Topic
Creativity research, explained
11 open-access creativity studies, each with a flashcard deck and a quiz.
- Does being mindful help or hurt creative problem solving?
People high in trait mindfulness solved word puzzles better when they worked them out step by step, but not when they relied on a sudden 'aha', and overall they solved fewer puzzles.
- Does music boost creativity by stirring up emotions?
Ten minutes of either cheerful or sad classical music made children more creative on a drawing test than sitting in silence, and the boost worked through how aroused the music made them feel rather than whether it made them feel good or bad.
- Do two creativity tests tap the same thinking process?
Imagining consequences of impossible events started more slowly, produced fewer but more creative early ideas, and unfolded more steadily than thinking up uses for objects, suggesting it relies less on simple memory recall.
- Does walking a free path make people more creative?
Walking freely along a self-chosen path for two minutes improved creative idea generation in both young and older adults, but only when people both chose and physically walked the path.
- How Sex Differences in Creativity Shift Over Time
While girls excel in childhood creativity, gender differences in average scores vanish by age 16, although boys show more extreme scores beginning in adolescence.
- Does a gifted-child enrichment day boost intelligence and creativity?
Gifted children in a weekly enrichment program improved on a standard reasoning test over the school year, but their creativity and open-ended reasoning did not change.
- Does self-control help or hinder children's creativity?
Children use highly unique mixtures of spontaneous thoughts and deliberate executive control to generate creative ideas, meaning there is no single cognitive profile for creativity.
- Can hand gestures and guided eye movements spark 'aha' moments?
Drawing simple lines with the hands helped people solve matchstick puzzles, and briefly guiding attention in a pattern that mirrors the solution helped people solve Duncker's radiation problem, mostly without noticing the link.
- Does an hour in total darkness make people more creative?
People who had just spent over an hour doing everyday activities in total darkness scored lower, not higher, on a creativity test than people who did the same activities in daylight.
- Do self-assessment mind maps boost kids' belief in their creativity?
Children who regularly filled in reflective mind maps during English class kept or slightly raised their belief that they could be creative, while a comparison class's belief fell, but the maps did not clearly improve English confidence or exam results.
- Do older and younger adults think creatively in different ways?
Older adults were as creative as younger adults at inventing new uses for objects and better at finding word links, but the two age groups seemed to rely on different mental abilities to get there.