Empathy research has long emphasized accuracy when imagining other minds. We explore whether empathy can be a creative process, where people think of multiple diverging possibilities of others' experiences. We developed two tasks to measure creative empathy. First, we adapted "forward flow" to measure the dynamic unfolding of creativity…

Previous research showed that in primary school, children's intelligence develops continually, but creativity develops more irregularly. In this study, the development of intelligence, measured traditionally, i.e., operating within well-defined problem spaces (Standard Progressive Matrices) was compared with the development of intelligence…

The Reisman Diagnostic Creativity Assessment (RDCA) is a free online self-report creativity assessment that provides immediate feedback to the user and is diagnostic, rather than predictive, with the focus on making the user aware of creative strengths and weaknesses. Several engineering and teacher education studies have included the RDCA over a…

Compared to the significant development of creativity studies, individual creativity research has not reached a meaningful consensus regarding the most valid and reliable method for assessing individual creativity. This study revisited 2 of the most popular methods for assessing individual creativity: subjective and objective methods. This study…

Arthur Cropley (2006) emphasized the critical place that convergent thinking has in creativity. Although he briefly refers to the blind variation and selective retention (BVSR) theory of creativity, his discussion could not reflect the most recent theoretical and empirical developments in BVSR, especially the resulting combinatorial models.…

Creativity is negatively associated with certain personality traits (e.g., conformity) and social influences (e.g., group pressure). In this study, creativity was examined in relation to unconventionality, which was expected to correlate positively with creativity, especially originality. This hypothesis was based on the theory that unconventional…

Current definitions of creativity almost universally include "value" or a close cognate as one of the criteria. This article discusses two problems that arise as the result of the inclusion of value in those definitions. First, there is a conflict between the researchers' definition of the relevant phenomena and that used in the ordinary…

Recent findings in creativity research suggest that how creativity is operationalized may have a profound influence on theories of creative production. In this study, two paradigms--divergent thinking and creative problem solving--were compared on several indices of creativity while keeping the problem constant. Participants were students from a…

This work is part of the debate regarding the possibility to judge the creativity of a particular object (an idea, a painting, an industrial product, etc.), by expert or nonexpert raters, with the same results or not. The study is focused on the concept "complexity of judgment" considered fundamental to fully understand the problem. The…

Creativity has been conceptualized as involving 2 distinct components; divergent thinking, the search for multiple solutions to a single problem, and convergent thinking, the quest for a single solution either through an analytical process or the experience of insight. Studies have demonstrated that these abilities can be improved by cognitive…

Earlier studies using psychometric tests have documented declines in creativity over the past several decades. Our study investigated whether and how this apparent trend would replicate through a qualitative investigation using an authentic nontest measure of creativity. Three-hundred and fifty-four visual artworks and 50 creative writing works…

This study associates the subclinical dark triad (DT) of personality--narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, and their composite--with negative creativity. An instrument developed by the author assessed the likelihood of engaging in creativity, where negative creativity was defined as an act that is original and useful to the individual.…

This study examined relations between creative thinking and performance on routine, everyday tasks. Results were considered in light of past research on the putative relation between creativity and schizophrenia/psychotic thinking. Thirty healthy undergraduates completed the Alternative Uses Task, a measure of divergent thinking, and the 2 × 3…

This research tested the use of concept map planning to support the development of creativity in photo stories, hypothesizing that skills taught to support organization would improve creativity. Concept maps are a type of graphic organizer, used to represent an ordering of ideas with nodes and linking words that form propositional statements. They…

Arthur Cropley's academic career began in the early 1960s and, more than 50 years later, shows few signs of abating. Over this lengthy period, he has made important contributions not only to creativity research, but to a range of related areas of psychology. Arthur Cropley has also been an influential figure in the careers of several generations…