General Creativity Research Articles

System‐failing creativity in health care

AbstractIntroductionHealth care professionals often generate novel solutions to solve problems during day‐to‐day patient care. However, less is known about generating novel and useful (i.e., creative) ideas in the face of health care system failure. System failures are high‐impact and increasingly frequent events in health care organizations, and front‐line professionals may have uniquely valuable expertise to address such occurrences.MethodsOur interdisciplinary team, blending expertise in health care management, economics, psychology, and clinical practice, reviewed the literature on creativity and system failures in health care to generate a conceptual model that describes this process. Drawing on appraisal theory, we iteratively refined the model by integrating various theories with key concepts of system failures, creativity, and health care worker's well‐being.ResultsThe SFC model provides a conceptualization of creativity from front‐line care professionals as it emerges in situations of failure or crisis. It describes the pathways by which professionals respond proactively to a systems failure with creative ideas to effectively address the situation and affect these workers' well‐being.ConclusionsOur conceptual model guides health care managers and leaders to use managerial practices to shape their systems and support creativity, especially when facing system failures. It introduces a framework for examining system‐failing creativity (SFC) and general creativity, aiming to improve health care quality, health care workers' well‐being, and organizational outcomes.

Are Creativity Tests Vulnerable to Coaching?

ABSTRACT This study tested the claim that coaching on a widely used creativity measure can improve respondents’ scores on that measure – specifically whether those who receive explicit coaching on the scoring of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural (TTCT-F) get higher subsequent scores on the test. A total of 35 adults were included in the treatment and reference groups. The treatment condition was defined as receiving coaching on how to score the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural (TTCT-F) and training on creative teaching strategies. The reference condition was defined as receiving training on general creativity skills and creative teaching strategies, but no coaching on how to score the TTCT-F. An ANCOVA was conducted to account for differences in the posttest scores by group while controlling the effect of pretest scores as covariates. The result of the ANCOVA indicated that the treatment group dropped significantly on the fluency subscale, F 1 , 32 = 9.73, p < .001 from pretest to posttest. Findings imply that TTCT-F scores do not benefit from specific coaching on test scoring.

The moderating effect of creative metacognition on adolescents’ risk-taking in creative performance

Research has demonstrated the crucial role of creative metacognition and risk-taking in creativity. However, little empirical research has examined how creative metacognition and risk-taking work on creative performance in educational practice. This paper explored the moderating effects of creative metacognition on the relationships between different types of risk-taking (i.e., propensity for taking a risk, willingness to take a risk) and creative performance (i.e., general creativity, originality, usefulness) in a middle school context. The sample consisted of 350 7th- and 8th-grade students from three middle schools. They completed a survey and a creative performance task. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that creative metacognition moderated the relationships between willingness to take a risk and both originality and usefulness. The results indicated that creative metacognition reinforces the positive effect of risk-taking on originality and mitigates the negative effect of risk-taking on usefulness. Our findings suggest a potential role for creative metacognition in enhancing curriculum-based creative performance in middle schools. In the end, practical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Embodied metacognition as strengthened functional connection between neural correlates of metacognition and dance in dancers: exploring creativity implications.

Dance education fosters embodied metacognition, enhancing student's creativity. This study examines the crucial role of functional connectivity (FC) between the neural correlates of metacognition (NCM) and dance (NCD) as the neurological foundation for dancers' embodied metacognition. The investigation also explores whether these consolidated FCs inform the general creativity in dancers. The research involved 29 dancers and 28 non-dancer controls. The study examined resting-state connections of the NCM through seed-based FC analysis. Correlation analyses were employed to investigate the connections between the targeted NCM-NCD FCs, initiated from the a priori NCM seed, and general creativity. Dancers demonstrated heightened FC between NCM and NCD compared to non-dancer controls. The targeted regions included the putamen, globus pallidus, posterior cerebellum, and anterior insula of NCD. The dancers exhibited higher originality scores. In dancers, the enhanced FC showed a negative correlation with originality and a positive correlation with flexibility. Conversely, the controls exhibited no significant correlations. Extended dance training enhances the NCM-NCD connection signifying embodied metacognition. This interconnectedness may serve as the neural predisposition for fostering general creativity performance in dancers. Dancers with heightened levels of originality could leverage the relatively weaker NCM-NCD FCs to facilitate better integration and coordination of creative cognitive processes. Our findings suggest that the consolidated functional connections as sculpted by domain-specific training may inform general creativity.

