Real-life Creativity Research Articles

Development of the Japanese version of the inventory of creative activities and achievements

Measurement of real-life creativity across various countries serves as the foundation for the cultural psychology of creativity. Although studies have suggested differences in creativity between Western and East Asian countries, the underlying factors remain insufficiently understood. This study focused on Japan, an East Asian country, that was perceived to have high creativity yet exhibited negative self-perceptions of creativity. We translated the Inventory of Creative Activities and Achievements (ICAA), a comprehensive measure of real-life creativity from activities and achievements. Data were collected from various participants, who included creative activity experts and non-experts and spanned from university students to general adults (pro-c: n = 489 and little-c: n = 1485). Validity and reliability of the Japanese version of the ICAA was confirmed. However, the Japanese version revealed that Japanese individuals' mean score of creative activities and achievements, even among professionals, was only approximately half of that reported among Western or Chinese university students. Reasons for lower creativity and achievements among the Japanese population have been discussed.

Experiencing more meaningful coincidences is associated with more real-life creativity? Insights from three empirical studies.

Literature suggests a link between creativity and the perception of meaningful patterns in random arrangements, which is coined apophenia, patternicity, synchronicity, or the experience of meaningful coincidences. However, empirical research did not establish a clear link between real-life creativity and the experience of meaningful coincidences. In this three-study approach, we consistently found a connection between the experience of meaningful coincidences and creative activities as well as creative achievements. However, we did not obtain a consistent link with openness to experience or with peoples' creative potential. By applying an internet daily diary approach, we found that the experience of meaningful coincidences fluctuates from day to day and that the number of perceived coincidences is associated with positive and negative affect. A third preregistered study showed that positive and negative affect might not serve as a strong mechanism that mediates the link between meaningful coincidences and real-life creative activities. We need further research to explore the reason for this robust link between meaningful coincidences and real-life creativity.

Individualism and Collectivism as Predictors of Creative Potentials and Real-Life Creativity in China and US

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationships between culture and creativity from the perspective of individualism and collectivism (I/C). Specifically, we compared cultural differences in I/C as well as creativity between two major economies, namely China and the US. We also examined how specific dimensions of I/C are associated with indices of creativity in these two cultural contexts. Four hundred and thirty-four Chinese college students and four hundred and seventy-eight US college students were recruited to complete a measure of I/C, a test of creative potentials, and a real-life creativity inventory. A four-dimensional I/C measure which assesses participants’ horizontal individualistic (HI), vertical individualistic (VI), horizontal collectivistic (HC), and vertical collectivistic (VC) tendencies was employed. The results showed significant differences in all of the I/C and creativity indices between the two countries. In addition, across the two cultural contexts, 1) HI, VI, and HC were all positively related to creativity to some extent; and 2) VC was negatively associated with creativity to some extent. Most importantly, culture-specific links between VI and creativity, HC and creativity, and VC and creativity were found in the Chinese and US samples. The findings were discussed from a culturally contextualized perspective.

The role of daydreaming and creative thinking in the relationship between inattention and real-life creativity: A test of multiple mediation model

For decades, a growing body of literature has suggested that inattention is related to creativity (positively, perhaps), and this relationship is probably mediated by daydreaming or mind-wandering. However, given the heterogeneity of daydreaming and the complexity of creativity, this relationship can be perplexing. The goal of the present study was to explore the mediation roles of types of daydreaming (i.e., positive and negative) and processes of creative thinking (i.e., idea generation and idea selection) simultaneously in the relationship between inattention and real-life creativity by testing a theorized multiple mediation model. Our findings from a sample of 555 undergraduate students showed that: (a) positive daydreaming (i.e., positive-constructive daydreaming), followed by idea generation, mediated the negative relationship between inattention and real-life creativity; and (b) positive daydreaming, followed by the idea selection, also mediated the negative relationship between the inattention and real-life creativity. However, negative daydreaming (i.e., guilty-dysphoric daydreaming) did not play any mediation role in this relationship. We further found that (c) idea selection, as a single mediator, mediated the negative relationship between inattention and real-life creativity. Our results demonstrated the positive relationships between positive daydreaming and both bottom-up and top-down processes of creative thinking. The current study might contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between inattention and creativity and highlight the heterogeneity of daydreaming.

