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Divergent Thinking as an Indicator of Creative Potential.

Divergent thinking (DT) tests are very often used in creativity studies. Certainly DT does not guarantee actual creative achievement, but tests of DT are reliable and reasonably valid predictors of certain performance criteria. The validity of DT is described as reasonable because validity is not an all-or-nothing attribute, but is, instead, a matter of degree. Also, validity only makes sense relative to particular criteria. The criteria strongly associated with DT are detailed in this article. It also summarizes the uses and limitations of DT, conceptually and psychometrically. After the psychometric evidence is reviewed, alternative tests and scoring procedures are described, including several that have only recently been published. Throughout this article related processes, such as problem finding and evaluative thinking, are linked to DT.

Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking as Predictors of Personal and Public Achievement: A Fifty-Year Follow-Up

This article presents the results of the 50-year follow-up of the longitudinal study E. Paul Torrance initiated 5 decades ago. The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was administered in the late 1950s and personal and public achievement data were obtained 50 years later and used as criteria in analyses reported here. These showed that TTCT scores were moderately correlated with personal, but not with public, achievement. However, an interaction of intelligence and creativity was significantly related to public achievement but not to personal achievement. When a composite was formed from the 4 TTCT indexes (fluency, originality, flexibility, and elaboration), a significant quadratic trend was found with the personal achievement criterion. Three of the indicators (“Love of work,” Tolerance of mistakes, and Minority of one) from the Beyonder instrument developed by Torrance (2003) were related to public achievement. Only one other indicator from the Beyonder measure (“Well-roundedness”) was associated with personal achievement. Men were significantly higher in public achievement than women, but there was no significant gender difference in personal achievement.

Assessing Associative Distance Among Ideas Elicited by Tests of Divergent Thinking

Tests of divergent thinking represent the most commonly used assessment of creative potential. Typically they are scored for total ideational output (fluency), ideational originality, and, sometimes, ideational flexibility. That scoring system provides little information about the underlying process and about the associations among ideas. It also does not really capture the key principle of divergent thinking, namely that ideas may be found when cognition explores new (divergent) directions. The investigation reported here used 3 independent semantic networks, each computerized and previously validated, to quantify the distance between responses (ideas) to several tests of divergent thinking. These sources were WordNet (WN), Word Associations Network (WAN), and IdeaFisher (IF). Statistical analyses indicated that remote and close associations can be reliably measured when different sources of associative strength are used. Inter-item reliability (alpha coefficients) of what these networks had identified as remote associations were higher than those from close associations. Inter-item reliability values were higher in the WAN and IF, which provided shorter lists than the WN. Therefore, longer associative lists did not necessarily produce better indices of remote and close associations. Also, scores from a measure of creative attitudes and values were significantly correlated with remote, but not with close, associations across all 3 networks. This finding is very important because it shows that people with a higher tendency of creative attitudes and values, as measured by divergent thinking tests, are more likely to make remote associations rather than close associations. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

The Genetic Basis of Creativity and Ideational Fluency

Reuter, Roth, Holve, & Hennig (2006) described what they called the first candidate gene for creativity. This study replicated and extended their work for a more careful analysis of five candidate genes: Dopamine Transporter (DAT), Catechol-O-Methyltransferase (COMT), Dopamine Receptor D4 (DRD4), D2 Dopamine Receptor (DRD2), and Tryptophane Hydroxylase (TPH1). Participants were 147 college students who received a battery of tests of creative potential. Multivariate analyses of variance indicated that ideational fluency scores were significantly associated with several genes (DAT, COMT, DRD4, and TPH1). This was apparent in both verbal and figural fluency ideation scores, before and after controlling general intelligence. Yet fluency, alone, is not an adequate measure of creativity, and the index that is by far the most important part of creativity (i.e., originality) had a negligible relationship with the genes under investigation. Hence, in contrast to earlier research, the conclusion offered here is that there is a clear genetic basis for ideational fluency, but that fluency, alone, is not sufficient to predict or guarantee creative performance. Hence, at present, the genetic basis of creativity remains uncertain.

