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We studied the correlations between creativity and imagery in 1361 university students of Fine Arts, Mathematics, and Geography and History. Significant values were found between certain factors of creativity and imagery, but creativity only accounted for 6% of the total variance in vividness of imagery for the whole sample.
The present study investigated the relation between dream length and verbal creativity for 32 subjects who were given a verbal creativity test and also kept a dream diary over a 2-wk. period. Subjects with high verbal creativity scores reported significantly shorter dreams. This may indicate that other factors influence the dream report's length, including visual memory.
A good deal of attention has recently been given to two studies purportedly showing a connection between creativity and affective illness. In both cases, there have been inadequate (or absent) controls, biased selection procedures, single interviewer-experimenter bias, and, in one study, misrepresentative use of statistics. We have published contrary experimental results which, on a statistically significant level, differentiate creative thinking and creativity from psychopathological modes of response.
A repeated-measures design was used to test for the effects of alcohol on creative writing as measured by use of novel figurative language. 11 male social drinkers participated in a creative writing task under two conditions, alcohol (high dose: 1.1 ml. ethanol/kilogram body weight) and placebo. In the alcohol condition, within-subject comparisons indicated significantly greater quantity of creative writing while intoxicated. These results were interpreted as supporting the belief that alcohol can reduce "writer's block," at least amongst nonalcoholic subjects.
A repeated-measures, balanced-order design was used to test for the effects of alcohol on creativity as measured by verbal forms of the Torrance Creativity Test. Social drinkers (8 men and 8 women) performed under 2 conditions, alcohol (dose = 0.83 ml ethanol/kg body weight) and a placebo. Significant group differences in the alcohol-creativity interaction were noted in that the performance of higher-scoring (in the placebo condition) subjects was impaired by alcohol whereas that of lower-scoring subjects was enhanced.
To investigate the relationship between substance use and creativity, four pairs of raters independently assessed the reports of over 600 respondents from the Mass-Observation (M-O) Archive. The M-O directive addressed, their use of 'stimulants and relaxants.' Correlations between 'creativity' ratings and 'substance use' ratings were low but significantly positive (around .275). The observed links are discussed in relation to laboratory-based and other studies of substance use and creativity.
Samples of 107 early, 81 middle, and 112 late adolescents responded to the UCLA Loneliness Scale and The Creativity Scale of the Adjective Check List. Contrary to the hypothesized direction, statistically significant inverse correlations (-.19 to -.33) were found between scores on measures of loneliness and creativity in all three adolescent samples. Findings are interpreted within the conceptualizations in which the relationship between loneliness and creativity were proposed.
The relationship between self-reported synesthesia, or sensory mixing, and verbal creativity as measured by the Remote Associates Test and pun generation was assessed. 210 participants responded online. Analysis yielded a significant correlation between scores on Synesthesia and Verbal Creativity as measured. The possibility that Synesthesia and Verbal Creativity stem from dedifferentiated thinking processes or neural cross-activation is discussed.
Creativity is considered as a vicissitude of the cohesiveness or fragmentation of the self. The emergence of a self, separate from the mothering figure, requires the mother's empathic fuelling and the child's capacity to contain his gradual disillusionment with her. The process is never fully completed, allowing a potential for anxiety over threatened disintegration, along a continuum from separation anxiety (loss of the object), in a relatively cohesive self, to engulfment anxiety (loss of the self) in the less cohesive. The creative artist is uniquely sensitive to these anxieties, through his own difficulties in separating from the infantile union with the mother, or in mourning an object that dies during his childhood. The artist draws on his unconscious experience to speak to the unconscious of the audience. For the audience, it is having one's own deepest longings and deepest anxieties spoken to and spoken for that constitutes the power of creative art.
One phase of Beethoven's life, between his 45th and 50th year, characterized by very low creativity and overwhelming stress situations, is subjected to a psychiatric interpretation. The historical background is briefly sketched and 5 precipitating stress factors are outlined. The symptoms of his illness are described, using Beethoven's letters as source material. A brief discussion of Beethoven's musical style prior to and after his illness is based on quotations from three eminent musical scholars. A resume of Beethoven's physical and psychological disorders during his life are given and the conclusion is reached that between 1815 and 1820, Beethoven experienced a creative illness which was psychotic in type, ended in recovery and radically changed his musical creativity.
Three experiments were performed to test Smith, Ward, and Schumacher's (1993) conformity hypothesis-that people's ideas will conform to examples they are shown in a creative generation task. Conformity was observed in all three experiments; participants tended to incorporate critical features of experimenter-provided examples. However, examination of total output, elaborateness of design, and the noncritical features did not confirm that the conformity effect constrained creative output in any of the three experiments. Increasing the number of examples increased the conformity effect (Experiment 1). Examples that covaried features that are naturally uncorrelated in the real world led to a greater subjective rating of creativity (Experiment 2). A delay between presentation and test increased conformity (Experiment 3), just as models of inadvertent plagiarism would predict. The explanatory power of theoretical accounts such as activation, retrieval blocking, structured imagination, and category abstraction are evaluated.
