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PubMed2004

Stimulating creativity in all elders: a continuum of interventions.

Contemporary society seldom associates creativity with people in later adult years. We challenge that perception. A continuum of creative programs defined here shows promise for eliciting late life creativeness offering elders in the community, in residential settings, in adult day care, and in home care new avenues for expression. Life story writing and sharing groups, Visible Lives storyboards, and TimeSlips storytelling method for patients with dementia equip caregivers with new tools to nourish creativity in all elders. Evidence suggests that stimulating creativity in elders at all levels of functioning improves health outcomes. This article introduces programs designed to engage, encourage, and inspire elders regardless of functionality. All three related but discreet interventions share core components of listening with intention, utilizing positive affirmation, and facilitating sharing in community as participants develop surprising new capabilities. Health care providers, community volunteers, and family members can develop skills and techniques to implement any of the programs described. Fostering creative expression through cognitive exercise and imagination among those in later years may forestall dementias, improve quality of life for elders and their caregivers, and meet unmet personal and societal needs. These programs demonstrate the possibility of growth and creative potential at every stage in life, including the latest years, even for those with dementias.

Aged↗

PubMed1991

Scientific creativity: a review.

Aside from possession of the relevant knowledge, skills, and intelligence, what seems to characterize the creative scientist is his imagination, originality, and ingenuity in combining existing knowledge into a new and unified scheme. This creativity frequently emerges from an aesthetic, poetic sense of freedom derived from work, an uninhibited playful activity of exploring a medium for its own sake. We speculate thus: With a preference for irregularities and disorder, the creative scientist temporarily takes leave of his senses, permitting expression of unconfigurated forces of his irrational unconscious. This amounts to a kind of internal "wagering," in which the scientist pits himself against uncertain circumstances, a situation in which his individual effort can be the deciding factor. When working on a difficult problem, there frequently occurs a "creative worrying" in which the problem is consciously and unconsciously carried around while doing other tasks. This period is attended by frustrations, tensions, and false inspirations. Dream and reality are wedded in a largely unconscious process of undefined emotional turmoil. When a uniquely gratifying association is realized, the unconscious deposits its collection of insights into the fringe consciousness, whereupon the full consciousness seizes on it and releases it as a flash of insight. Because the creative scientist possesses a strong and exacting self-concept, he can organize, integrate, and even exploit the conflict within himself. By compensating in fantasy for what is missing in reality, creativeness can be an expressive outlet ameliorating the universal, annoying split between a man's inner unconscious world and his outer conscious world. Although there is a divergence of opinion as to whether creativity can be taught, there is agreement that it can be fostered. However, parents, teachers, and institutions must display considerably more flexibility and tolerance towards individually minded persons who behave in seemingly nonconformist ways.

Creativity↗

PubMed2005

[The relationship between idea search space and creativity].

This study investigated the relationship between participants' evaluation of creativiy and characteristics of creative products towards a clear and objective definition of the concept of creativity. Three experiments examined whether the size of "idea search space" in the creative process predicts the score of products in creativity assessments. In Experiment 1, in order to construct an multidimensional scaling (MDS) space which was supposed to correspond to creators' "idea space," 20 participants exhaustively evaluated the strength of semantic connection between every pair of 50 (physical) parts of possible creatures. In Experiment 2, 40 participants drew novel extraterrestrial creatures using five out of 50 parts used in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, 20 participants assessed the creativity of each of the 40 drawings from Experiment 2. The results showed that a drawing with a larger idea search space estimated by the MDS score have a tendency to receive a higher creativity score. These results support the framework of idea search space and a possibility of explaining the creativity in terms of this model is suggested.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

[The impact of mood alterations on creativity].