The effect of smartphone use on mental effort, learning, and creativity.

We argue that scientific studies have not directly assessed the key cognitive processes affected by smartphone use. We propose that smartphone use can be disruptively habitual, with the main detrimental consequence being an inability to exert prolonged mental effort. This inability might negatively affect real-life creativity and domain-specific knowledge acquisition.

Brain connectivity-based prediction of real-life creativity is mediated by semantic memory structure.

Associative theories of creativity argue that creative cognition involves the abilities to generate remote associations and make useful connections between unrelated concepts in one’s semantic memory. Yet, whether and how real-life creative behavior relies on semantic memory structure and its neural substrates remains unclear. We acquired multi-echo functional magnetic resonance imaging data while participants underwent a semantic relatedness judgment task. These ratings were used to estimate their individual semantic memory networks, whose properties significantly predicted their real-life creativity. Using a connectome predictive modeling approach, we identified patterns of task-based functional connectivity that predicted creativity-related semantic memory network properties. Furthermore, these properties mediated the relationship between functional connectivity and real-life creativity. These results provide new insights into how brain connectivity patterns support real-life creative behavior via the structure of semantic memory. We also show how computational network science can be used to couple behavioral, cognitive, and neural levels of analysis.

Creative Self and Fear of Rejection

Abstract. Realization of creative potential in everyday life, sharing an original product or idea with others involves the risk of being rejected. In the current study, we explored the factors affecting the process of realization of creative potential in creative activities and creative achievements. We examined whether creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity, on the one hand, and fear of negative evaluation and rejection sensitivity, on the other hand, moderate the relationship between creative potential and real-life creativity (i.e., creative activities and achievements). According to the results, the relationship between creative potential and real-life creativity is stronger when people with creative potential have high creative personal identity and fear of negative evaluation scores. However, the relationship between creative potential and real-life creativity is not significant when people with creative potential have high scores on the creative self-efficacy and rejection expectancy scales (a cognitive aspect of rejection sensitivity). Possible explanations of the different results related to the different indicators of creativity and implications for future research are discussed.

On surface and core predictors of real-life creativity

Which factors drive creative activity and achievement? Here, we explore this question with a special focus on both core, to a large extent biologically rooted (e.g., personality, intelligence), and surface, more malleable and socio-culturally conditioned (e.g., creative self-concept), predictors of real-life creativity. Using a series of multivariate structural equation models (N = 803), we examined how creative self-concept, lower-level personality aspects, and cognitive ability (divergent thinking and intelligence) relate to creative activities and achievements across domains. Creative activity in certain domains (i.e., science or art) fully mediated the links between creative self-concept, intelligence, divergent thinking, personality, and creative achievement. No cross-domain effects were observed; while creative activity in art predicted achievement in art, it did not predict science accomplishment. Similarly, the activity in science predicted achievement in science, but not in the arts. The structure of the most relevant predictors of creative activity across domains differed. Creative activity in science was mainly predicted by intelligence, divergent thinking and the Intellect aspect of the Openness to Experience trait. Creative activity in art was predicted by the Openness aspect of the Openness to Experience personality trait and creative self-concept. For everyday creative activity, intelligence, personality, and creative self-concept played a more balanced and similar role. We discuss the implications of these findings and propose directions for future research.

