Supporting Creativity Or Conformity? Influence of Home Environment and Parental Factors on the Value of Children's Creativity Characteristics

Although creativity is a desirable skill, parenting for creativity may be quite a challenge and may be less favored than parenting for conformity. The present study aims to investigate parent-related factors that may support creativity versus conformity at home. To this end, this study examined how parents’ attitudes and values toward creativity, creative home environment, and mindful parenting style are related to parents’ perceptions of creative versus socially acceptable characteristics. Analyses of the data collected from 1324 parents (predominantly mothers) indicated that parents were more supportive of creativity traits than socially acceptable characteristics. Most importantly, parents’ attitudes and values toward creativity and creative home environment were significantly and positively related to support for creativity characteristics, whereas mindful parenting was significantly and negatively related to support for socially acceptable characteristics in children. Those findings show that parents who value creativity and set up a creative environment are more likely to support children's creativity. Mindful parenting style seems to indirectly support creativity because it is associated with lower respect for socially acceptable characteristics, some of which are at odds with creativity. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications for training programs that enhance awareness of creativity.     

The role of child temperament on low‐income preschool children's relationships with their parents and teachers

The current study examined the associations between low‐income preschool children's temperament (reactive and regulatory) and their relationships with parents and teachers. In particular, we focused on the moderating role of regulatory temperament on reactive temperament in the prediction of closeness and conflict with parents and teachers. Two hundred ninety‐one children (M = 53.88 months, SD = 6.44 months), their parents, and teachers from 3 different preschools serving low‐income children in 2 midwestern cities in the United States participated. Parents reported on temperament and parent–child relationships, and teachers reported on teacher–child relationships. Hierarchical regression models using SAS PROC MIXED were employed to allow for nesting of children within classrooms. After controlling for child age, gender, ethnicity, and parent education, children's reactive temperament was negatively associated with parent–child closeness and positively associated with parent–child conflict and teacher–child conflict. Children's regulatory temperament was positively related to teacher–child closeness and negatively associated with teacher–child conflict. Regulatory temperament moderated the association between reactive temperament and teacher–child closeness. These findings suggest that although reactive temperament potentially undermines closeness in relationships with teachers, regulatory temperament can buffer the influence of reactive temperament on teacher–child closeness.

Highlights

• This study examined the association between children's temperament and their relationships with parents and teachers.
• Reactive temperament was positively associated with parent/teacher–child conflict and negatively associated with parent–child closeness. Regulatory temperament was a moderator for the association between reactive temperament and teacher–child closeness.
• Improving children's regulatory temperament may be helpful for children with the reactive temperament to have better social relationships with their teachers.

     

Creativity and Religiosity: A Reanalysis with Regional Predictors

Building on previous research showing a negative relationship between conservatism and creativity, the present investigation focused specifically on religiosity in the context of the United States. Because of the association between conservatism and religiosity, creativity might have a negative association with religiosity, too. To this end, individuallevel and regional data were matched by linking responses to psychometric measures such as Attitudes and Values toward Creativity to regional data such as church attendance. These analyses controlled other regional variables including education, diversity, and socio-economic status. Two-level analyses with individual data at Level 1 and county data at Level 2 indicated that people from more religious locations held less positive attitudes and values toward creativity and rated their environment as less creative. On the other hand, creative personality, ideational behavior and creative achievement were not significantly related to religiosity. Those analyses provided evidence that creativity and religiosity have a negative relationship in terms of people's attitudes and values toward creativity as well as their perceptions of environment for creativity. Findings were discussed in terms of types of religiosity and other socio-cultural variables.     

Differences in Creative Problem‐Solving Preferences Across Occupations

FourSight theory contends that individuals show preferences for the mental operations rooted in the creative process. The four fundamental preferences measured by FourSight are Clarifiers, Ideators, Developers, and Implementers. The present study examined the extent to which certain occupations reflect a proclivity for these four creative‐process preferences. Guided by Holland's theory of vocational choice, hypothesized relationships were formulated for the link between FourSight theory and 17 occupations. For example, it was predicted that those who work in finance would show a significant bias toward the Clarifier preference. Of the 17 hypothesized relationships between FourSight and occupation, statistical analysis of the FourSight preferences for 20,784 individuals showed support for 12 predictions and partial support for two of the hypothesized relationships. These findings clearly demonstrate that particular occupations engage specific creative‐process preferences. Future investigations might wish to examine the degree to which the interaction between work and creative‐thinking preferences predicts creative performance, satisfaction, stress, and turnover.     

Social Media Use and Creativity: Exploring the Influences on Ideational Behavior and Creative Activity

This study explored the relationship between social media (SM) use and creativity. The data collected from 407 participants included indicators such as time spent using SM, frequency of SM use, purposes for using SM, and the nature of SM use. The data involved two aspects of creativity: ideational behavior and creative activity and accomplishment. Correlational analyses indicate that SM use is positively related to both creativity measures. Overall, the active use of SM (e.g., sending a post) is more related to creativity than the passive use (e.g., reading others’ posts); and the link between creativity and SM use is more evident for certain platforms (i.e., Twitter) than others (e.g., Instagram). Ideational behavior and creative activity were also found to be higher among those who use SM primarily for expressing their ideas and opinions, gleaning information on topics to discuss and self‐education and learning compared with those who use it primarily for entertainment or relaxation. None of the creativity measures used was related to extraversion and excessive use of SM. Our findings indicate that SM is not necessarily a negative factor for creativity; it may even be a useful platform to support new ideas and projects.     

