Popular definition of creativity
Something novel and relevant
Why is novel and relevant criteria both important to creativity?
Not Novel but relevant: ordinary solution
Not relevant but novel: kind of pointless
What is creativity typically operationalized as?
Devising a novel solution to a standard problem
Solving an insight problem
What did early research on creativity focus on?
Historical, ground breaking instances of creativity, extracting that
Describe the Kekule creativity cased in benzene
Try to determine the chemical structure of benzene. While dozing by the fire he had a dream of a snake eating it’s own tail and inferred that the benzene structure is a circle/ring
Generally, historically, scholars arrived at ground breaking insight in
Sudden flashes, just one day through pivotal experiments. Case for artists, scientist, etc
Describe Wallas (1926) four step theory of creative thinking and where it came from
Came from historical analysis
Preparation: gain knowledge of problem space
Incubation: put the problem aside, do other things
Illumination: get a flash of insight (aha)
Verification: check the insight to ensure it’s correct
Are incubation and illumination more than metaphors?
Incubate an egg until the idea hatches
Research on creativity today focuses more on?
Product instead of process
Recent work suggests that creative problem solving is _____ in kind than ordinary problem sdolving
No different in kind
A solution’s creativity depends on ordinary factors like?
Problem representation
Solution fixation
Prior knowledge
Productivity: the more problems you solve the better
Cultural transmission: most creative products are from many different cultures
Describe the nine dot study and problem representation
Solution is assumed to have to be followed by constrain of the nine dot box, however the solution requires going outside of the box/ removing the necessary constraint
Describe MacGregor et al 2001 and the nine dot problem
Provided nine dot, eleven dot, and twelve and thirteen dot
No one solved the nine dot problem after two tries. Would succeed in the eleven dot problem 50% in the first try, twelve dot 60%, thirteen 73% first try because they made it a shape in the arrow
Similar to putting the tacks outside the box (removed preutilization
Describe the Remote Associates Test difficult?
Breaking fixation on the wrong words can get fixated (flycatcher) and makes it hard to think about food and hot
Describe Smith and Blankenship manipulated fixation by accompanying each RAT triad with a distractor word
Example:
Water, pick, skate (board)
Participants attempted to answer 20 RAT problems in two sessions. Then read a story or did nothing
Doing nothing lead to a 9% improvement
Story lead to 31% mprovvement
The story helped participants break fixation on the distractor words on Test 2 (test 2 had no distractor words)
Suggest that improvement may just be based on a break from fixation
Describe prior knowledge in Ward 1994 (make an alien study)
Imagine traveling to a planet different from earth, new type of animal.
11% had two wings, 41% had arms (24% two arms), many had ears,nose, legs, and eyes in typical amount
Prior knowledge implies that creative generation requires?
Manipulating a known exemplar
Describe manipulating the exemplar in prior knowledge for drawing an alien with certain criteria (it has scales, fur, etc)
Animal with feathers looked like birds/had wings and beaks often, animals who had scales often had fins and gills, animals with fur often had ears and legs
Correlated features suggest that participants are working from known exemplar to novel forms
Describe productivity in bipolar disorder
Creative professionals experience bipolar disorder at higher rates with controls, and often has higher rates of creativity compared to controls
Historically, creativity results from the ordinary cognition is its association with?
Madness
Describe Robert Schumann’s case of bipolar disorder
Schumann likely had depression and mania (bipolar disorder) through journal entry. Analyzed the quality and the amount of time the composition was recorded, hypothesized that music he made in manic episodes. Found that works composed when he was manic were recorded significantly more often. However, Schumann produced more compositions per year when manic (big confound). Then found quality appears to be similar once quantity is taken into account
How did traits not form? Fully or incrementally? Describe the eyes
Incrementally, evolved from a patch of light sensitive cells to a camera lens
How are ideas evolved, and how is it similar to physical traits?
Evolve via mutation and natural selection. Ideas evolve via mutation and cultural selection.
Describe the 1000 year evolution of the sewing needle
Used awl and fork together, then later joined awl and fork for poking and threading, then created the middle eye needle (brittle) then created the notched needle, then created the modern sewing needle