The bright and dark personality correlates of creative potentials, creative activities, and creative achievements

Little research has been done to examine how different personality traits (both “positive” and less desirable attributes) contribute to various aspects of creativity from a domain-specific point of view. The present study thus aimed to investigate the relationships between two types of personality traits (the Big Five and the Dark Triad traits) and three types of indicators of creativity (divergent thinking, creative activities, and creative achievements) among 559 university-level Chinese students. Results indicated that Openness served as a common core of both creative potential (divergent thinking) and real-life creativity (creative activities and achievements) at almost all levels and domains. Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness were found to be significant predictors of real-life creativity in specific domains and levels (i.e., literature and sports). No significant relationship was found between Neuroticism and any indicator of creativity after controlling for the other Big Five traits. Compared to the Big Five traits, the Dark Triad traits had limited influence on creativity, with only Machiavellianism being a significant and positive predictor of literary and performance activities, and Narcissism being a significant and positive predictor of originality. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Brain activity sensitive to visual congruency effects relates to divergent thinking

The present study used functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI) to examine the role of focused attention in divergent thinking and real-life creativity. Participants completed a Navon task, on which the stimuli consisted of a large letter made up of the smaller version of the same (congruent), or a different (incongruent) letter. Participants were cued to identify a letter at either the local or at the global level. A smaller congruency effect – how much faster people responded on the congruent than on the incongruent trials – was an index of focused attention. Overall, larger behavioral congruency effect was accompanied with increased activation in the anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG), and with increased activation in the left precuneus. Individual differences in divergent thinking, however, were associated with smaller behavioral congruency effect, as well as with smaller right aSTG increase on the incongruent versus congruent targets, suggesting that people with better performance on the divergent thinking tests have more focused attention. Real-world creativity was not associated with the congruency effect, or with any of the regions implicated in the congruency effect. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Assessment of real-life creativity: The Inventory of Creative Activities and Achievements (ICAA).

This article introduces the Inventory of Creative Activities and Achievements (ICAA), a broad-based assessment of individual differences in real-life creativity. The ICAA provides independent scales for the frequency of engagement in everyday creative activity and the level of creative achievement across 8 creative domains. A formal test analysis based on 7 Little-C samples and 2 Pro-C samples (overall N = 1,566) provides evidence for the reliability and validity of the ICAA test scores. The analyses shed light on the prevalence of specific creative activity and achievement and examine the relevance of personality, creative potential, and intelligence across domains of creativity. The findings further suggest that the assessment of creative activity is particularly suited for Little-C creativity, whereas the assessment of creative achievement appears more appropriate for Pro-C creativity. The ICAA offers researchers a broad and versatile assessment tool for studying creativity across domains and levels.

Creative Thinking in an Emotional Context: Specific Relevance of Executive Control of Emotion-Laden Representations in the Inventiveness in Generating Alternative Appraisals of Negative Events

Although divergent thinking ability in different domains may largely rely on the same basic executive functions, domain-specific functions may also be important, in particular when it comes to more real-life creativity demands. This study investigated if functional executive control of emotion-laden representations may be specifically relevant in cognitive reappraisal, which implies being creative in an affective context. In a sample of 88 healthy individuals, the relation between the participants’ inventiveness in generating positive reappraisals of adverse events (Reappraisal Inventiveness Test) and in generating novel ideas without emotional component (conventional divergent thinking test) to their executive functioning in tasks without (Mittenecker Pointing Test) and with emotional contribution (humor processing task) was studied. In line with hybrid models of creative thinking, poorer basic inhibition skills were found to be associated with poorer fluency performance in both divergent thinking tasks. Relations applied more specifically to reappraisal inventiveness when it came to executive processes with a more prominent emotional component. Creative performance in both tasks may have been hampered by time limits. The results support the notion that, in addition to basic executive functioning, more specific cognitive control functions are implicated in more real-life creative performance, according to related domain-specific demands.

Affective creativity meets classic creativity in the scanner.