Using a model of domain learning to understand the development of creativity

Creative thinking is a process through which individuals generate ideas that are simultaneously novel and meaningful within a given social context. Historically, psychologists have closely studied the general creative capacity of young learners, as well as the domain-specific creativity of experts. However, the developmental trajectory from children’s general creativity to experts’ domain-specific creativity remains largely unmapped. In this article, we work to address this issue theoretically by drawing on one established conceptual framework of academic development, the Model of Domain Learning (MDL). The MDL contains specific hypotheses about how learners’ declarative and procedural knowledge, motivation, and performance within a domain change as they learn, and we here delineate our hypothesized ways in which creative thinking could be expected to concomitantly progress throughout that development. We suggest that domain creative thinking develops from a largely self-referenced process when domain knowledge is low, to a more highly socially-referenced process as domain knowledge grows. In addition, we argue that creativity can both support, and be supported by, domain learning and offer specific suggestions for incorporating creative thinking into instruction at each stage of domain learning. We also show that, as learners develop academically within a domain, creative thinking requires a progressively greater investment of time and effort, which contributes to the riskiness of creative innovation and the rareness of creative experts.

Assessing the Linguistic Creativity Domain of Last-Year Compulsory Secondary School Students

The importance of creativity in the training of people gained special relevance with the PISA Tests of the OECD, which, for the first time, evaluated the general creativity of 15-year-old students in 2022. This descriptive and quantitative study focuses on the evaluation of linguistic creativity, using different classical instruments to measure divergent thinking and adding new ones, such as metaphorical capacity. Participants were 454 students in their last year of secondary education from eight Spanish educational centers. Results indicate moderate performance in divergent thinking tasks, with students exhibiting limitations in generating novel metaphors, often resorting to literal responses. Statistically significant differences according to gender were found in metaphor generation and in the alternate uses task. A correlation study reveals significant associations between metaphor generation and divergent thinking tasks. These highlight the differential role of semantic memory and cognitive processes involved in metaphor generation and divergent thinking. Finally, this study underlines the complexities and multicomponent nature of creativity as a first step to develop educational policies and interventions targeting creativity. Overall, the importance of addressing creativity in a transdisciplinary way and training teachers on techniques to channel creativity are highlighted, such as through the design of challenges or writing workshops.

The Creativity Levels of Preschool Teachers

In this study, the creativity levels of preschool instructors employed in Denizli's central districts' public schools and institutions throughout the 2022–2023 academic year were examined. The study used a scanning model and was quantitatively conducted. Data from 324 preschool teachers were gathered using a convenience sampling technique. Preschool teachers have medium levels of creativity in terms of academic creativity, artistic creativity, and artistic performance. They were discovered to have a high level of creativity in the originality area but a low level in the scientific/mechanical area. In preschool teachers' ratings of creativity, boys considerably outperformed girls on the dimension of scientific/mechanical inventiveness. In the area of artistic performance, creativity perceptions revealed a strong and significant difference in favor of women. Whether they were young, middle-aged, or old, teachers' assessments of creativity had comparable traits.&#x0D; There was a difference between preschool teachers with less seniority and those with more seniority when the artistic performance dimension of their judgments of creativity was explored, favoring those with less seniority. A difference was observed among the participants with 1–10 years of seniority and those with 11–20 years in terms of artistic inventiveness, favoring those with less seniority. When the preschool teachers' opinions of their own creativity were matched to their educational backgrounds, it was found that the graduate-degree holding teachers had greater perceptions of academic, scientific/mechanical, originality, and general creativity than the undergraduate teachers. It was determined that teachers with project experience have greater perceptions of creativity than those without project experience in the areas of academic, artistic performance, artistic inventiveness, and general creativity.&#x0D; Keywords: Creativity, teacher, preschool, school.