Basic elements of artistic (and other) creativity are the technical-professional skill and knowledge, the special talent and ability and the willingness or motivation; one of which being absent results in partially realised creativity like juvenile, frustrated or abandoned types, respectively. Psychometric scales have been developed to measure everyday and eminent creativity, which show that creativity correlates with higher psychoticism, impulsivity and venturesomeness scores and with lower neuroticism and conformity scores of the personality test employed in a general population. Among the psychological components of creativity are the cognitive processes, mood, motivation, and personality traits. Regarding mood, a theory of "inverted U" has been proposed as elevation of mood facilitates creativity to a certain point after what extreme increase has an adverse effect on achievement. Analysing psychopathology and creativity among various professions, higher rates of psychopathology, especially affective symptoms, have been found in art-related professions. Examples of immortal poets, writers, painters, sculptors and composers, having created invaluable cultural treasures for mankind, illustrate that many of them showed signs of mood alterations (unipolar or bipolar affective disorder spectrum) which were expressed in their artistic products.

Affect↗

PubMed1979

[The relationship between mental health, socialization and creativity].

It is shown, that there are two traditions of thought in research as well as in psychotherapy which foster different assumptions about the relationship between a persons creativity and his mental well-being and between his creativity and the child-rearing practice of his parents. One tradition suggests that most creative people have experienced more intense suffering during childhood than others. The other tradition takes the opposite position, that a permissive, non-authoritarian home environment is most conducive for later creativity. Results of empirical research relevant to this questions have been contradictory, partly due to considerable methodological difficulties, and partly due to the ideological biasis of the experimenters and reviewers. Our own research on the child rearing practices and attitudes related to creative/non-creative 12-year old children of both sexes, as measured by questionnaires and observations of mother-child interaction, opposes the latter tradition. We have observed that mothers of high creative children behave more active and evaluating when engaged in dyadic problem solving situations with their children, and this pattern is symmetrically reflected in the behavior of their children. Mothers of low creative children, however, interact in a more guarded and cautious manner, yet with more visible demonstrations of positive affect. Questionnaire data on the fathers' attitudes on child-rearing seems to oppose the belief that creative children have permissive, non-authoritarian fathers.

Attitude↗

PubMed1998

'Killing the angel in the house': creativity, femininity and aggression.

The author brings to bear an art historical perspective on the psychoanalytic understanding of creativity as an object relationship, proposing that the creative endeavour is determined by a wider, more complex network of internal and external object relationships than is usually assumed. The workings of tradition, language, contemporary practices, methods and materials are explored. Creative block is considered in the context of the determining relationships, with particular reference to the role of aggression. The position of the latter within psychoanalytic theories of creativity is surveyed and it is proposed that aggression has a pivotal place not primarily in instituting sublimation, reparation or reaction formation but simply because the processes of creativity demand it. Virginia Woolf's image of 'Killing the Angel in the House' is analysed and used to track the implications of gender, focusing on the concept of the muse. It is pointed out that traditionally, the fear, guilt and anxiety associated with aggressive creativity has been mediated by the muse, which is compared to the internal good object. Drawing on art history, artists' statements, and clinical material, the author illustrates the disparate means by which the presence of 'muse' can be internalised to infuse the relationships that constitute creativity.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Effects of social-psychological factors on creative performance: the role of informational and controlling expected evaluation and modeling experience.

The impact of two social-psychological factors, expected evaluation and modeling, on creativity was investigated in a laboratory study. The controlling and informational aspects of expected evaluation were manipulated and individuals were provided no example, a standard example, or a creative example of a solution to a representative management problem. As expected, individuals had significantly higher creativity and intrinsic motivation when anticipating an informational rather than a controlling evaluation. In addition, individuals given a creative example had higher creative performance than those given no example. The lowest levels of intrinsic motivation and creativity were found when expected evaluation was of a controlling nature and a standard model was given. Additionally, we tested and found support for Cognitive Evaluation Theory's primary intervening cognitive process of locus of causality mediating the relationship between evaluation and intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation was not found to mediate the relationship between evaluation and creativity, and possible explanations for this result are discussed.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1983

Psychopathology and creative cognition. A comparison of hospitalized patients, Nobel laureates, and controls.