The quantitative evaluation of creative responses in TCT (Test for Creative Thinking) has elucidated various problems. In order to evaluate responses qualitatively, four basic categories were set up. They were constructed according to the degree of freedom of responses from the task-setting. The category, Td (Task-dependence) refers to responses that are entirely influenced by the task-setting. Tm (Task-modification) is for responses which are produced more flexibly than Td, but still influenced by the task-setting. Responses which are made by attending to only a part of the task-setting and neglecting the rest are judged Ho (Homomorphosis). Moreover, responses which are quite free from the task-setting are called He (Heteromorphosis). This He is thought to be the most creative response, and if it appears rarely. When 123 junior high-school students were tested using TCT, He responses appeared least, in four (only 20.3% of the subjects), while Td's were produced by 99.2% of the subjects. Ho's were lower than Tm's and Td's in frequency. However, the validity of these categories is still to be pursued.
CONTEXT: Many myths, theories, and speculations exist as to the exact etiology of the diseases, drugs, and chemicals that affected the creativity and productivity of famous sculptors, classic painters, classic music composers, and authors. OBJECTIVE: To emphasize the importance of a modern clinical chemistry laboratory and hematology coagulation laboratory in interpreting the basis for the creativity and productivity of various artists. DESIGN: This investigation analyzed the lives of famous artists, including classical sculptor Benvenuto Cellini; classical sculptor and painter Michelangelo Buonarroti; classic painters Ivar Arosenius, Edvard Munch, and Vincent Van Gogh; classic music composer Louis Hector Berlioz; and English essayist Thomas De Quincey. The analysis includes their illnesses, their famous artistic works, and the modern clinical chemistry, toxicology, and hematology coagulation tests that would have been important in the diagnosis and treatment of their diseases. CONCLUSIONS: The associations between illness and art may be close and many because of both the actual physical limitations of the artists and their mental adaptation to disease. Although they were ill, many continued to be productive. If modern clinical chemistry, toxicology, and hematology coagulation laboratories had existed during the lifetimes of these various well-known individuals, clinical laboratories might have unraveled the mysteries of their afflictions. The illnesses these people endured probably could have been ascertained and perhaps treated. Diseases, drugs, and chemicals may have influenced their creativity and productivity.
Although laypeople and creativity theorists often make the assumption that individual creativity depends primarily on talent, there is considerable evidence that hard work and intrinsic motivation--which can be supported or undermined by the social environment--also play central roles. In this article, the author uses the thoughts and work of the novelist John Irving to illustrate the prominence of nontalent components in the componential model of creativity.
This article illustrates how creativity is constituted by forces beyond the innovating individual, drawing examples from the career of the eminent chemist Linus Pauling. From a systems perspective, a scientific theory or other product is creative only if the innovation gains the acceptance of a field of experts and so transforms the culture. In addition to this crucial selective function vis-à-vis the completed work, the social field can play a catalytic role, fostering productive interactions between person and domain throughout a career. Pauling's case yields examples of how variously the social field contributes to creativity, shaping the individual's standards of judgment and providing opportunities, incentives, and critical evaluation. A formidable set of strengths suited Pauling for his scientific achievements, but examination of his career qualifies the notion of a lone genius whose brilliance carries the day.
For at least the past decade, the holy grail for companies has been innovation. Managers have gone after it with all the zeal their training has instilled in them, using a full complement of tried and true management techniques. The problem is that none of these practices, well suited for cashing in on old, proven products and business models, works very well when it comes to innovation. Instead, managers should take most of what they know about management and stand it on its head. In this article, Robert Sutton outlines several ideas for managing creativity that are clearly odd but clearly effective: Place bets on ideas without much heed to their projected returns. Ignore what has worked before. Goad perfectly happy people into fights among themselves. Good creativity management means hiring the candidate you have a gut feeling against. And as for the people who stick their fingers in their ears and chant, "I'm not listening, I'm not listening," when customers make suggestions? Praise and promote them. Using vivid examples from more than a decade of academic research to illustrate his points, the author discusses new approaches to hiring, managing creative people, and dealing with risk and randomness in innovation. His conclusions? The practices in this article succeed because they increase the range of a company's knowledge, allow people to see old problems in new ways, and help companies break from the past.
70 preschool-age children were administered a modified version of the Matching Familiar Figures test as well as a modified version of the picture completion task from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Sex of subject and cognitive tempo were combined factorially with type of creativity measure in a 2 times 2 times 4 repeated-measures design. A significant effect for cognitive tempo was found showing reflective subjects scoring higher than impulsive subjects on each measure of creativity.
Examples from his clinical work are used by the author to illustrate creative instances during analysis. First, there appear a dis-idealization and a threat of chaos, followed by mourning, reparation and sublimation. The creative function originates in a patient's attempt to objectify his or her ego in different ways--which involves a phantasy of being re-born in order to love someone and be loved in turn. It represents a triumph of life over death, of health over madness. In other words, the creative function means putting psychic chaos into order with pre-existing elements by means of original, new, better-integrated changes.