Lecture 10: Thinking

Question 1

What are the criteria for creativity?

Answer 1

• Uniqueness, originality
• Usefulness
• (need some of both)

Question 2

What are the 4 P’s?

Answer 2

• process, products, personality, press

- A way to understand creativity

Question 3

What is the alternate use tasks?

Answer 3

• Coming up with alternative uses for a basic item (e.g., a sock).
• Number (how many ideas), originality, flexibility across categories, elaboration/detail

Question 4

What is divergent thinking?

Answer 4

• generating creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions

Question 5

What is reduced latent inhibition?

Answer 5

• The idea that without trying our minds are paying attention to some stuff and simultaneously blocking out other stuff. Reduced latent inhibition is not being able to block these things out which might be helpful to creativity. – People generally do a pretty good job of automatically blocking out irrelevant information. It happens unconsciously and is called latent inhibition. Low latent inhibition can be problematic. However, creativity may be an exception where reduced latent inhibition is helpful.
  Allowing a little more random information into the mind seems to help people think in divergent, creative ways.
  -Tested through word tests.

Question 6

What is the remote associates test

Answer 6

• Fish/mine/rush (Gold is the correct answer, task is to find the word that goes with all of them)
• Back/step/screen (door)
• Cottage/swiss/cake (cheese)

Question 7

What are the products of creativity?

Answer 7

• (what can you do with a sock?) the answers generated are creative products
• Assessment issues:
• Counting works, publications, patents etc. (Objective, but insensitive to quality)
• Expert or subjective ratings
• Counting ‘impact’ (e.g., citations, performances- How many times have you been referenced? How impactful or special are these creative products?)
• Self reports of accomplishments. You ask people about specific creative works. Based on the responses we can get different levels of creativity, most people aren’t creative across the board.

Question 8

What is the relationship between creativity and personality?

Answer 8

• Big 5 openness (positively associated with creativity). Interest, thinking, aesthetics, novelty, Linked over decades to divergent thinking, Linked to more products
• Intelligence, expertise. For accomplishment sometimes useful to divergent thought.
  Children (children actually have an advantage for some elements of creativity, because they don’t have the same knowledge and constraints as adults.

Question 9

What aspects of the environment (i.e., press) are related to creativity?

Answer 9

• Autonomous work places (overall strategy of autonomy facilitates creativity in the work place)
• Positive moods (especially high arousal). Conducive to creativity. Lab studies suggest that positive moods, especially high energy ones, increase creativity on tasks like remote associates test.
• Norm violation (can boost creativity- helps you break out of familiar patterns of thinking). Actual vs. vicarious experience in virtual reality: Normal rules of physics don’t seem to apply in this virtual reality and even watching others in it make you more creative. E.g., making breakfast as usual or not, In the Netherlands, chocolate toast, if they make their toast abnormally it might spur creative thinking.
• Multicultural experiences: Moderated by openness Historical dark ages vs. golden age

Question 10

What are the strengths of the virtue, wisdom?

Answer 10

• Judgement, perspective, curiosity, love of learning, creativity

Question 11

What does wise reasoning involve?

Answer 11

• Seeking multiple perspectives (wisdom involves considering things broadly)
• Uncertainty
• Knowledge about pragmatics of life (understand how the world works and what is likely to happen)
• Prosocial motivations (this distinguishes wisdom from intelligence)

Question 12

How can we measure wisdom?

Answer 12

• Self reports: Sometimes indirect (modesty important), Sometimes rating/describing specific events*,Yet, less frequent than other strengths
• Scenarios with coding of open response (record people while you ask them to think out loud

Question 13

Who is wise?

Answer 13

• No clear increase with age (no strong association with age, the age effects go in both directions). But consider other cognitive decline? Wisdom doesn’t seem to decline with age either relative to other cognitive processes. Still seen as strength of healthy aging.
• Big 5 openness (+ associated with wisdom)
• Intelligence
• Links with psychological well-being

Question 14

What are the situational effects on wisdom?