The investigation of neurocognitive processes underlying more real-life creative behavior is among the greatest challenges in creativity research. In this fMRI study, we addressed this issue by investigating functional patterns of brain activity while participants were required to be creative in an affective context. Affective creativity was assessed in terms of individual's inventiveness in generating alternative appraisals for anger-evoking events, which has recently emerged as a new ability concept in cognitive reappraisal research. In addition, a classic divergent thinking task was administered. Both creativity tasks yielded strong activation in left prefrontal regions, indicating their shared cognitive processing demands like the inhibition of prepotent responses, shifting between different perspectives and controlled memory retrieval. Regarding task-specific differences, classic creative ideation activated a characteristic divergent thinking network comprising the left supramarginal, inferior temporal, and inferior frontal gyri. Affective creativity on the other hand specifically recruited the right superior frontal gyrus, presumably involved in the postretrieval monitoring of reappraisal success, and core hubs of the default-mode network, which are also implicated in social cognition. As a whole, by taking creativity research to the realm of emotion, this study advances our understanding of how more real-life creativity is rooted in the brain. Hum Brain Mapp 39:393-406, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Supplemental Material for Assessment of Real-Life Creativity: The Inventory of Creative Activities and Achievements (ICAA)

Supplemental Material for Assessment of Real-Life Creativity: The Inventory of Creative Activities and Achievements (ICAA)

Creativity - Lost in Simplification?

A B S T R A C T The target article claims that creativity research is in crisis, which is associated with the excessive oversimplification employed in quantitative creativity research. We oppose this view by showing that lab measures of creative cognitive po- tential are valid with respect to real-life creativity and hence represent a valuable means of empirical creativity research. Neuroscientific research in particular, which is often viewed as a considerably artificial paradigm for the study of creativi- ty, is a powerful complemental method to unveil basic cogni- tive mechanisms (e.g., attention and memory processes) involved in creative thought and to extend our understanding of the creating brain. Conceptual clarity and methodological rigor necessarily go along with simplification in natural sci- ence, which does not generally forfeit validity but rather facil- itates the cumulative gain of dependable knowledge. This is particularly important for creativity research, a discipline that risks being seen as an immature science when it attempts to explain more than it actually can.

Myth and the Creative Process: A View of Creativity in the Light of Three Indian Myths

Three stories from Indian mythological literature are considered—one each from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavatam. The experiences of the protagonists in the stories—the poet Valmiki, the warrior hero Arjuna, and the seeker Muchukunda—may be seen as variations on an archetype of the creative process. It is suggested that the story of Valmiki provides a complete paradigm of the creative process while those of Arjuna and Muchukunda are powerful instances of the interplay between ego and creativity. The article analyzes the creativity of the scientist Marie Curie, mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, and novelist Patrick White in the light of the mythic archetypes. The analysis is carried out to explore the complementary relationship of myth and creativity in real life. A secondary objective is to explore the relationship between culture and creativity, and its implications for cross-cultural perspectives on creativity. The article concludes that mythic models offer a valuable vantage point from which to study real-life creativity, and that essentially creativity and originality are transcultural in nature.

Creativity in Offspring of Schizophrenic and Control Parents: An Adoption Study

Previous studies (Heston & Denney, 1968; Karlsson, 1970; Kauffman, Grunebaum, Cohler, & Gamer, 1979) have reported that psychologically healthier biological relatives of persons with schizophrenia had unusually creative jobs and hobbies. These studies, however, examined only eminent levels of creativity in a few professions, involved serendipitous post hoc findings, assessed creativity, or both, while aware of diagnosis. We studied 36 index adult adoptees of biological parents with schizophrenia and 36 demographically matched control adoptees with no biological family history of psychiatric hospitalization. Adoptees were diagnosed with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1980) criteria by investigators blind to creativity assessments. Adoptees' real-life creativity was rated by other investigators blind to personal and family psychopathology with scales of demonstrated reliability and validity applied to descriptions of vocational and avocational activities obtained from interviews. It was hypothesized that adoptees with genetic liability for schizophrenia (and thus potentially unconventional modes of thinking and perceiving)-although not schizophrenia itself-would be more creative. In fact, nonschizophrenics with either schizotypal or schizoid personality disorder or multiple schizotypal signs (which other research has linked with genetic liability for schizophrenia) had significantly higher creativity than other participants. Interestingly, some control adoptees also fit these criteria and were included in analyses. Results have implications for relations of creativity to personal symptoms and familial risk for schizophrenia.