Unscrambling creativity measurement: An invitation to better formalize the domain generality-specificity of creativity with psychometric modeling

A key question in creativity research concerns whether creativity is best understood as domain-specific or domain-general (Baer & Kaufman, 2005). Yet, the literature is plagued with insufficiently defined notions of domain specificity and generality of creativity. For example, researchers have alternatively discussed domain-generality as either a positive manifold (i.e., positive interdomain correlations), or as a unidimensional factor model (e.g., Ivcevic, 2007), without acknowledging the difference or providing a justification for their particular choice. We argue that there are diverse ways to conceptualize domain generality and specificity, with different implications (Kan et al., 2019). We propose to unscramble confusions in the literature by defining taxonomy of models that imply a general factor, domain specific factors, both, or neither. We review statistical frameworks used to test and compare them, examine their implications, and invite creativity researchers to clarify how they conceptualize and formalize generality and specificity in their research. Statement of educational relevanceA clear representation of how creativity is structured across domains is fundamental to the understanding of how creativity is to be learned and trained. Notably, the existence of a general creativity implies that creativity might be learned and trained in general (i.e., across multiple domains), while domain specificity implies that it might be learned primarily at the domain (or subdomain) level. Beyond the traditional framing of this question as a dichotomy or continuum of generality-specificity, we argue that there are in fact many types of conceptual and statistical models for understanding the structure of creativity across domains, which have different implications.

The Effectiveness of a Proposed Discrete ‎Math Program Based on Mathematical ‎Thinking Styles in Developing Achievement ‎and Creativity among Computer Science ‎Student-Teachers at Sana'a University

The study sought to determine the extent to which a ‎mathematical thinking-based program in discrete math has an ‎effect on developing achievement and creativity among ‎computer science student-teachers at Sana'a University's Faculty ‎of Education. The study followed the experimental method with ‎two related groups and pre- and post-tests. Data collection tools ‎included a list of mathematical thinking styles and methods, a ‎proposed program, an achievement test and a general creativity ‎test. All the tools were appropriately checked for their validity ‎and reliability. The sample selected for the study consists of 30 ‎first-year teachers of computer science, and the consistency of ‎extraneous variables was checked. The tools were administered ‎at the beginning of Second Semester (2021-2022), the ‎proposed program was implemented during the semester, and ‎the tools were re-administered at the end of the same semester. ‎‎ The study findings demonstrated statistically significant ‎differences between the participants' average scores in both pre- ‎and post-accomplishment and creativity tests (0.01) in favor of ‎post-tests, as well as a high level of effectiveness of the ‎suggested program.The study recommended that student-‎teachers should be trained on thinking styles as well as on new ‎techniques of teaching and learning that emphasize thinking and ‎creativity.‎ (Keywords: Program, Math, Mathematical Thinking Styles, ‎Achievement, Creativity)‎

The Influence of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Malevolent Creativity in Young Adulthood.

Childhood trauma may increase the risk of antisocial behavior in young adulthood. Our study examined the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the specific antisocial behavior of malevolent creativity (MC), the application of original ideas to purposely harm others, often to gain an unfair advantage through manipulation, threat, or harm. We surveyed college students (N = 524; 78% women) on demographics, ACEs, empathy, social support, coping, general creativity, and malevolent creativity. The data were analyzed via sequential linear regression models. Reporting ≥ 4 ACEs was associated with increased MC, which remained significant when general creativity and demographics were controlled. The association between higher ACEs and MC was no longer significant when psychosocial control variables (social support, empathy, and coping) were included in the statistical model. Social support and empathy were negatively associated with MC, while coping and MC were positively associated. ACEs may increase the likelihood of malevolent creativity in young adulthood, but empathy and social support may disrupt this trajectory. Care should be taken that coping skills, while typically viewed as a positive addition to one's behavioral repertoire, do not push individuals toward over-reliance on themselves, which may reduce prosocial behaviors and increase MC.

Environmental Sustainability Strategy, Creativity, Innovation and Organizational Performance: The Role of Green Human Resource Management

This paper provides a theoretical explanation for the “black box” between “going green” and organizational performance and links individual-level behaviors with organizational-level outcomes. We argue that the adoption of an environmental sustainability strategy and high involvement green human resources management practices will have the intended impact of increasing employee green creativity and the unintended impact of increasing employee general creativity. As well, we suggest that employee green values moderate these relationships. Furthermore, the positive effects on employee creativity (green and general) are theorized to increase organizational innovation, which positively impacts organizational performance. This paper extends the research by providing a possible explanation for how the “black box” between “going green” and organizational performance is impacted by intended and unintended behaviors that are shaped by green human resources management practices.

