Chapter 6 Flashcards
What has research in individual differences traditionally been concerned with?
Intelligence and personality.
What is the definition of creativity?
Creating something novel and appropriate.
Since when has creativity been studied?
Since 1950
What are the 4 Ps?
A way of organizing research into creativity: (characteristics of the creative )person (examine their) products, (what cognitive) processes, press (the social and environmental situation)
What is reliability?
Getting the same results on different occasions.
What is validity?
Measure what supposed to measure.
What is a measure of reliability?
Coefficient.
To what extent is there agreement on how to test creativity?
No agreement.
What are the most common tests for creativity? What are they?
Divergent thinking (DT) tests. These are when there are multiple answers to a single question.
Of the 24 DT tests, which is the most popular?
Unusual uses ( e.g. a brick, can)
What is the most common battery of DT tests?
Torrance Tests of Creativity Thinking (TTCT)
What is fluency as a mans to score unusual uses?
How many responses in a divergent thinking test.
What is a problem with using fluency as a means to score divergent thinking?
Some ideas are quite conventional (store books, store CDs etc.) Need to use something else.
What are three other ways of assessing creativity except for fluency?
Flexibility, originality and elaboration.
What is flexibility?
Different categories of responses.
What is originality?
How novel an idea is compared with a list of quite conventional ideas.
What is elaboration?
Level of detail in responses.
What is a problem with validity when assessing creativity using the four measures?
High fluency can mean high flexibility and originality because more ideas to score.
What is the Remote Associates Test (RAT)?
Linking different ideas e.g salt, deep, foam.
The RAT shows correlations with what?
Factors related to intelligence.
The RAT does not show a correlation with what?
DT scores.
RAT is sometimes seen as a test of what?
Insight
What is insight?
Sudden solution to a problem.
What are the four stages of Wallis’ model on insight?
Preparation, incubation, illumination, verification.
In insight tasks, the answer is not what?
Obvious at once.
Although insight problems seem to be valid, what is a problem?
Some insight problems maybe don’t need insight, the problems are very different from one another, they are often very difficult. Only very few problems are used in a study.
What is a problem with only very few insight problems being used in a study?
Limited reliability but simple and well-used nonetheless.
What is the Creative Activities Questionnaire (CAQ)?
Self-report measure to look at whether been creative in the past to know if will be in the future. PPS indicate level of achievement in different domains.
In the CAQ, how are scores given?
For which achievements done and sometimes how often.
CAQ has a correlation with what?
DT scores
What is a problem with validity of self-report measures?
Easy to lie.
What may be the best way to determine creativity? Who determines this? What is the name of the most famous test?
Look at the products. Experts determine this.
Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) sometimes referred to as the gold standard of creativity assessment.
What are the key principles of the CAT?
Choose task that doesn’t need too many specialized skills, standardized instructions, 3-10 judges with familiarity of those kinds of PPS (e.g. Schoolchildren and teacher), judge products against each other, give ratings independently according to own definition of creativity, look at correlations between judges
There are strong correlations between the CAT and what?
Unusual uses
What has the CAT been criticized for?
It isn’t a general measure of creativity as it only tests one domain.
What is historiometry?
Use archives on historical, creative figures and aim to find rules/laws independently of where, when or who. Quantitative and use large samples.
What and how did Lehman look at?
How creativity changes with age, used encyclopedias and text books and made lists of creative people, and products.
What did Lehman find out about the changes in creativity with age?
Sharp increase, peak and then slow decline. Different fields have different peaks (e.g. Poetry earlier and science later). Across cultures the same.
How has Lehman’s work been criticized?
Research is old now and peaks may be later, historians were biased towards more recent history, creative productivity may be later but fewer survivors
How did Simonton confirm Lehman’s research? What else did he find?
Peaks then declines and some domains have earlier peaks than others. Found that not about your chronological age but how long have been in that domain.
Why is there some doubt over the validity of historiometry?
No experimental control (but good because large data sets).
What are traits and what is the trait approach?
Stable, enduring characteristics thought to be biological and the trait approach focuses on the psychometric measurement of these.
Are traits thought to be continuous (dimensions) or discontinuous (types)?
Continuous dimensions.
Which hypothesis did early work on trait theory use?
The lexical hypothesis.
