Divergent Thinking Research Articles

Deconstructing Learners’ Creative Potentials: An Assessment of Students’ Divergent Thinking Skills

Deconstructing Learners’ Creative Potentials: An Assessment of Students’ Divergent Thinking Skills

Psychological capital mediates the mindfulness-creativity link: the perspective of positive psychology.

The positive mindfulness-creativity link has been widely documented; however, its underlying psychological mechanisms remain less understood. From the perspective of positive psychology, this study examined the mediating effect of psychological capital (PsyCap) on the effect of dispositional mindfulness on creative functioning. A total of 894 Chinese secondary school students in Hong Kong (50.8% female; M age = 15.5 years) completed the study. A cross-sectional design was used, in which context PsyCap and dispositional mindfulness were assessed by the Chinese version of the revised Compound PsyCap Scale (CPC-12R) and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), respectively. Moreover, by adopting the multiple-measurement approach to creativity, three commonly used creativity tests (i.e., the Wallach-Kogan Creativity Test/WKCT, the Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production/TCT-DP, and the Creative Problem-Solving Test/CPST) were applied to capture three aspects of creativity (i.e., divergent thinking, creative combination, and creative problem solving). The results suggest that (1) PsyCap partially but significantly mediated the mindfulness-creativity link for all three aspects of creative functioning, and (2) PsyCap demonstrated the strongest effect size in mediating the mindfulness-creativity link for creative problem solving, followed by creative combination and then divergent thinking. These results, on the one hand, support the positive psychology perspective by confirming a positive psychological resource mechanism regarding the relationship between mindfulness and creativity. On the other hand, the results regarding the varied sizes of the mediation effect further enrich the discourse on this perspective by showing that the mediation mechanism may function to different degrees depending on which aspect of creativity is under consideration. These findings illuminate the positive functioning of mindfulness, psychological resources/capital and creativity.

Automatic Scoring of Verbal Divergent Thinking Tests: From Lexical Databases to Large Language Models

The article explores the evolution of methods for automatically assessing verbal divergent thinking tests. Resear - chers have increasingly focused on the ability to evaluate the originality of respondents' answers by calculating their semantic distance from the stimulus task. From 2009 to 2019, latent semantic analysis became the primary method for assessing semantic distances. Overall, in terms of internal consistency and correlation with expert ratings, its application yielded satisfactory results, maintaining an acceptable balance of quality and effort expended. However, issues emerged (dependence on the corpus used, result instability, systematic distortions related to the length of analyzed responses), prompting researchers to transition to more advanced models of distributional semantics (GloVe, Word2Vec etc.), large language models, and supervised learning. Large language models, especially those fine-tuned on creativity test materials, demonstrated higher effectiveness compared to models assessing semantic distances and approached expert evaluations. In addition to evaluating originality, the article considers works proposing methods for automatic assessment of elaboration, flexibility, associative flow, and divergent semantic integration. References to online platforms that allow for automatic assessments of originality in responses to divergent tests are provided. The issue of interpreting results obtained through large language models is discussed. A drawback of using these models is the lack of understanding of the basis on which judgments of the originality of creative products are made. The perspectives of applying explainable artificial intelligence for evaluating results of verbal and non-verbal tests of creative thinking are being discussed.

Effectiveness of Critical Thinking Education on Divergent Thinking and Academic Enthusiasm of High School Students

Effectiveness of Critical Thinking Education on Divergent Thinking and Academic Enthusiasm of High School Students

Impact of Personality and Parenting Style on Divergent Thinking among Middle School Students

Impact of Personality and Parenting Style on Divergent Thinking among Middle School Students

Divergent Thinking and Writing Self-Ef􀅮icacy: A Study of Undergraduate Students in Zhejiang Province

Divergent Thinking and Writing Self-Ef􀅮icacy: A Study of Undergraduate Students in Zhejiang Province

Presenting a Conceptual Model Based on Cognitive Components and Personality Traits Affecting Entrepreneurial Competence through Document Analysis