Creative Abilities: Divergent Thinking

Publisher Summary Many things influence organizational creativity. Some are social and literally organizational. The individuals who comprise it bring others to the organization. There is, of course, an interaction, with the social context having an impact on the performances and contributions of the individuals, as well as the organizational productivity and innovation in part being dependent on those same individuals. One important individual factor is ability. To a certain degree, then, organizational creativity depends on the abilities of the individuals within it. Creative ability is a broad label and category, however, and probably for that reason most research is much more focused. The research on divergent thinking is plentiful and says a great deal about the potential for creative accomplishment, both by individuals working alone and those in organizations. Quite a bit of the research reviewed in this chapter involves divergent thinking in social settings and organizations. There is research on the divergent thinking of managers, for example, as well as entrepreneurs and individuals studying business.

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.

Consistency of the performance and nonperformance methods in gifted identification: A multilevel meta-analytic review

Current approaches to gifted identification suggest collecting multiple sources of evidence. Some gifted identification guidelines allow for the interchangeable use of performance and nonperformance identification methods. This multiple criteria approach lacks a strong overlap between the assessment tools; however, interchangeable use of the instruments (replacing one for another) entails high regularity. This meta-analytic review investigated the consistency of using performance and nonperformance identification methods by examining the influence of three moderators in two different study analyses. Study 1 focused on correlational and comparison studies by using Pearson r as the index of effect size within a three-level multilevel design. Study 2 was conducted with three diagnostic proportional metrics: efficiency, effectiveness/sensitivity, and specificity. Results from Study 1 indicated the overall correlation between the performance and nonperformance gifted identification methods was medium (r = .30). Teacher ratings yielded significantly higher consistency with performance measures than teacher or parent nomination and self-ratings. Study 2 showed that nonperformance methods are relatively strong in terms of specificity (70%) and effectiveness/sensitivity (59%) but not very efficient (39%). Analyses of four diagnostic quadrants indicated that performance and nonperformance gifted identification methods, when used alone, tend to identify different students who would not be identified otherwise despite some amount of convergence between the two. Our findings indicated that nonperformance and performance gifted identification methods cannot replace each other. They should be used concurrently rather than be used alone or consecutively.

Schizophrenia and creativity: A meta-analytic review

The present study investigated the relationship between creativity and schizophrenia with a 3-level multilevel meta-analytic approach. Analyses with 200 effect sizes obtained from 42 studies found a mean effect size of r=-0.324, 95%CI [-0.42, -0.23]. Further analyses focused on moderators and indicated that the relationship between schizophrenia and creativity is moderated by type of creativity measure, the content of creativity measure, the severity of schizophrenia, and patient status. The negative mean effect size was stronger with semantic-category or verbal-letter fluency tasks than the divergent thinking or associational measures. Performance on verbal measures of creativity was significantly lower than the nonverbal measures. When effect sizes were compared at different levels of severity, a stronger and more negative mean effect size was obtained at chronic schizophrenia than acute and early onset levels. Studies that involved inpatients had a significantly higher (more negative) mean effect size than those involving outpatients. When these findings are considered along with previous meta-analyses on the link between creativity and psychoticism and schizotypy, creativity and psychopathology seem to have an inverted-U relationship. A mild expression of schizophrenia symptoms may support creativity but a full demonstration of the symptoms undermines it.

Further Evidence That Creativity and Innovation Are Inhibited by Conservative Thinking: Analyses of the 2016 Presidential Election.

The investigation replicated and extended previous research showing a negative relationship between conservatism and creative accomplishment. Conservatism was estimated, as in previous research, from voting patterns. The voting data used here were from the 2016 US Presidential election. The number of patents granted per county in the United States was used as estimate of creative and innovative accomplishment. Using a 2-level multilevel approach, in which state-level influences are taken into consideration, various control variables were tested, including socioeconomic status (SES), education, income, and diversity. The results confirmed a negative relationship between conservatism and the number of patents granted. Therefore, in counties and states with high conservatism, fewer patents were granted, even after controlling for SES and population. Patents were positively related to racial diversity and education. Practical implications include the benefits of liberal thinking outside of the political arena. Liberal thinking is very likely associated with flexibility, tolerance, and openness, and according to the present results, creative accomplishment. Limitations of the research and future directions are discussed.

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 peoples 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.