What is the lexical hypothesis?
How important a trait is will be reflected in the importance it is given in a language. We can learn about personality by looking at language.
What does the lexical hypothesis suggest about synonyms?
The more synonyms a word has the more important it is.
What technique did Cattell use to formulate his 16PF?
Factor analysis.
What does factor analysis involve?
Looking for patterns in correlations.
What is a factor?
An underlying dimension found through factor analysis which is based on clusters of items.
What do high correlations between items suggest?
The same underlying factor.
What were Eysenck’s three factors?
Extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism.
How many traits do most people believe there are?
Five
What are the big 5?
Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism
Who developed the big 5? What was their measure?
Costa and McCrae, the NEO-PI-R
Each factor in the NEO-PI-R was divided into how many facets?
Six
Recent research across languages has suggested what about the big 5?
That there may be a 6th factor (honesty/trustworthiness).
Which of the big five is most associated with creativity? Which other is there a positive correlation with (and what to a lesser extent)?
Openness.
Extraversion (neuroticism).
Which two traits of the big five have a negative correlation with creativity?
Agreeableness and conscientiousness.
What did Feist find about the difference between scientists and artists in terms of personality?
Scientists- more conscientious, emotionally stable and socialized.
Creative artists - more ambitious, driven and self-confident
There is an enduring stereotype of creativity and what?
Mental illness.
Who found a link between creativity and psychoticism (even though other research hers didn’t)?
Eysenck
Which has a correlation with creativity, schizotypy or schizophrenia!
Schizotypy.
Which affective disorder has a correlation with creativity?
Bipolar (because of the hypomanic states).
Why is it not possible to say that mental illness is good for creativity?
Because many creative people are OK.
What did Zabelina et al. find in Sweden?
That there is a high representation of bipolar people (not unipolar) in creative professions.
What is an emerging area of research with regards to creativity?
How it can be used for bad purposes.
Why is it difficult to study real world malevolent activity?
Difficult to recruit (bad) people and ethically wrong
What did Lee and Dow study with regards to the dark side of creativity? What were the results?
Asked PPS to think of uses for a brick or a pencil and counted uses to harm people. Negative correlation to conscientiousness and positive to physical aggression.
What did Gino and Ariel look for links between?
Creativity and dishonesty.
What was Gino and Ariely’s experiment? What are the results? Why?
PPS told paid for correct answers on problem-solving test
Correlation with creative achievement and personality
Creative people more likely to think of different options including the dishonest ones.
What did Gino and Wiltermuth find about the direction of the effect between creativity and dishonesty?
That it is bidirectional. PPS were given the chance to be dishonest by over reporting scores on tasks. They were then shown to be more creative on measures of creativity than non-cheaters.
Caring about rules is related to higher or lower creativity?
Lower creativity when feel constrained by rules.
What is the dark triad? What might they be linked by?
Machiavellianiam, narcissism, psychopathy.
A single core factor such as callousness or interpersonal antagonism.
How are dark triad traits measured?
Surveys and questionnaires.
What can dark triad traits be good for?
Some people in the work place as able to get ahead of colleagues and get leadership positions.
Dark triad traits are linked with what kind of behaviors outside the workplace?
Trolling, infidelity, many sex partners.
Although both have a positive correlation with criminal behavior, what is the difference between psychopathy and machiavellianism?
Machiavellianism is more associated with white-collar crime and psychopathy with impulsive behavior.
Which trait are researchers saying should be added to the dark triad?
Sadism.
How did narcissists do on unusual uses tasks?
Gave selves higher ratings but did not actually get higher ratings.
What was the difference between the creative ideas pitched by narcissists versus non narcissists?
Delivered with more confidence so seemed better but not actually better based on objective measurement.
Kapoor presented PPS problems with which three solutions?
Negative-creative (harmful or malevolent), positive-creative and neutral
Why were narcissists more likely to choose positive-creative solutions in Kapoor’s study? What was there a link between for psychopathy? Machiavellianism?
To give socially desirable answers.
Psychopathy and negative creativity.
Machiavellianism was not a good predictor of any type of creativity.
What were some problems with Kapoor’s study?
Low sample, are solutions actually negative or creative (e.g. ‘Emergency’ phone call so can’t do the presentation)?
