Creativity and Divergent Thinking

A Task-Specific Approach

John Baer

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317781578
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría en psicología

Do general-purpose creative-thinking skills -- skills like divergent thinking, which is touted as an important component of creative thinking no matter what the task domain -- actually make much of a contribution to creative performance? Although much recent research argues against such domain-transcending skills -- including several new studies reported in this book -- the appeal of such general skills remains strong, probably because of the theoretical economy and power such skills would provide. Divergent thinking, in particular, has had an incredible staying power. Despite its many flaws, divergent thinking remains the most frequently used indicator of creativity in both creativity research and educational practice, and divergent thinking theory has a strong hold on everyday conceptions of what it means to be creative. Reviewing the available research on divergent thinking, this book presents a framework for understanding other major theories of creativity, including Mednick's associative theory and a possible connectionist approach of creativity. It reports a series of studies (including the study that won APA's 1992 Berlyne Prize) that demonstrate the absence of effects of general creative-thinking skills across a range of creativity-relevant tasks, but indicate that training in divergent thinking does in fact improve creative performance across diverse task domains. The book then ties these findings together with a multi-level theory, in which a task-specific approach to creativity is strengthened by recasting some divergent-thinking concepts into domain- and task-specific forms. This book fills the gap between divergent-thinking theory and more recent, modular conceptions of creativity. Rather than advocate that we simply discard divergent thinking -- an approach that hasn't worked, or at least hasn't happened, because of many attacks on its validity and usefulness -- this book shows how to separate what is useful in divergent-thinking theory and practice from what is not. It shows that divergent-thinking training can be valuable, although often not for the reasons trainers think it works. And it offers specific suggestions about the kinds of creativity research most needed today.

1

Introduction

Context and Goals

A central controversial issue in creativity research and theory is whether creativity is (a) a general capacity that influences an individual’s performance across many domains, or (b) a widely diverse collection of skills and knowledge, each contributing to creative performance in only a single domain (Bamberger, 1990). The former assumption—that general creativity-relevant traits, skills, attitudes, or habits of thought exist—has guided much research and theory in creativity (see, e.g., Amabile, 1983; Darley, Glucksberg, & Kinchla, 1986; Kogan, 1983; Perkins, 1981; Tardif & Sternberg, 1988; Torrance & Presbury, 1984). This monolithic view has recently been challenged, however, by a number of writers (see, e.g., Gardner, 1988; Gruber & Davis, 1988; Runco, 1987; Tardif & Sternberg, 1988; Winner, 1982).

There are many reasons for hoping that a general theory of creativity can be constructed to (a) explain creative thought processes, (b) predict creative behavior, and (c) demonstrate an underlying unity among diverse creative activities and productions. From a theoretical point of view, a general theory would be both more efficient and more elegant; and from a practical perspective, a one-size-fits-all theory would make the testing and training of creativity-relevant skills easier and more effective.

Psychologists working in fields other than creativity have also, for similar reasons, been attracted to general theories that can account for wide-ranging observations and connect seemingly disparate phenomena. Consider, for example, the hard-to-eradicate appeal of IQ scores (e.g., Jensen, 1980; Snow & Lohman, 1984), which lingers despite both (a) arguments dating back to the originator of IQ testing, Alfred Binet, stating that “intelligence is not a simple indivisible function” (Binet, 1911/1962, p. 150); and (b) nearly a century of accumulated psychometric evidence that single-factor theories cannot adequately represent human cognition (Gardner, 1983; Sternberg, 1988). Similarly, there has been an almost century-long struggle in educational psychology between those who have argued for and against the long-cherished belief that the study of certain subjects (such as Latin) will train the mind to learn more readily any subject one chooses to study. As early as 1903, Thorndike presented correlational evidence that “the mind is a host of highly particularized and independent abilities” (Thorndike, 1903, p. 39) and that success in one field of study was at most mildly predictive of success in other fields. Despite general consensus among educational psychologists that Thorndike was right, the appeal of theories that emphasize general, easily transferable cognitive skills or traits remains with us because of the power to improve thinking and learning that such skills or traits could provide (Costa, 1985; Gardner, 1983; Kaplan, 1990; Mayer, 1983, 1987; Smith, Sera, & Gattuso, 1988; Sternberg & Davidson, 1986; Wiggins, 1989).

