Creativity

Unusual Uses Task [Measurement of creativity]

Requires respondents to generate alternative uses for a common object. Responses are scored on 4 dimensions: (i) Fluency - total number of appropriate uses generated (ii) Originality - statistical rarity of uses given (iii) Flexibility - no. of distinct conceptual categories implied by the various uses (iv) Elaboration - amount of detail given for the generated uses Assess the capacity to engage in divergent thinking, i.e the ability to explore multiple potential answers/solutions to a given problem.

Remote Associates Test [Measurement of creativity]

Requires respondents to respond with a word that can be associated with 3 distinct stimulus words. eg. widow-bite-monkey -->spider Stems from the belief that the creative process requires the ability to associate ideas that are very far apart conceptually.

What are some characteristics of creative persons?

Unlike general intelligence, which represents a more or less cohesive cognitive ability, creativity is just as much a personal attribute as an intellectual capacity. Creativity correlates with scores on standard personality measures. More notably, the creative person is more likely to score on the openness-to-experience factor of the Big Five Factor Model. Besides scoring higher in divergent thinking, openess is also associated with the diminished capacity to filter out extraneous information, a tendency often called cognitive disinhibition or reduced latent inhibition. This "defocused attention" enables the creative person to make observations that others would overlook.

What are the 3 criteria for creativity?

1. Originality - the idea must have a low probability and ideally be unique. 2. Usefulness - the idea should be valuble or work. 3. Surprise - the idea should be surprising, or at least non-obvious.

What are some of the environmental encouragements of creativity?

Contextual influences: creativity is often enhanced when persons are exposed to incongruous/novel stimuli. Long term exposure (eg. via multicultural experiences coupled with high openess-to-experience) allows individuals to be open to the potential stimulation that a new environment provides. Some sociopolitical/economic/cultural environments are supportive of exceptional creativitiy, which affects whether little-c and Big-C [especially the latter] are more likely to appear in a given environment.

little-c creativity

Creative ideas that appear at the personal level, whether the home or at the workplace. Such creativity needs not have a larger impact to be considered creative.

Big-C Creativity

Creative ideas that have an impact well beyond the everyday life of home or work. At the highest level, this kind of creativity is that of the creative genius.