Objective: Following the publication of a report on sustainable development issues, the United Nations identified creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship as key elements to address sustainable development challenges. The primary objective of this study was to present an appropriate conceptual model for entrepreneurial competence based on cognitive components and personality traits with an emphasis on creativity. In this context, to achieve a comprehensive and hypothetical understanding of the psychological factors' impact on entrepreneurship, an integration of both the creativity and entrepreneurship domains was utilized. Methods and Materials: This study employed a qualitative meta-synthesis approach. According to the qualitative meta-synthesis method, the research population included all Persian and English scientific documents (research articles, theses, and books) published in the field of entrepreneurship from 2010 to 2022. To assess the quality of the found articles, the impact factor of a scientific journal was examined, and 90 articles were approved. Then, the relevant data from each article were extracted and entered into MAXQDA software. After reaching saturation, content analysis in this software was a systematic and continuous process of data comparison, conducted in three stages: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding, based on Strauss and Corbin's approach. Findings: The results showed that the conceptual model of entrepreneurial competence based on cognitive components and personality traits with regard to creativity includes the following: Personality traits (dynamism and restlessness, lively interaction and humor combined with personal discipline, thoughtful extraversion, ambition with altruism, simultaneous femininity and masculinity, rebellious and independent, passionate yet realistic and goal-oriented, suffering and pain along with much pleasure, determined and serious yet flexible, internal control source, openness and the expansiveness of fantasy rooted in realities, emotional stability with emotional steadiness, hardworking and perseverance combined with responsibility). Cognitive components (intelligence quotient above 120, active memory, attention and concentration, convergent and divergent thinking), Contextual conditions (planning ability, organizational ability, time management and control, reasoning power, judgment ability, decision-making power, problem-solving ability, impulse control), Intermediate conditions (cognitive flexibility, ambiguity and conditions of uncertainty and certainty, being active, experience-seeking and risk-taking). Conclusion: It can be concluded that a multidimensional empirical approach of cognitive components and personality traits provides more information.

Бинарная личность как критический субъект самоорганизации современной экономики

The article is devoted to substantiating the need for a qualitative renewal of a personality-oriented approach to the study of modern economics. At the same time, the methodological basis was the evolutionary and behavioral economic theories, in which the main subject of activity is the personality. The novelty of the results of the work lies in the identification of a synergetic form of increasing economic complexity, as well as the designation of a critical entity with authority to carry out economic self-organization. The concept of a binary personality is substantiated, which represents the unity of the individual as a «collapsed» society and society as an «expanded» individual. The unity and interrelation of the phenomena of binary personality and binary quality of economic synergetics as the basis of progressive economic development in the process of ensuring dynamic balance of freedom of economic decision-making and the need to develop morally acceptable forms of their creative and labor realization is shown. The necessity of the «renaissance» of individualism is proved, since it is the unique individual who is the generator, first of all, of implicit knowledge as the cognitive basis of large-scale and radical innovations. The scientific and practical significance of the article's conclusions lies in the possibility of their use for further improvement of the disciplinary matrix of political economic analysis, as well as for qualitative updating of programs of all forms and types of modern education, the objective function of which should be to form divergent thinking among students and employees.

Liberatory Design Thinking for Equity-Centered Instructional Design: A Systems Thinking Analysis

As per the National Equity Project, any system that produces inequities, injustices, and inequalities is often a product of design. Research has shown that systemic inequity often results from the design process and can rupture the power balance, producing inequitable relationships in the social justice arena (NEP, n.d.). Equity-centered systems design is pivotal in dismantling systems of oppression and empowering people of color, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community, the indigenous, and other marginalized communities. An equity-centered liberatory design thinking approach can support instructional designers in identifying and addressing the problems of inequities in an existing system. By considering the ethos and strategies necessary to center equity by design, instructional designers can provide a platform and opportunity for all stakeholders to practice converging and divergent thinking.

The effect of self-related humor on convergent and divergent thinking

Humour enhances creativity, but the question is whether different types of humour have a similar effect on improving individual creativity. It is evident that negative humour style is negatively related to creativity, while positive humour style is positively related to it. However, no evidence has been found that self-related humour (self-enhancing and self-defeating humour) directly affects creative thinking in the experimental setting. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the effect of self-related humour on convergent and divergent creative thinking. We included 60 (38 male, 22 female) participants and randomly assigned 20 in each condition to conduct this experiment. To evoke humour, we used 12 stimuli (12 self-enhancing jokes, 12 self-defeating jokes, and 12 non-humorous statements) in each condition. Remote Association Task (RAT) was used to measure convergent thinking, and Alternative Uses Task (AUT) was used to measure divergent thinking. We expected that i) people who engage in self-enhancing humour would perform better at convergent thinking tasks than the control group and the self-defeating humour group and ii) people who engage in self-enhancing humour would perform better at divergent thinking tasks than the control group and the self-defeating humour group. Our results supported our hypotheses and suggested that self-enhancing humour induced individual creativity both in convergent or divergent thinking (originality, fluency, flexibility). In contrast, self-defeating humour failed to affect either convergent or divergent thinking.