To assess a tendency to rapid opposite responding associated with the type of creative cognition called janusian thinking, timed word association tests were administered to 12 creative scientists who were Nobel laureates, 18 hospitalized patients, and 113 college students divided as controls into high and low creative groups. Nobel laureates gave the highest proportion of opposite responses at the fastest rate of all groups, whereas patients gave the lowest proportion of opposite responses at the slowest rate. Both Nobel laureates and high creative students gave opposite responses at a significantly faster rate than they gave common, popular (nonopposite) responses, and their average speed of opposite response was fast enough to indicate that conceptualizing opposites could have been simultaneous. The results support the connection between janusian thinking and creativity and indicate a distinction between creative and psychopathologic cognitive modes.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Apollo 13 creativity: in-the-box innovation.

A study of the Apollo 13 mission, based on the themes showcased in the acclaimed 1995 film, reveals the grace under pressure that is the condition of optimal creativity. "Apollo 13 Creativity" is a cultural and creative problem-solving appreciation of the thinking style that made the Apollo mission succeed: creativity under severe limitations. Although creativity is often considered a "luxury good," of concern mainly for personal enrichment, the arts, and performance improvement, in life-or-death situations it is the critical pathway not only to success but to survival. In this case. the original plan for a moon landing had to be transformed within a matter of hours into a return to earth. By precluding failure as an option at the outset, both space and ground crews were forced to adopt a new perspective on their resources and options to solve for a successful landing. This now-classic problem provides a range of principles for creative practice and motivation applicable in any situation. The extreme situation makes these points dramatically.

Aerospace Medicine↗

PubMed1999

Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms linking ambiguous word meaning retrieval and creativity.

The deferral of ambiguity resolution has been thought to be an important component of creativity. The time course of priming of dominant and subordinate meanings of ambiguous words was investigated using a divided visual field priming paradigm with subjects that varied on a measure of creativity. The Wallach-Kogan similarities subtest was used to group 72 subjects into three levels of verbal creativity to compare their performance on the ambiguity resolution task (Burgess & Simpson, 1988a). Results suggest that both the left and right hemispheres contribute to the maintenance of multiple word meanings in highly creative subjects, while less creative subjects show sustained subordinate priming only in the right hemisphere or no sustained subordinate priming. These results support an interactive, collaborative theory of verbal creativity (Bogen & Bogen, 1969) and suggest that there are important individual differences that expand on the basic time course model of hemispheric processing (Burgess & Simpson, 1988a).

Brain↗

PubMed2006

Identification of first candidate genes for creativity: a pilot study.

Studies from behavioral genetics have demonstrated the high heritability of intelligence. However, the endeavor to detect the genes forming the molecular basis of intelligence has been rather unsuccessful until now. Pharmacological studies have demonstrated the influence of the dopaminergic (DA) and the serotonergic (5-HT) system on subcomponents of cognitive functioning, and first studies from molecular genetics have demonstrated that genes related to the DA metabolism are associated with mental abilities. However, candidate genes for creativity have not been identified so far. Therefore, the influence of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (locus: COMT VAL158MET) gene and the dopamine D2 receptor gene (locus: DRD2 TAQ IA) on creativity was tested in addition to a serotonergic gene, TPH1 (locus: TPH-A779C), in a sample of N = 92 healthy Caucasian subjects while controlling for intelligence. Results showed that the DRD2 gene and the TPH gene were both associated with total creativity, explaining 9% of the variance, while COMT was not related to creativity at all. With respect to the subcomponents, the A1+ allele of DRD2 was related to higher verbal creativity as compared to the A1- allele, and carriers of the A allele of TPH1 showed significantly higher scores in figural and in numeric creativity, indicating that the two gene loci discriminate between higher cortical functions according to the organization of cognitive functions in the respective hemispheres.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Semantic divergence and creative story generation: an fMRI investigation.

The aim of this fMRI investigation was to identify those areas of the brain associated with approaching a story generation task creatively and to investigate the effects upon these correlates of incorporating a set of words that were unrelated to each other-a strategy considered to encourage semantic divergence. Preliminary experiments were undertaken to investigate the possible confounding effects of the scanner environment upon creativity and to reveal the effects of creative effort and word relatedness upon the creativity of those who would be participating in the fMRI scan. In the final part of the investigation, a factorial fMRI design was used to elucidate brain regions involved in increased creative effort and also the effect upon activity in these regions when participants incorporated words that bore little semantic relationship with each other. Results support the notion that areas of the right prefrontal cortex are critical to the types of divergent semantic processing involved with creativity in this context.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Creative thinking in nursing education: preparing for tomorrow's challenges.

