Journal of Creative Behavior最新文献

Where does creativity come from and what is its purpose? The paper revisits these ever-turning questions to correct the prevalent but, arguably, inaccurate historical interpretation of creativity as a concept that emerged in modernity. First, I substantiate that a close study of the ancient Greek texts suggests that although creativity seems to occupy a peripheral position in the ancient philosophical thinking, it is a central, yet, hidden, subject of speculation. Second, I overturn the worn-out view that the ancient Greek philosophy conceives creativity as a God-given talent breathed into a fortunate few. Last, I demonstrate that a more encompassing understanding of creativity is implied by several Greek philosophers. To achieve this, (a) I discuss the contemporary interpretations of the ancient notion; (b) I examine the historical origin and etymology of the Greek term demiourgein (“to create”) to discuss its relevant uses; and (c) I develop a nuanced framework for conceptualizing ancient creativity and its interrelation to human agency, politics, and social life.

A wandering mind is not always a creative mind. Anecdotes about ideas spontaneously entering awareness during walks, showers, and other off-task activities are plenty. The science behind it, however, is still inconclusive. Creativity might result from how thought context—whether thoughts are on-task or off-task—relates to thought dynamics—how thoughts unfold. To explore this, study 1 (n = 85) surveyed creative professionals about a single idea they had earlier in the day. The spontaneity of thoughts positively correlated with self-reported creativity, whereas off-task thoughts or doing something else did not. Study 2 (n = 180) replicated these findings in a student sample during an idea generation task and added that free movement of thoughts also correlates with self-reported originality during idea generation. As indicated by expert ratings, no relationship of thought dynamics and thought context was found with population-level creativity. Herewith, this study suggests that thought dynamics, rather than thought context, explain the often suggested relationship between mind wandering and creativity.

This intervention study examined the effectiveness of instructional support tailored toward two techniques (i.e., random associations and constraint identification) to strengthen children's creative problem-solving skills within upper-elementary science education. Five inquiry-based science lessons with ample opportunity for creative problem-solving (i.e., divergent and convergent thinking) were provided. Children were assigned to a condition with instructional support (n = 107) or without (n = 134). Domain-general and specific measures of divergent and convergent thinking were included, and reading comprehension as well as mathematical ability were taken into account. Repeated measures multivariate analyses of covariance revealed how all children improved in terms of domain-general convergent thinking, with a larger increase for children who performed better in mathematics. This shows a promising premise for future research focusing on the domain generality of convergent thinking and for the potential of transfer across domains. No additional improvement based on instructional support was found and children did not improve in terms of divergent thinking. The constraint identification and random associations technique might not be suitable for elementary school children, yet future research is necessary to validate such claims. Meanwhile, teachers could possibly support convergent thinking by simply providing exercises for divergent and convergent thinking.

Creativity researchers are increasingly interested in understanding when, how, and for whom creativity can be beneficial. Previous reviews have demonstrated that creativity research largely ignores the study of its impact on factors that promote health, and well-being among populations of adults. It is unclear, in fact, whether this gap in research also extends to creativity research among young children. This paper addresses this issue. Early childhood is a crucial stage for the cognitive development of young children who remain highly sensitive to stress, and adversity. It is therefore essential to identify and promote factors that are beneficial to early childhood resilience, thereby contributing to documenting more of the effects of creative activities on positive outcomes. This paper presents a review with a bibliometric analysis of 1000 randomly selected articles from the Web of Science, without bias towards any specific peer-reviewed journal. The analysis of 454 included articles shows that approximately 80% of the included studies focus on creativity as an outcome (replicating previous findings with a larger sample), with only 3.78% investigating creative activities as predictors among young children. In this small percentage, most of the studies addressed creative activities in young children related to resilience outcomes.

This qualitative study explored the relationship between creativity, time, age, and the literary world among 16 award-winning Israeli writers in the second half of their lives. Based on data collected through in-depth interviews with the participants, the findings indicate that the writers' creativity in the second half of life was linked to Preservation, Growth, and Decline, leading to four interrelated dimensions: (a) preserving youth through creativity, (b) enhancing creativity over time, (c) navigating creativity, acclaim, and ageism, and (d) managing creativity amidst a changing world. The study found that the writers' creativity was enhanced over time, as they gained experience and developed their skills. However, some writers experienced a decline in stamina or their ability to write long novels. The study also found that the writers' experiences of acceptance from the literary world and the audience changed over time. Some writers continued to receive acclaim and attention, while others experienced ageism and a decline in the audience's interest in their work.

Conspiracy theories (CTs) are spectacular narratives, widely spread, that pose societal threats. We test whether CTs might be linguistically creative products, which would facilitate their transmission and thereby account for their widespread popularity. We analyzed nominal compounds (e.g., mind control, carbon dioxide; N = 1,713,568) from a large corpus of conspiracist and mainstream texts matched by topic. In conspiracist texts, compounds showed greater originality, divergence, and sophistication, but they were used with lower frequency and were more often repeated in different contexts. This pattern suggests a creative aspect in the generation of compounds, coupled with rigidity in their use. We interpret these findings as an effect of loosely defined conceptual boundaries among conspiracist writers, in conjunction with social functions like status or group signaling. Our findings not only contribute to the discourse on creativity in CTs but also provide insights into the communicative advantage of CTs.