Answer 14

• Reducing ego-centric perspective helpful
• Cultures with less individualism
• Lab manipulations of personal vs others (they give you a conflict, think about whether its happened to you or someone else. When its happened to others people have more wise reasoning, whereas if it happened to you people are less wise and rational. Being personally involved makes it harder to take multiple perspectives)

Question 15

Describe intelligence

Answer 15

• Strong opinions, debate & controversy (about intelligence testing, SAT’s, GRE’s)
• Intelligence is highly valued
• Clear individual differences in ‘smarts’

Question 16

Like traits, virtues & SWB, intelligence is…?

Answer 16

• Hierarchically structured (intelligence as one thing at the top of the hierarchy and then specific things below it like math)
• Heritable
• Sensitive to environmental influence

Question 17

What is g made up of?

Answer 17

• The hierarchical structure of intelligence. G is made up of a bunch of narrower abilities
• Spatial
• Numerical
• Memory
• Verbal
• Fluency
• Perceptual/speed

Question 18

What are the correlates of ‘g’?

Answer 18

• educational achievement (.70-.80)
• work performance (.20-.60)
• income (.30-.40)
• criminal behaviour (-.20)
• SES origin (.40)
• SES (.50-.70)
  More g’ predicts greater accomplishment

Question 19

How does ‘g’ predict specific abilities?

Answer 19

• More ‘g’ predicts greater accomplishment. Even at very high levels (top 1%).
• But specific profiles predict area (i.e., certain intelligence domains predict whether someone will excel in that domain). Numeric and STEM (people in stem tend to be high in numeric intelligence). Verbal and humanities.
• Multiple intelligences. Distinct abilities vs. learning style. Research suggests that trying to tailor education to learning styles isn’t helpful, showing information in multiple pathways is positive but its positive for everyone.
• Emotional intelligence

Question 20

What does accomplishment depend on?

Answer 20

• Ability/intelligence (cognitive)
• Interests (affective)
• E.g., people vs things
• Mastery/drive (conative) E.g., grit, persistence (personality)
• Study skills also useful for academics (distinct from cognitive abilities)

Question 21

What are the best study techniques?

Answer 21

• Practice tests

- Distributed practice (one hour a day for a week)

Question 22

What are the ‘ok’ study techniques?

Answer 22

• Interleaved learning (doing a little bit of everything when you study, history, psychology)
• Self explanation, elaborative interrogation

Question 23

What are the ‘not so good’ studying techniques?

Answer 23

• Highlighting, complete re readings, summarizing, imagery, key word memory triggers

Question 24

What is affective forecasting?

Answer 24

• ‘predicted emotions’ have spawned much research in recent years
• Notion that prediction errors impede happiness maximization
• A few systematic errors found
• Some additional, idiosyncratic errors found

Question 25

What is impact bias?

Answer 25

• Tendency to over estimate intensity or duration of emotional reactions E.g., pregnancy tests, tenure decisions, sports games, elections, exams, break ups etc.
• Overall happiness in general doesn’t actually change your happiness that much. On follow up, things don’t make as much of an impact on happiness as people predicted that they would.

Question 26

What are the reasons for impact bias?

Answer 26

• Immune neglect: Underestimating all we do to cope with bad experiences (cf. hedonic treadmill)
• Focusing illusion: Failing to consider the ‘full picture’. When we make a judgement we are focused too narrowly. E.g., would you be happier in California? (California actually has higher cost of living, less jobs)

Question 27

What is beyond the impact bias?

Answer 27

• Interacting with stranger vs. partner: People are happier talking to a stranger (contradicts intuition), the reason for this is because we put on a positive face, present ourselves in a positive/ideal way. With a romantic partner you may be socially comfortable
• Talking to strangers on bus, taxi subway
• Items with return police or not: When you have the option to return something or trade it in people are less satisfied with the item. But if you don’t have the option to return people’s internal coping mechanisms make you think you like it better.
• Walking in tunnels vs. near river at CU