspiring creative writers according to a modern hierarchal model of trait personality. A sample of aspiring writers (n = 93) and nonwriters (n = 114) completed the Big Five inventory. Correlations with personality were carried out at three levels: the Big Five traits, the two higher-order factors (stability and plasticity), and the more detailed facet-level. Consistent with past research, creative writers scored higher on trait openness. Extending past work, the hierarchical analysis also revealed novel correlates for the higher-order meta-traits (stability and plasticity) and some of the lower-order facets (aesthetics, ideas, activity, assertiveness, and depression). Individuals with higher scores on agreeableness, stability, and assertiveness were less likely to be aspiring writers. The likelihood of being a writer also decreased with age. Taken together, these findings indicate that aspiring creative writers differ from nonwriters in trait personality, with differences emerging at all levels of the personality hierarchy.     

Controlling competitive anger among male soccer players

Abstract

This study examined the effectiveness of anger awareness training (i.e., self-monitoring) and role-playing (i.e., modeling and behavioral rehearsal) in reducing participants’ angry behavior and angry feelings. Male participants (N = 57) from intact soccer teams were randomly assigned to a role-playing, an anger awareness, or a control group. Pretreatment anger scores indicated that all three groups exhibited similar anger dispositions before the study began. Following pretreatment assessment, angry behavior and self-reported anger were observed and measured during a 15-game round-robin soccer season. Analyses revealed that although angry feelings remained consistent across the duration of the study, the role-playing group was more effective than both the anger awareness and control groups in controlling angry behavior. Findings indicate that although the use of anger awareness and role-playing interventions can reduce angry behavior, the role-playing intervention was a more effective method.     

Aid and bias

Over the last few decades, psychologists have amassed a great deal of evidence that our thinking is strongly influenced by a number of biases. This research appears to have important implications for moral methodology. It seems likely that these biases affect our thinking about moral issues, and a fuller awareness of them might help us to find ways to counteract their influence, and so to improve our moral thinking. And yet there is little or no reference to such biases in the philosophical literature on many pressing, substantive moral questions. In this paper, I make a start on repairing this omission in relation to one such question, the 'Aid Question', which concerns how much, if anything, we are morally required to give to aid agencies. I begin by sketching a number of biases that seem particularly likely to affect our thinking about that question. I then go on to review the psychological research on 'debiasing' - that is, on attempts to counteract the influence of such biases. And finally I discuss and illustrate certain strategies for counteracting the influence of the biases in question on our thinking about the Aid Question.     

Specificity of Task Constraints and Effects of Visual Demonstrations and Verbal Instructions in Directing Learners' Search During Skill Acquisition

In the present study, the efficacy of visual demonstrations and verbal instructions as instructional constraints on the acquisition of movement coordination was investigated. Fifteen participants performed an aiming task on 100 acquisition and 20 retention trials, under 1 of 3 conditions: a modeling group (MG), a verbally directed group (VDG), and a control group (CG). The MG observed a model intermittently throughout acquisition, whereas the VDG was verbally instructed to use the model's movement pattern. Participants in the CG received neither form of instruction. Kinematic analysis revealed that compared with verbal instructions or no instructions, visual demonstrations significantly improved participants' approximation of the model's coordination pattern. No differences were found in movement outcomes. Coordination data supported the visual perception perspective on observational learning, whereas outcome data suggested that the modeling effect is mainly a function of task constraints, that is, the novelty of a movement pattern.     

Age and Cognitive Stress Influences Motor Skill Acquisition,Consolidation, and Dual-Task Effect in Humans

This study examined motor skill learning using a weight-bearing and cognitive-motor dual-task that incorporated unexpected perturbations and measurements of cognitive function. Forty young and 24 older adults performed a single-limb weight bearing task with novel speed, resistance, and cognitive dual task conditions to assess motor skill acquisition, retention and transfer. Subjects performed a cognitive dual task: summing letters in one color/orientation (simple) or two colors/orientations (complex). Increased cognitive load diminished the rate of skill acquisition, decreased transfer to new conditions, and increased error rate during an unexpected perturbation; however, young adults had a dual-task benefit from cognitive load. Executive function predicted 80% of the variability in dual-task performance. Although initial learning of a weight-bearing cognitive-motor dual-task was poor, longer term goals of improved dual-task effect and retention emerged.     

Contingent Reinforcement Effects on Movement Responses of Prison Inmates to the Holtzman Inkblot Technique

Prison inmates were administered the Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT) under conditions of either verbal or nonverbal reinforcement of movement responses. Overall, there were no differences among the verbal, nonverbal, and control groups. Inmates charged with violent crimes were found to give the fewest movement responses. With crime category controlled, more movement responses were given under nonverbal conditions. There were no sex differences for movement responses but testing time increased significantly when administered by the female examiner.     

Factorial validity of the Mental Toughness Questionnaire-48

The purpose of this study was to assess the factorial validity of the Mental Toughness Questionnaire-48 (Clough, Earle, & Sewell, 2002). In total, 8207 participants (male n = 4019, female n = 3922, unspecified = 266) aged between 16 and 68 years (M = 37.00, SD = 12.09) completed the MTQ48. Model fit was assessed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and exploratory structural equation modeling, in addition to the robust maximum likelihood estimator. Overall, our results support the factorial validity of the MTQ48 and indicate that the MTQ48 is a robust psychometric measure of mental toughness. Along with previous data, which supports the internal validity of the MTQ48 in addition to results of this study, it would appear that the MTQ48 is an acceptable method of assessing mental toughness.     

Emotions and Human Flourishing

Individual differences in emotional reactivity or affective style can be decomposed into more elementary constituents. Several separable of affective style are identified such as the threshold for reactivity, peak amplitude of response, the rise time to peak and the recovery time. latter two characteristics constitute components of affective chronometry The circuitry that underlies two fundamental forms of motivation and and withdrawal-related processes-is described. Data on differences in functional activity in certain components of these are next reviewed, with an emphasis on the nomological network of surrounding individual differences in asymmetric prefrontal The relevance of such differences for understanding the nature affective dysfunction in affective disorders is then considered. The ends by considering what the prefrontal cortex “does” in certain of affective style and highlights some of the important questions for future research.