Systematic review: Factors influencing creativity in the design discipline and assessment criteria

Using psychological instrument to measure creativity is getting popular in design research. However, unlike quantifying general creativity using divergent thinking, the complexity and interdisciplinarity of the design discipline have made it difficult to explore research on design creativity. Therefore, to better quantify and measure design creativity, 31 relevant studies were retrieved by Google Scholar and the University of London Common Research in this article. This study summarizes the factors that influence design creativity in different design disciplines, the rules for setting the internal dimensions, and the valid instruments for measuring design creativity. The factors affecting design creativity can be divided into internal factors (aesthetic, spatial ability, and ambiguity tolerance) and external factors (environment and visual stimulation). Among these factors, different instruments and evaluation criteria considerably impact the result, while the measurement of design creativity is still not mature enough. A single scale evaluation or creative task evaluation cannot comprehensively evaluate the design creativity, which consists of aesthetic, functional, and technical aspects. In addition, the reference value of ordinary creativity remains to be further discussed in design. Under some professional design fields, the effect of widely recognized factors closely related to creativity, such as divergent thinking, imagination, and personality, is insignificant.

A Contemporary Atomistic Model of Art—A First-Person Introspection of the Artistic Process

In modern science and human activity, we increasingly refer to creative thinking that does not belong to the strict definition of art. Art studies and art theory should answer the questions that emerge in the complex interaction among diverse creative fields. Art experience may be considered as one of many different manifestations of creative thinking (general creativity). When we develop ideas involving heterogeneous nuclei, our thoughts aim to encompass or reflect upon the area in between their fusion. This paper proposes a method of implementing an introspective analysis that brings the artist to a new position—the position of an explorer of their own cognitive space.

The Turning Point: Scientific Creativity Assessment and Its Relationship with Other Creative Domains in First Year Secondary Students

Research on creativity, as well as its application to the education field and its assessment at the different educational stages, have been of increasing interest over the past decades in different countries. In this context, this study aims to evaluate performance in scientific creativity and its relationship with other creativity domains (linguistic and general creativity) of Spanish first-year secondary students. This is a key moment both from the point of view of the change in educational level and a critical age in cognitive developments associated with creativity. The research was carried out using a quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional design. Data was collected using previously validated tests. Results revealed a moderate-to-low performance for the scientific domain, as well as for the linguistic one and for general creativity. In addition, positive correlations have been found between all the studied domains of creativity. Nevertheless, this correlation was stronger between both scientific creativity dimensions (daily and specific). This research shows the scarce creative competence of students at the early stage of secondary education and gives evidence about the multicomponent nature of creativity. The need for the inclusion of creative teaching strategies at the secondary education level via transdisciplinary approaches is discussed.

A Supervised Machine Learning Approach to Classify Brain Morphology of Professional Visual Artists versus Non-Artists.

This study aimed to investigate whether there are structural differences in the brains of professional artists who received formal training in the visual arts and non-artists who did not have any formal training or professional experience in the visual arts, and whether these differences can be used to accurately classify individuals as being an artist or not. Previous research using functional MRI has suggested that general creativity involves a balance between the default mode network and the executive control network. However, it is not known whether there are structural differences between the brains of artists and non-artists. In this study, a machine learning method called Multi-Kernel Learning (MKL) was applied to gray matter images of 12 artists and 12 non-artists matched for age and gender. The results showed that the predictive model was able to correctly classify artists from non-artists with an accuracy of 79.17% (AUC 88%), and had the ability to predict new cases with an accuracy of 81.82%. The brain regions most important for this classification were the Heschl area, amygdala, cingulate, thalamus, and parts of the parietal and occipital lobes as well as the temporal pole. These regions may be related to the enhanced emotional and visuospatial abilities that professional artists possess compared to non-artists. Additionally, the reliability of this circuit was assessed using two different classifiers, which confirmed the findings. There was also a trend towards significance between the circuit and a measure of vividness of imagery, further supporting the idea that these brain regions may be related to the imagery abilities involved in the artistic process.

