Lecture 14: Divergent vs Convergent Thinking

How does sleep help with divergent thinking?

"Performance on both a word fluency task and a challenging nonverbal planning test was 'significantly impaired by sleep loss'"

How does positive mood help with divergent thinking?

-Higher number of proposed solutions -Ability to see relations between concepts -Increased ability to differentiate between and to integrate unusual and diverse information

What helps with Convergent Thinking?

-Using affirmative judgement ->Look for the best rather than focusing on the worst -Staying focused ->Don't you dare use divergent thinking -Consistently checking your objectives/date ->Always refer back to past user data, interview results, etc... USE THE FACTS

What helps with divergent thinking?

-positive mood -sleep

8 elements of divergent thinking

1. Complexity 2. Curiosity 3. Elaboration 4. Flexibility 5. Fluency 6. Imagination 7. Originality 8. Risk taking

Divergent Thinking

A thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. - There's one question and a bunch of potential solutions

Elaboration

Element of Divergent Thinking: Adding to, building off of, or embellishing a product or an idea.

Risk-taking

Element of Divergent Thinking: Being courageous, daring, adventuresome - taking risks or experimenting with new things so as to stand apart

Originality

Element of Divergent Thinking: Coming up with fresh, unusual, unique, extremely different or completely new products or ideas

Complexity

Element of Divergent Thinking: Conceptualizing difficult, multifaceted, many layered or intricate products or ideas

Flexibility

Element of Divergent Thinking: Creating varied perceptions or categories wherefrom come a range of different ideas pertaining to the same thing or problem

Imagination

Element of Divergent Thinking: Dreaming up, inventing, or to think, to see, to conceptualize novel products or ideas, to be original. Coming up with creative solutions

Fluency

Element of Divergent Thinking: Engendering many ideas so as to have an increase in the number of potential solutions or associated products

Curiosity

Element of Divergent Thinking: Probing behaviors, searching, asking questions, learning to get more knowledge/information about something, and of being able to go deeper into ideas. Yknow actually wonder about how things work

Convergent Thinking

The ability to give the "correct" answer to standard questions that do not require significant creativity, for instance in most tasks in school and on standardized multiple-choice tests for intelligence. -there's only ONE answer