The appeal of theories positing teachable skills that improve overall intellectual competence is also evidenced in advertising claims for a wide variety of training programs. Wff’ N Proof, a game of symbolic logic, claims in its advertisements an average increase of 20 IQ-test points after just 3 weeks of playing the game. Edward de Bono’s (1985) CoRT program claims that “so basic is thinking as a skill that the same CoRT lessons have been used by children in the jungles of South America and by top executives of the Ford Motor Company” (p. 208). And on a recent National Public Radio broadcast, a dance instructor who was being interviewed averred that learning tap dancing “trains the mind” and makes all other kinds of learning easier. These claims are similar to the belief that learning Latin can improve thinking of all kinds and in all subjects—a claim that is only now being generally abandoned, almost a century after Thorndike’s (1903) initial attempts to dispel it (Mayer, 1987).

The search for general, all-encompassing theories has by no means been limited to psychology (or advertising). A primary goal of physics is to find “a complete, consistent, unified theory that would include ... all partial theories as approximations” (Hawking, 1988, p. 155). Einstein spent most of his later years searching for such a unified theory, and although he was unsuccessful, the search for a grand unified theory, or “Theory of Everything, “has captured the imagination of many of the world’s foremost scientists (Davies, 1984; Riordan & Schramm, 1991).

Despite their popularity, however, general, context-free theories have been on the defensive in recent years in many fields. Feminist scholarship has challenged the hegemony of such models in the physical, natural, and social sciences (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Fausto-Sterling, 1991; Harding, 1986; Gilligan, 1982; Gilligan & Attanucci, 1988; Nelson, 1990). Challenges to the universal nature of theories have been especially common in the various sub-disciplines that make up psychology. For example, in developmental psychology, the effects of domain-specific knowledge on stages of cognitive development are widely acknowledged (Chi, 1978; DeLisi & Staudt, 1980; Fivush & Hudson, 1990; Flavell, 1985); in both cognitive psychology and behavioral neuroscience, connectionist/neural network models challenge what might now be thought of as “classical” information-processing models (for a range of perspectives on how connectionist models differ from the information-processing approach, see Bereiter, 1991; Edelman, 1987, 1989; McClelland, Rumelhart, & the PDP Research Group, 1986; Pinker & Prince, 1987; Rumelhart, McClelland, & the PDP Research Group, 1986; Smolensky, 1988); and in social, educational, and clinical psychology, new epistemologies—new world views that are more contextualist in nature—have become increasingly popular (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987; Kramer & Bopp, 1989; McKerrow & McKerrow, 1991; Pintrich, 1990).

This brief overview of the question of the level of universality at which it is most appropriate to pitch scientific theories—that is, whether science is better served by general, context-transcending theories or particularistic, context-specific theories—demonstrates that this debate extends beyond both creativity research and the field of psychology. But what can this context tells us about how to proceed with research and theory-building in creativity?

One answer to this question is a simple acknowledgment of the importance, and the complexity, of the issue. From this perspective, many fields of science can be seen to be wrestling with essentially the same difficult question. Although recognizing that creativity theory is not alone in struggling with the generality-specificity issue offers little guidance in the search for solutions to this question in creativity theory and research, it does promote an appreciation of the general significance of the issue.

A second answer also relates to this sharing of a common theme by suggesting that, through an analysis of the debates, evidence, and (where they exist) conclusions being produced elsewhere in psychology and in the other sciences, creativity theorists may be able learn lessons that will enable them to solve creativity’s own unique versions of the generality-specificity issue more efficiently and more thoroughly. There is, of course, some irony in taking what might be termed a universal perspective on these issues. Because these issues in the various sciences all seek to determine how much to focus on the particular (be it a particular context, a particular task or domain, or a particular subgroup or subset that illustrates the failure of general rules or theories), one may argue that simply taking such a perspective is in itself an endorsement of the universal approach and a denial of the validity of the particularistic model.