인공지능(AI)을 활용한 건축디자인 정보처리 모델에 관한 연구

Recently, there is a lot of discussion in the architectural world about the impact that artificial intelligence image generation models will have on architectural design. Artificial intelligence uses information processing theory to analyze and model human cognitive abilities. According to information processing theory, architectural design is an information processing activity that establishes reasonable concepts to solve spatial problems and processes visual and conceptual information that corresponds to them. In this study, the five information processing processes of Akin's (1986) information processing model, DIPS (design information processing system), 'Information acquisition', 'Information representation', 'Information projection', 'Information confirmation', and 'Regulation of control'. The characteristics of architectural design thinking types, ‘convergent thinking’, ‘divergent thinking’, and ‘analogical thinking’ were examined. Through this, I identified the characteristics of representative design-related artificial intelligence NLP, GAN, and DNN and proposed an architectural design information processing model using artificial intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to examine the architectural design information processing model and compare the characteristics of the thinking style that occurs in the process with the characteristics of the artificial intelligence model to analyze the possibility of using artificial intelligence in architectural design and to provide architectural design information using artificial intelligence. The goal is to propose a processing model.

창의성 과제 특성, 부화활동의 유형, 과제선택권에 따른 부화효과의 차이

The purpose of this study was investigated the incubation effect on the two main types of creative thinking, convergent thinking (e.g., remote association task) and divergent thinking (e.g., alternative use task). More importantly, the main interest of this study was to know on how incubation activities that participate in the incubation stage and choice in tasks play a role for the effect of incubation. In experiment 1, taking away from the problem for a while and participating another task was helpful to creative problem solving. In experiment 2, the result of convergent thinking task (RAT) showed that incubation effects were differed according to incubation activities and choice in tasks. The incubation group with no choice in tasks displayed significant performance improvement compared to the choice in tasks group. In addition, we could not find the difference in incubation effect for the incubation activities. In contrast, the result of divergent thinking task (AUT) showed that there were no difference in incubation effects according to incubation activities and choice in tasks. Based on these results, we discussed creativity education using incubation.

간호대학생의 액션러닝 학습법의 효과

Objectives In this study, it is important to teach nursing knowledge in order to train nurses, but it is also important for learners to find ways to acquire knowledge on their own and to be able to solve problems through daily creativity and information utilization skills. This study attempted to confirm the effects of action learning methods on problem-solving ability, information utilization ability, and everyday creativity.
 Methods The subjects of the study were 76 first-year students taking nursing informatics courses at a 4-year nursing school located in G Metropolitan City. This study was carried out from September 1, 2022 to October 30, 2022. with 76 nursing students assigned among 1st year students attending nursing department in G city. It was designed as a total of 6 programs through the action learning teaching learning method, and was measured using problem solving ability, information literacy ability and every creativity measurement tools. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, paired t-test and Cronbach's α coefficient using the SPSS 26.0 program.
 Results There was no effect on improving problem-solving ability (2.46±0.52, p=.210) and every creativity (3.75±0.48, p=.270) of nursing students after the action learning teaching learning method, but information literacy (3.72±0.47, p=.027) improved. It was effective in the sub-areas of problem-solving ability, divergent thinking (t=2.24, p=.027), execution and risk taking (t=2.24, p=.027), and the sub-area of information literacy ability(t=2.24, p=.027), information retrieval(t=2.58, p=.011) and creative flexibility (t=-2.19, p=.030), a subarea of everyday creativity.
 Conclusions It is necessary to develop various contents of nursing informatics classes using the action learning teaching learning method of nursing students, apply and repeat research, and verify the effectiveness of classes by applying various grades and subjects, and a longitudinal study on the effect of applying action learning classes. It is suggested that.

Creative quality matters: Teaching early-career scientists to think in multiple directions

Divergent thinking (DT) is an essential cognitive ability to nurture creativity and is often used as an indicator of creative potential. This study examined early-career scientists’ ability to generate ideas in multiple directions during a 10-week creativity course. Three alternate-form exercises of two formats (“Many uses” and “What is”) – conducted at the beginning, middle, and end of the course – were used to assess DT evolution of biology PhD students (n = 21). Responses to these exercises were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively using traditional DT scores, and theory-driven dimensions representing the ideational hyperspace. Results showed that PhD students’ fluency, originality, and peak originality greatly increased from Exercise 1 to Exercise 2, however, in Exercise 3, which involved the “What is” task, growth was not statistically significant in any of the three DT scores. Although overall fluency increased, correlations with originality and peak originality became weaker as the course advanced and not significant in the last exercise. The ideational hyperspace analysis revealed that PhD students generated ideas mostly on six conceptual categories: Practical, Serious, Non-Synthetic, NEMBL, Feasible, and Domain-General; five of which had been negatively correlated with originality. Findings suggested that DT should be supported with the practice of cognitive flexibility and deliberately thinking about specific cognitive processes to improve early-career scientists’ ability to generate both more and highly original ideas. Considerations for teaching creativity to scientists are discussed.

