Spontaneous or Deliberate: The Dual Influence of Mind Wandering on Creative Incubation

Two experiments examined the dual influence of mind wandering (MW) on the incubation of both deliberate and spontaneous modes of creativity. Specifically, using a modified version of Sustained Attention Response Task as the incubation task, this study assessed whether taking a break from a creative task and engaging in either an MW-allowed task or an MW-prevented task can exert differential effects on different aspects of creativity. Results showed that after engaging in an incubation task that allowed MW rather than prevented MW, participants generated ideas more flexibly but less persistently in the subsequent divergent thinking tasks, and were more likely to solve creative insight problems through intuitive insight but not systematic analysis. The results suggest that MW during incubation may simultaneously facilitate the spontaneous mode of creativity while suppressing the deliberate mode of creativity. These findings also indicate that creativity must be parsed into different subtypes in order to identify more specific ways to enhance creativity.