A third answer to the question, “What can the particularist-universalist debates in the various sciences teach creativity theory?” comes from examining the success of these two approaches in fields more (and less) like creativity theory. There is, perhaps, a rough continuum in science, with physics near one end and the social sciences nearer the other. Hard and soft are the terms most often applied to the ends of this continuum, although contextually stripped and contextually rich (Fausto-Sterling, 1991, p. 11; see also Harding, 1986, for the origin and a fuller development of this approach to analyzing the scientific hierarchy) are alternative terms to describe the endpoints of the same continuum. Universal theories have been successful, and continue to hold sway, in physics, which is generally considered the hardest (and most contextually stripped) of the sciences. Most of the other sciences, including the social sciences, have attempted to capitalize on physics’ success by imitating physics’ preference for producing grand, unified theories, a hierarchical view of the sciences that Fausto-Sterling (1991) dubbed “physics envy” (p. 10). But particularistic challenges to universal theories have been most successful in the softer, contextually rich sciences, and there is currently much “debate ... whether physics (at least, classical physics) can serve as a model for biology and other sciences” (Nelson, 1990, p. 219).

Without entering directly into this debate about the appropriateness of modelling other sciences (like psychology) on physics, it is nonetheless possible to see that creativity theory (and, arguably, all of psychology) currently stands closer to the soft, contextually rich end of the soft/hard, contextually rich/contextually stripped continuum. This allows us to recognize that particularistic claims are likely, at least at this stage in their development, to be relevant to creativity theory. This does not mean that we should abandon larger, more general theories, because even if we accept that more narrow, particularistic theories are inevitable, this acceptance does not tell us along which lines we should subdivide the concept, topic, or field of creativity. Do we need different models for creativity based on age, culture, or gender? On educational background? On the domain, or the specific task, being undertaken? Perhaps there are many such lines to be drawn, but they must be drawn on the basis on research, not a priori theorizing. It is one of the goals of this book to demonstrate one such set of lines that should be drawn—a set of lines that describes a universe of task-specific constraints —and to propose how creativity theory will be enriched by adopting the particularistic approach defined by this set of task-specific considerations.

Accepting the need to draw lines that subdivide creativity theory does not preclude the possibility that larger theories will, at some point, be more successful in explaining creativity than is currently possible. Nor does it mean that the larger theories we now have—in particular, divergent-thinking theories of creativity—are devoid of meaning. Much of what follows, although critical of general theories of creativity (and especially of divergent-thinking theories), grows directly out of such large, universal approaches. It is therefore a goal of this book not only to show where such general approaches fail us, but also to demonstrate in what ways they can still guide both our thinking about creativity theory and our efforts to improve creative performance through instruction.

It is, finally, a goal of this book to show how at least a part of the work of two large groups of creativity researchers—those who take a particularistic stance, and those who espouse more universal theories—can be brought together into a single research paradigm.

An Overview of the Book

The term creativity has a wide range of meanings, many, but not all, of which are the subject of this book. One recent meta-theoretical analysis of creativity (Johnson-Laird, 1988b) argued, from an information-processing viewpoint, for three kinds of creativity, which I label real time, multi-stage, and paradigm-shifting creativity.

Real-Time Creativity. (Also called “on-line” in computer jargon.) This refers to creative performance within some genre under time constraints that make performance basically spontaneous, with no opportunity for revision—as in jazz, modern dance, or other forms of improvisation; in everyday conversation; or in any kind of extemporaneous performance or problem-solving task (such as reacting to emergency situations). Because performance of this kind does not allow sufficient time for the generation of a wide range of alternative solutions followed by a thoughtful selection among those candidate solutions, creative performance in real time requires tight constraints on the kinds of possible solutions that will be generated. Choice among candidate solutions in this model is essentially arbitrary, in Johnson-Laird’s (1988b) view, and therefore all the candidate solutions that are generated must meet the task constraints. This imposes significant limitations on the degree of variability that can be tolerated among the candidate solutions. Johnson-Laird (1987) likened this real-time model of creativity to Lamarck’s theory of evolution because the previous experience must guide the solution-generation process, rather than allowing an essentially random generation of ideas. This kind of real-time creative performance has received little attention in the creativity literature, making Johnson-Laird’s attempts to model it using computer programs that create improvised jazz bass lines especially interesting. In the present analysis, however, real-time creativity is primarily of interest because it provides a contrasting model that helps to clarify the nature of the second, multistage model.