Too old to be creative? An age bias in creativity judgment

Abstract Building on prior literature on social judgment and age stereotypes, we investigate whether age bias exists in creativity judgment and, if so, how it emerges and to what extent it persists. One archival data study (Study 1) and 5 recruitment scenario experiments (Studies 2–5) provide evidence that people persistently evaluate the creativity of an older person more negatively compared to that of a younger person. This age bias in creativity judgment remained even when a creative job feature that is positively associated with older people (i.e., requiring convergent vs. divergent thinking) was highlighted (Study 3) and when a worker demonstrated creative performance (Study 4). Furthermore, by testing the moderating role of age stereotypes, we found that age stereotypes in the adaptability dimension specifically contributed to this bias: those who believe that older people are not adaptable at work tend to exhibit age-biased creativity judgments (Studies 5a and 5b). Understanding the persistence of age bias in creativity judgment and its processes helps raise awareness of it in the workplace. Our findings also call for future investigations into effective strategies to attenuate such biases in the workplace.

Automatic assessment of divergent thinking in Chinese language with TransDis: A transformer-based language model approach.

Language models have been increasingly popular for automatic creativity assessment, generating semantic distances to objectively measure the quality of creative ideas. However, there is currently a lack of an automatic assessment system for evaluating creative ideas in the Chinese language. To address this gap, we developed TransDis, a scoring system using transformer-based language models, capable of providing valid originality (novelty) and flexibility (variety) scores for Alternative Uses Task (AUT) responses in Chinese. Study 1 demonstrated that the latent model-rated originality factor, comprised of three transformer-based models, strongly predicted human originality ratings, and the model-rated flexibility strongly correlated with human flexibility ratings as well. Criterion validity analyses indicated that model-rated originality and flexibility positively correlated to other creativity measures, demonstrating similar validity to human ratings. Study 2 and 3 showed that TransDis effectively distinguished participants instructed to provide creative vs. common uses (Study 2) and participants instructed to generate ideas in a flexible vs. persistent way (Study 3). Our findings suggest that TransDis can be a reliable and low-cost tool for measuring idea originality and flexibility in Chinese language, potentially paving the way for automatic creativity assessment in other languages. We offer an open platform to compute originality and flexibility for AUT responses in Chinese and over 50 other languages ( https://osf.io/59jv2/ ).

Formation of schoolchildren’ divergent thinking in the conditions of additional education when working with timelines

Problem statement . One of the most important tasks that digital school teachers face is preparing a graduate, who is ready to use the acquired knowledge in his future life and find non-standard, original solutions, overcoming the usual patterns and established opinions. The study aimed at substantiating the effectiveness of the use of timeline services for the development of divergent thinking in schoolchildren in the conditions of additional education. Methodology . Theoretical and methodological analysis and generalization of fundamental scientific works on the research problem, processing of test results and timelines were applied. The pedagogical experiment involved 130 students of the state budgetary educational institution of Moscow “School No. 1506”. To diagnose and assess the formation of divergent thinking, the method of F. Williams (adapted by E.E. Tunik) was used. Pearson's chi-square test was used as a statistical processing method. Results . The timeline in additional education was carried out when displaying historical facts in chronological order, compiling algorithms, creating biographies, and presenting statistics. The didactic potential of the timeline as a kind of quantitative infographics is revealed, which offers a graphical implementation of digital data in relation to each component in the structure of creativity: flexibility, originality, elaboration, fluency. Statistically significant differences in qualitative changes in the pedagogical system were determined. Conclusion . The use of timeline services in the conditions of additional education contributes to the development of divergent thinking of students due to the possibilities of interactive presentation of events and facts, reuse, multimedia, technical minimalism. Difficulties that complicate the use of virtual timelines are noted: time resource management, the need to develop criteria and indicators for the effective use of web services for the corresponding purpose.