Creative development, self-esteem and barriers to creativity in university students of education according to their participation in artistic activities

Different studies have pointed out the relationship between participation in artistic activities and creative development. However, there is scant literature that addresses the issue in students who are training to be future teachers. This is the reason for the present study, which focuses on university students of education degrees at two public universities located in different Spanish cities. The main objective of the study was to discover the role played in creative development, self-esteem and barriers to creativity by prior participation in artistic activities. The study also aimed to detect the frequency with which these students undertook artistic activities and to determine which activities were most frequently carried out by men and women. In view of the scarcity of rigorous measurement instruments validated for the Spanish population, the study also proposed to validate the Inventory of Personal Creativity Barriers in the Spanish population. A total of 574 students participated in the validation and 291 (randomly selected) in the subsequent quasi-experimental, descriptive, cross-sectional study. A questionnaire was used to collect socio-demographic data, a Personal Creativity Barriers Inventory, the Test of Creative Imagination for Adults (PIC-A) (2012) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1965). The validation of the Inventory showed contrasted evidence of internal consistency. The results of the study to determine differences associated with participation in artistic activities detected that the group who carried out such activities obtained higher scores in narrative, graphic (although at the limit of significance) and general creativity. No significant differences were found between the groups in the factors of barriers to creativity or self-esteem. We conclude by recommending participation in artistic activities given the benefits deriving from creativity, particularly in narrative and graphic tasks.

Darkness within: The Internal Mechanism between Dark Triad and Malevolent Creativity.

The Dark Triad has been found to be associated with malevolent creativity (MC) in terms of trait level, and its underlying mechanism remains unclear. Based on the cognitive-affective processing system theory and the existing studies, the current study aimed to explore the internal mechanism between the Dark Triad and MC behavioral tendencies/performance. The results revealed that the Dark Triad is positively related to MC behavioral tendencies through trait aggression and general creativity behavioral tendencies. Regarding MC performance, the Dark Triad is positively related to the originality of malevolent ideas through MC behavioral tendencies, but this effect is only significant at low-to-medium levels of moral identity. In line with moral identity theory, a higher moral identity may prevent individuals from acting immorally due to their desire to maintain their moral image, which may further suppress malevolent idea generation. Therefore, cultivating moral identity may be an effective approach to weaken the Dark Triad-MC performance association.

ACTUALISATION OF CREATIVITY IN THE LATVIAN LABOUR MARKET: CREATIVE PERSONS AND EDUCATION

Creativity has become a characteristic feature and a driving force of the contemporary labour market. The researcher Richard Florida characterises the creative professionals as a modern basic class. Creativity is viewed as a basic feature of each person and sustainability of the state. However, this raises the question in what way representatives of creative professions become part of and compete in an environment of general creativity. How grounded is it to speak about a law for creative persons when it is so problematic to define the target group of this law and the representatives of those professions who will be able to claim relief and privileges that this law would provide? Creative persons or representatives of creative professions is a complex, non-homogeneous and problematic group, the same as students of art universities in Latvia who, although they acquire education and skills of a similar profile, is a non-homogeneous, split and essentially different group, which does not lend itself to analysis when we speak about their common adequacy to the labour market in Latvian. Does a student who graduates from the Art Academy of Latvia, the Latvian Academy of Culture or the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music become a creative person, a creative professional or a representative of a creative profession, or all of them together? Or perhaps none of the above? How adequate to and ready for the labour market is this graduate? To what extent does it matter which of the universities has been graduated and how significant it is in the future career of the graduate? The paper seeks answers to these questions and attempts to establish what connection exists between the creative class, creative people, representatives of creative professions, graduates-bohemians and students of Latvian art universities.

Creativity in Second Language Learning and Use: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Implications. A Literature Review

This paper is a comprehensive literature review of the role of creativity in second language (L2) learning and use. It seeks to provide a theoretical background of the concept of creativity and show its practical relevance in the L2 context. The article begins with the conceptualisations of general creativity and narrows down to the concept of linguistic creativity and its instances in L2 use. Next, it presents the empirical research findings that point to an important role and benefits of creativity in L2 learning and use. The paper closes with pedagogical implications and methodological guidelines on enhancing creativity in the L2 classroom.

How do parents influence student creativity? Evidence from a large-scale survey in China

This study focuses on parental influences on student general and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) creative ideation behaviors (CIB). It examines the direct and indirect relationships between parent support for general creativity, parent creative self-efficacy, student creative self-efficacy, and student general and STEM CIB with a large-scale dataset collected from over 5,000 students and their parents in different regions of China. Through the use of Structural Equation Modeling, this study found that parent support and creative self-efficacy significantly predicted student creative self-efficacy, which strongly predicted student general and STEM CIB. Although these two parental variables did not directly predict student general and STEM CIB, they both indirectly predicted student general and STEM CIB through the effect of student creative self-efficacy, which established the significant indirect effects of student creative self-efficacy between parental factors and student CIB. These findings were discussed in the context of creativity literature.