Week 10: Thinking

Question 1

What are the two factors in creativity? What are the four Ps?

Answer 1

Uniqueness
(originality), Usefulness
4 Ps: process, products, personality, press

Question 2

What are the cognitive processes looked for when testing creative people?

Answer 2

Number, originality, flexibility across categories, elaboration/detail

Question 3

What are the most important personality traits to creativity?

Answer 3

Openness (big 5)

• interests, thinking, aesthetics, novelty
• Decade of divergent thinking

Intelligence

• expertise required for accomplishment
• note: naivete sometimes useful to divergent thinking

Question 4

What are some environmental factors that can help foster creativity?

Answer 4

Autonomous work places can foster creativity
Positive moods are useful (especially high arousal/energetic)
Norm violations (ex: people are more creative in VR because physics isn’t a thing)
Multicultural experiences (moderated by openness)

Question 5

What are the components of wise reasoning?

Answer 5

Seeing multiple perspectives
Uncertainty
Knowledge about pragmatics of life
Prosocial motivation

Question 6

What are the steps to wise reasoning in an experimental setting?

Answer 6

1. put myself in the other person’s shoes
2. believed the situation could lead to a number of different outcomes
3. double-checked whether my opinion on the situation might be incorrect
4. tried my best to find a way to accommodate both of us
5. tried to see the conflict from the point of view of uninvolved person

Question 7

What are the six components of general intelligence?

Answer 7

Spatial, numerical, memory, verbal, fluency, perceptual speed

Question 8

What is the heritability percentage of IQ? What is the Flynn effect?

Answer 8

50-75% - people are not “blank slates”

Flynn effect: rising IQs over time, people who scored average 100 years ago would score extremely low today

Question 9

What are the factors that lead to accomplishment?

Answer 9

Ability/intelligence (cognitive)
Mastery/drive (conative)
Interests (affective)

Question 10

What is impact bias? what are the subsets of immune neglect and focusing illusion?

Answer 10

Tendency to overestimate intensity or duration of emotional reactions (ex: pregnancy tests, tenure decisions, sports games, elections, exams, break-ups)

Immune neglect: under-estimating all we do to cope with bad experiences (adaptation, hedonic treadmill)
Focusing illusion: failing to consider the full picture (ex: would you be happier in California)