Machine-learning applications for differentiation across states/stages of creative thinking based on time-series and time-frequency features of EEG/ERP signals

BACKGROUND: The study presents machine-learning (ML) classification approaches for the state/stage differentiation of creative tasks using the “test-control” approach. The control tasks were considered as the initial stages of the creative activity. Time-series and time-frequency electroencephalography (EEG) data analyses were employed in three divergent thinking tasks: 1) creating endings to well-known proverbs (“PROVERBS”, event-related potential [ERP] paradigm); 2) creating stories (“STORIES”, continuous EEG); 3) free creative painting (“viART”, continuous EEG). AIM: To compare and select effective ML classification approaches for EEG signal separation at different stages or states of creative task performance. METHODS: In this study, 22 individuals participated in the “PROVERBS” (ERP paradigm), 15 in the “STORIES”, and 1 (a longitudinal case study) in the “viART” tasks. Linear and convolutional neural network (CNN) classifiers were used. EEG data were previous artifacts corrected and converted to current source density (CSD). Continuous EEGs were divided into 4-s intervals and 1500 ms after stimulus presentation, were used in ERPs. The EEG/ERP time-frequency maps (Morlet wavelet transformation) for 3–30 Hz were generated for 4-s intervals with 100 ms shift (continuous EEGs in “STORIES” and “viART”) or for 1500 ms after stimulus presentation (ERPs in “PROVERBS”) and consisted of combined images (224×224 px) for frontal (Fz) and parietal (Pz) brain zones. Image classification was carried out using the modified CNN (ResNet50, ResNet18 architectures). RESULTS: The offline classification accuracy of the four-class system (description of a picture, inventing a story plot, continuation of story’s plot, and background with open eyes) in the “STORY” creation task was up to 96.4% [±8.3 SD] with ResNet architectures (ResNet50 and ResNet18). The accuracy of the three states discrimination of the artists’ creative painting (resting state with open eyes, painting on canvas, and viewing the painting) was 86.94% for kernel naive bayes and 98.2% for CNN. For the trained and tested samples given for the CNN in consecutive order (neurointerface mode), the accuracy diminished to 70.0% [11% SD] on average. In the ERP paradigm “PROVERBS”, the classification accuracy of the three-class system (creation of “new” ending, naming of semantic synonym, and remembering of the known ending) was 80.5% [±8.7 SD] for the common spatial pattern, followed by rSVM (radial kernel basis support vector machine), compared with 43.2% [±8.8 SD] for CNN. CONCLUSION: The use of CNNs allowed better classifying of “continuous” long-term states of creative activity. In fast “transient processes” such as ERP, time-series classifiers with spatial filtering proved to be more efficient.

Creativity and Attention Control: An Individual Difference Approach

ABSTRACT Prior work suggests that attention is related to creativity, in large part because creative individuals are more likely to attend to and remember irrelevant auditory information. However, the specific role of attention in those studies is unclear because the results may reflect memory processes rather than attention. In two experiments, we used a dichotic listening task to experimentally manipulate attention control (focused, divided) without memory demands. Analyses tested whether individual differences in dichotic listening performance covaried with creative achievement and creative performance on lab-based tests. Results from both studies showed that misperceptions in the dichotic listening tasks were negatively related to creative performance, with mixed results for their relations to creative achievement. There was also a negative relationship between the ability to focus attention and divergent thinking. We speculate that misperceptions may index periods of attentional lapses, which are also likely to limit creativity. Additionally, focused attention may hinder divergent thinking. Taken together, the findings suggest that individual differences in attention control contribute to performance on lab-based creativity tests.

Reduced occipital alpha power marks a movement induced state change that facilitates creative thinking

Walking and minimized movement restriction has a positive effect on creativity, such as divergent thinking. Walking is further known to reduce occipital alpha activity. We used mobile EEG during free and restricted movement, while subjects (N = 23) solved a Guilford's alternate uses test, to understand if occipital alpha power is also affected by movement restriction and if it is a neural marker for creativity. We found that, independent of the task, relative occipital alpha power was higher during movement restriction and showed a negative relationship with creativity scores even though the task was purely based on auditory information. Alpha lateralization was only modulated during the task related think-time (mainly during sitting) and showed a positive relationship with creativity scores but no correlation with the relative alpha power. This indicates that the ongoing alpha power and alpha lateralization mark two independent processes. Overall, our work shows that movement and movement restriction leads to a general change in state which affects cognitive processes. Specifically, limiting one's movements e.g. due to sitting and fixating on a screen can introduce a state of increased occipital alpha power and lowered creativity.