Ingredients of Creativity: Originality and More

In spite of voluminous research into the nature of creativity, the definition of the term is still highly controversial. Much of the work in this area has focused on the questions of what, and how many, factors should form the definition. This study took an empirical approach to the question considering the various perspectives such as the standard definition of creativity, the US Patent Office definition, and the Creative Product Analysis Model. Subsequently, the usefulness of four major factors of creativity—originality, value, surprise, and aesthetics in the context of 3 types of outputs (ideas, everyday products, and socially recognized products) were investigated. The major focus of the study was to reveal which of these 4 factors are most crucial to creativity. The analyses were also extended to the concept of innovation. Data collected from both experts and nonexperts indicated that originality was the strongest correlate of both creativity and innovation. Surprise explained a significant amount of variance in creativity above and beyond originality and value, which supports the 3-dimensional Patent Office definition. However, it played a less significant role in explaining differences in innovation. Aesthetics was also significantly related to creativity in all types of outputs but was mostly unrelated to innovation. Interestingly, expertise mostly did not influence the evaluations. Limitations and further research are discussed.     

When Fairness Clashes with Personal Autonomy and Parental Authority: A Comparison of Daughters' and Mothers' Reasoning in Two Cultural Contexts in Turkey

The author examined religious and secular daughters' and mothers' reasoning about personal autonomy, maternal authority, and moral concepts in family decision-making situations in urban Turkey. Sixty-eight daughters and 34 mothers were individually interviewed about decision-making autonomy in general issues and hypothetical daughter–mother conflicts. Results indicated participants regardless of their family status and religious background assigned more decision-making autonomy to mothers when evaluating general issues. Analysis of controversial issues as hypothetical conflicts indicated that daughters and mothers do not hold unitary social judgments about the social world that were always consistent with the norms of their community and family status. There were some religious background differences in evaluations of some conflict stories as a function of whether they evaluated the choices as moral, conventional, personal, and prudential matters. Although secular and religious participants conceptualized daughters and mothers in relational terms rather than characterizing the relations and social issues by harmony, obedience to authority, and acceptance of norms findings suggested that secular women evaluated the hypothetical adolescent–mother conflicts more consistently when the issue entails violation of a moral principle such as justice, fairness, and well-being of the other.     

Academic activism and its impact on individual‐level mobilization,sources of learning,and the future of academia in Turkey

In January 2016, academics in Turkey distributed a peace petition calling for an end to hostilities and to restart negotiations with the Kurdish movement. The Turkish government responded by opening legal cases, jailing academics, and dismissing them from universities. In the state of emergency following the July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, the government's extended powers allowed them to fire thousands of civil servants from every branch of government, including thousands of academics. This increased the number of academics who organized to form and teach in academic collectives. The current study evaluates how politicization occurs in scholars removed from the university environment. Traditional approaches to collective action and politicization suggest that empowerment is an important catalyst in politicization and continuation of collective political engagement. With the social and political restrictions that decree law dismissals place on scholars, what is it that motivates them to politicize? The current study was conducted through semistructured interviews with nine academics who work in these collectives. Participants described their politicization in terms of previous practice, reaction to injustice, and ideals of academia and academic freedom. They further evaluated current and prospective functions and possible barriers to academic collectives. Finally, although somewhat ambivalent, participants discussed feelings of efficacy, psychosocial support, and senses of solidarity and liberation in terms of being empowered. Their perspectives provide an opportunity to understand how and where academics engage in scholar activism for an independent and free academia in the context of consolidated political oppression.     

The Incremental Validity of a Short Form of the Ideational Behavior Scale and Usefulness of Distractor,Contraindicative, and Lie Scales

This article describes an empirical refinement of the Runco Ideational Behavior Scale (RIBS). The RIBS seems to be associated with divergent thinking, and the potential for creative thinking, but it was possible that its validity could be improved. With this in mind, three new scales were developed and the unique benefit (or “incremental validity”) of each was assessed. The three validity scales contained (a) distractor items, (b) contraindicative items, or (c) items constituting a lie scale. Step‐wise analyses using the three validity scales indicated very little incremental validity: They were interpreted in the light of psychometric theory, which suggests that their contribution may have been on a behavioral rather than on a statistical level. One additional analysis explored the possibility that a short form could be constructed. The short form of the RIBS was highly correlated with the long form (r = .94). Thus, most decisions made by the short form will be entirely compatible with decisions that would have been reached using the long form. A second significant result was that the RIBS was highly correlated with a check list of creative activities, supporting its concurrent validity.