The present health care environment requires creative change, a thought that evokes both excitement and apprehension and offers a clear challenge for the contemporary nurse. In this era of capitation, re-engineering, and redesign in the health care system, nursing programs must prepare nurses who can successfully perform in an environment that demands innovative problem solving. Integrating creative problem solving into this BSN program has (1) provided students with information and experience in the creative process, (2) fostered the personal creative development of nurses, (3) challenged students to use creative thinking in solving nursing problems, and most important, (4) further established and reinforced a new, higher level of nursing practice--a level that appropriately sees the nurse as a creative and innovative member of the health care team.

Creativity↗

PubMed2000

Creativity. Cognitive, personal, developmental, and social aspects.

Although many psychologists have expressed an interest in the phenomenon of creativity, psychological research on this topic did not rapidly expand until after J. P. Guilford claimed, in his 1950 APA presidential address, that this topic deserved far more attention than it was then receiving. This article reviews the progress psychologists have made in understanding creativity since Guilford's call to arms. Research progress has taken place on 4 fronts: the cognitive processes involved in the creative act, the distinctive characteristics of the creative person, the development and manifestation of creativity across the individual life span, and the social environments most strongly associated with creative activity. Although some important questions remain unanswered, psychologists now know more than ever before about how individuals achieve this special and significant form of optimal human functioning.

Creativity↗

PubMed1998

Can the promise of reward increase creativity?

Two experiments, involving 436 preadolescent schoolchildren, investigated how the explicitness of promised reward affects creativity. In the first study, the nonspecific promise of reward increased the creativity of picture drawing if children had previously received divergent-thinking training (generating novel uses for physical objects). In the second study, promised reward increased the creativity of children's drawings if current task instructions clarified the necessity of creative performance. Promised reward evidently increases creativity if there is currently, or was previously, an explicit positive relationship between creativity and reward.

Child↗

PubMed2001

When openness to experience and conscientiousness are related to creative behavior: an interactional approach.

This study adopted an interactional approach to understanding how 2 of the Five-Factor traits, openness to experience and conscientiousness, are related to creative behavior in the workplace. Openness to experience is theorized to result in high levels of creative behavior and conscientiousness is theorized to result in low levels of creative behavior when the situation allows for the manifestation of the trait influences. More specifically, the authors hypothesized that openness to experience would result in high levels of creative behavior if feedback valence were positive and job holders were presented with a heuristic task that allowed them to be creative. The authors also hypothesized that conscientiousness would result in low levels of creative behavior if supervisors engaged in close monitoring and coworkers were unsupportive. The authors tested their hypotheses in a sample of office workers, and 5 out of the 6 hypotheses were supported.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Understanding when bad moods foster creativity and good ones don't: the role of context and clarity of feelings.

Using a mood-as-input model, the authors identified conditions under which negative moods are positively related, and positive moods are negatively related, to creative performance. Among a sample of workers in an organizational unit charged with developing creative designs and manufacturing techniques, the authors hypothesized and found that negative moods were positively related to creative performance when perceived recognition and rewards for creative performance and clarity of feelings (a metamood process) were high. The authors also hypothesized and found that positive moods were negatively related to creative performance when perceived recognition and rewards for creativity and clarity of feelings were high.

Affect↗

PubMed2005

Why we sing the blues: the relation between self-reflective rumination, mood, and creativity.

Past research has shown that creative behavior is associated with a higher risk for depression. The authors hypothesized that a 3rd underlying factor, namely, self-reflective rumination, may explain the connection. This hypothesis was examined in a sample of 99 undergraduate college students, using path analysis. The authors found that self-reported past depressive symptomatology was linked to increased self-reflective rumination. Rumination, in turn, was related to current symptomatology and to self-rated creative interests and objectively measured creative fluency, originality, and elaboration. No direct link existed between currently depressed mood and either creative interest or creative behavior. These results suggest that the association between depression and creativity is solely the result of rumination.

Adult↗