Maciej Karwowski

Creativity and academic achievement: A meta-analysis.

This article reports on a meta-analysis of 120 studies (total N = 52,578; 782 effects) examining the relationship between creativity and academic achievement in research conducted since the 1960s. Average correlation between creativity and academic achievement was r = .22, 95% CI [.19, .24]. An analysis of moderators revealed that this relationship was constant across time but stronger when creativity was measured using creativity tests compared to self-report measures and when academic achievement was measured using standardized tests rather than grade point average. Moreover, verbal tests of creativity yielded significantly stronger relationships with academic achievement than figural tests. Theoretical and practical consequences are discussed.

School achievement of children with intellectual disability: the role of socioeconomic status, placement, and parents' engagement.

The objective of this study was to describe the selected conditions for school achievement of students with mild intellectual disabilities from Polish elementary schools. Participants were 605 students with mild disabilities from integrative, regular, and special schools, and their parents (N=429). It was found that socioeconomic status (SES) was positively associated with child placement in integrative and regular schools rather than special schools, as well as with higher parental engagement in their childrens studies. Parental engagement mediated the positive effects of SES and placement in regular and integrative schools on school achievement. The results are discussed in the context of inclusive education theory.

Sex differences in online selfie posting behaviors predict histrionic personality scores among men but not women

The common usage and novelty of social media is reflected in the emergence of many new psychological phenomena. Here, we explored the relationship between number of uploaded selfies (a self-portrait photograph of oneself) and individual personality differences that are likely to be related with self-promoting behavior, i.e., histrionic personality. A total of 748 people (355 women and 393 men) completed a self-assessment questionnaire on histrionic personality, self-assessed physical and interpersonal attractiveness, and reported the numbers of three types of selfies (selfies alone, selfies with a group, and selfies with a romantic partner) posted within the last month to any type of social media. We found that females posted more own and group selfies (but not selfies with a partner) than did males. Relationships between histrionic personality and the number of selfies were statistically significant only for men. We discuss our results in the context of social media related gender differences and self-presentation. We ran the study with a pooled sample of 748 Polish men and women aged 17-47 years.Correlation between aggregated number of selfies and HPD was robust.Histrionic personality and the number of selfies was related only in men.Selfies may manifest of maladaptive patterns of personality among men.

Tell Me Your Name and I'll Tell You How Creative Your Work Is: Author's Name and Gender as Factors Influencing Assessment of Products' Creativity in Four Different Domains

The main goal of this study was to examine the effects of authors’ name and gender on judges’ assessment of product creativity in 4 different domains (art, science, music, and poetry). A total of 119 participants divided into 5 groups assessed products signed with a fictional authors name (unique vs. typical, male vs. female) or in an anonymous condition. It was observed that depending on the domain, the uniqueness of the authors name and her or his gender was associated with the assessment of creativity of the product. A poem and painting signed with an unusual name and a piece of music whose authorship was attributed to a man with a unique name were assessed as especially creative. In case of scientific theory, works attributed to men were assessed as significantly more creative than those of women. The results are discussed in light of the attributional approach to creativity.

Measuring creative imagery abilities

Over the decades, creativity and imagination research developed in parallel, but they surprisingly rarely intersected. This paper introduces a new theoretical model of creative visual imagination, which bridges creativity and imagination research, as well as presents a new psychometric instrument, called the Test of Creative Imagery Abilities (TCIA), developed to measure creative imagery abilities understood in accordance with this model. Creative imagination is understood as constituted by three interrelated components: vividness (the ability to create images characterized by a high level of complexity and detail), originality (the ability to produce unique imagery), and transformativeness (the ability to control imagery). TCIA enables valid and reliable measurement of these three groups of abilities, yielding the general score of imagery abilities and at the same time making profile analysis possible. We present the results of nine studies on a total sample of more than 1700 participants, showing the factor structure of TCIA using confirmatory factor analysis, as well as provide data confirming this instruments validity and reliability. The availability of TCIA for interested researchers may result in new insights and possibilities of integrating the fields of creativity and imagination science.

Extending climato-economic theory: when, how, and why it explains differences in nations' creativity.

The climato-economic theory postulates mechanisms of threat and challenge to explain differences between countries. Interestingly, both of these mechanisms are often considered to be components of the models of organizational climate for creativity. We show that among rich countries, climatic demands are related to creative achievement in a reversed-U manner, whereas the relationship is linear among poor countries.

The Dynamics of Creative Self-Concept: Changes and Reciprocal Relations Between Creative Self-Efficacy and Creative Personal Identity

Although creative self-concept constructs are intensively studied in the creativity literature, little is known about the dynamics of their changes during the life span and the relationships between different aspects of the creative self-concept. Using a longitudinal and a cross-sequential design, this investigation aimed to test changes in two important creative self-concept constructs—creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity—over short (6 months) and longer (20 months) periods of time, while simultaneously examining reciprocal relationships between them. The results showed the short-term stability of both constructs, but they also revealed significant change over the longer period―specifically, a growth of creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity in people from late adolescence to early adulthood and a drop among older participants. Reciprocal longitudinal relationships between creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity were also demonstrated, with creative self-efficacy being a more stable predictor of creative personal identity than the reverse.

Development of children's creative visual imagination: a theoretical model and enhancement programmes

This paper presents a new theoretical model of creative imagination and its applications in early education. The model sees creative imagination as composed of three inter-related components: vividness of images, their originality, and the level of transformation of imageries. We explore the theoretical and practical consequences of this new model. At the theoretical level, we argue that it is important to analyse creative visual imagination as both a process (understood as a cognitive mechanism) and typologically (revealing different types of creative imagination). On a practical level, we present preliminary applications and discuss several creativity training programmes for developing childrens creative imagination understood as the effective and coordinated cooperation between vividness, originality, and transformative ability of images.

Toward Untangling Creative Self-Beliefs

In this chapter, we argue that the way researchers (including ourselves) have conceptualized and measured creative self-beliefs may blur important distinctions among these beliefs. We focus our discussion on three key self-beliefs: creative self-efficacy, creative metacognition, and creative self-concept. More specifically, we aim to clarify how these beliefs are conceptually distinct, highlight key areas of conceptual overlap, and offer our recommendations on how researchers might revise or develop new measures that are more aligned with these conceptualizations. Implications for theory and research are also discussed.

Creative Mindsets: Prospects and Challenges

Abstract Believing that creativity is stable (fixed) versus possible to change (malleable) can have severe consequences for people’s creative self-beliefs and motivation, all the way to their creative activity and, subsequently, creative achievement. These creative mindsets may be perceived as a subset of implicit theories of creativity that specifically relates to perceived sources of creative potential. Intriguingly, recent research demonstrated that in the case of creativity, people hold both mindsets, which—albeit negatively correlated—do not necessarily form two ends of one continuum. In this chapter, we focus on the most striking theoretical questions related to the current state of the research on creative mindsets and discuss future directions of these studies.