Multistage Creativity. This refers to creative performance within an established domain under conditions that allow sufficient time for evaluating and revising a variety of possible solutions. Creative performance of this type can be characterized as multistage because the generation of possible solutions follows a set of criteria that differs from the criteria by which optimal solutions are later judged. In the generation stage, the criteria for producing candidate solutions can be quite flexible, because unlike real-time creative performance, this multistage model can tolerate the generation of solutions that do not meet minimal task constraints. The two stages of this model (generation of ideas and selection of solutions) allow the process of multistage creativity to tolerate more diversity in its initial generation stage because there is an opportunity at the next stage to reject unworkable solutions. This multistage model thus allows a much wider range of possible solutions than the single-stage real-time model, in which the constraints on solution generation must be tight because there is no solution-evaluation stage prior to performance. It is, of course, possible (and, I believe, quite reasonable) to think of the distinction between real-time and multistage creative performances as a series of points along a continuum rather than as two discrete processes. The degree to which a performance is considered to allow multistage processing depends on the nature of whatever limitations are placed on the second, evaluative stage. These variations in the time available for evaluating competing candidate solutions in turn allow varying degrees of flexibility or “looseness” in the criteria used to guide the generation of candidate solutions.

Paradigm-Shifting Creativity. This refers to creative performances that result in fundamental changes in the nature of the domain in which the creator is working—such as changes in the way the domain itself is conceptualized, or changes in the options available to those who later work and solve problems in that domain. In this kind of creativity, Johnson-Laird argued (1988b), there can be no prior constraints on the kinds of candidate solutions that are generated. He therefore referred to this model as a “neo-Darwinian” process, and argued that “a neo-Darwinian procedure is the only mechanism available if there is no way in which the generative process can be guided by selective constraints” (p. 218). This is an extreme-case argument, however, because completely random idea generation would be a hopelessly time-consuming enterprise, and Johnson-Laird (1988b) himself acknowledged that “the productive use of knowledge is a central part of genius” (p. 218). It may prove, as Johnson-Laird suggested, far more difficult to discover the cognitive processes that support creativity of the highest order than to find the mechanisms that underlie real-time and multistage creativity; however, the fact that it may be more difficult to find, in Johnson-Laird’s (1988b) words, “tractable computational algorithms for producing successful innovations” (p. 218) does not allow us to assume that the underlying processes are essentially different from those that underlie the quotidian, garden-variety creative performances that do not result in paradigm shifts. The distinction between paradigm-shifting and multistage creativity may, like the distinction between real-time and multistage creativity, be one of degree rather than a firm categorical difference. Although it will likely prove impossible to draw firm distinctions between different levels of creative performance, it may nonetheless be useful to analyze creative genius, on one hand, and the kinds of thinking that underlie everyday problem solving and garden-variety creativity, on the other, using different lenses, such as the meta-theoretical models that Johnson-Laird proposed.

Johnson-Laird’s (1988b) analysis is a useful guide for specifying the kinds of creativity on which we are focusing attention. There are those creativity researchers and theorists, like Howard Gruber (1981; Gruber & Davis, 1988) and his many associates (many of whose works are collected in Wallace & Gruber, 1989), whose work focuses on the creativity of individuals whose genius is widely acknowledged. In fact, Gruber (Gruber & Davis, 1988) argued against “the use of inappropriate populations, such as ... unselected high school students. Although these are certainly valuable and interesting human beings, usually we can have no guarantee that the sample taken includes a single person who is functioning creatively” (p. 246). Under the definition of creativity that guides Gruber’s work, much of the creativity that falls under both real-time and multistage creativity is simply not creativity, and therefore cannot tell us anything about the cognitive processes that underlie creative performance.

Among creativity theorists who argue for domain specificity, there is a tendency to focus on creativity of the highest order—the kind of creativity that leads to eminence in a field. And those who focus on creativity of the highest order tend, in turn, toward a domain-specific approach to the nature of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988, 1990; Gruber, 1981; Gruber & Davis, 1988; Tardif & Sternberg, 1988; Wallace & Gruber, 1989).

In contrast, those who view creativity as a more general trait tend to see creativity as a continuum, with genius at one end and everyday problem solving at the other. The distinction between multistage and paradigm-shifting creativity are considered matters of degree that do not reflect different underlying cognitive processes. Most of the divergent-thinking theories and measurement strategies (discussed in some detail in chapter 2) fall into this category. Because genius is hard to find, researchers in the “general trait” camp typically run studies that compare what might be termed the garden-variety creative performances of ordinary subjects under different experim...