How are ideas born? Contrary to commonly held beliefs, creative performance, like any goal-oriented action, requires understanding and managing one's own cognitive processes -- thus, efficient metacognition. Recently, a systematic framework of creative metacognition (CMC) has been proposed, assuming the relevance of metacognitive knowledge,…

When people are working on creative tasks, they make progress in conscious thought (CT) and unconscious thought (UT) processes. UT occurs outside conscious awareness, and unlike CT, it is independent of working memory resources. Previous studies suggest UT is more influential under certain conditions, known as the UT effect. Typically, these…

This article presents the PTSI (Person x Task x Situation Interaction) theory of creativity. The theory deals with the creative person, the deployment of creativity in tasks, the ecological context in which this deployment takes place, and the types of creative products that result. The theory draws upon a wide range of previous work. The article…

A wandering mind is not always a creative mind. Anecdotes about ideas spontaneously entering awareness during walks, showers, and other off-task activities are plenty. The science behind it, however, is still inconclusive. Creativity might result from how thought context--whether thoughts are on-task or off-task--relates to thought dynamics--how…

Previous research has examined cross-cultural influences on creative performance. Findings of this line of inquiry are, however, not consistent. While some scholars suggest that individuals from Western cultures, who tend to apply context-independent thinking styles, produce more novel ideas given a cognitive task than individuals from Eastern…

In this three-study investigation, we applied various approaches to score drawings created in response to both Form A and Form B of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural (broadly TTCT-F) as well as the Multi-Trial Creative Ideation task (MTCI). We focused on TTCT-F in Study 1, and utilizing a random forest classifier, we achieved 79% and…

While people approach creative actions in diverse ways, navigating them effectively requires self-regulatory effort. In this preregistered experiment, we examined whether simple self-regulation prompts, provided across the stages of the creative process, make the outcomes more creative. Participants (N = 332) engaged in one of three creativity…

Anxiety-driven counterfactual thinking can be a slippery slope. Building on the premise that both positive and negative emotions can impact creativity, the present study examines how trait anxiety, optimism, and other mental health factors like therapy experience shape outputs in divergent thinking (DT) tasks. Using an online sample (N = 647), the…

Creative problem-solving skills are essential for navigating complex, non-routine challenges, enabling individuals to create unique goals, execute innovative procedures and generate original outcomes. While the link between metacognitive skills and the creativity of outcomes was established only recently, further exploration is required to…

Evaluative skill, the ability to accurately assess ideas in terms of originality or creativity, is a critical component of creativity. It involves discarding bad ideas and discerning ideas that are worthwhile to pursue. In light of the growing research on the association between individuals' evaluative skill and divergent thinking (DT), a research…

Creativity research crucially relies on creativity evaluations by external raters, but it is not clear what properties characterize good raters. In the present study, we investigated whether rater personality and rater creativity are related to discernment (i.e., the ability to distinguish creative from uncreative responses) when evaluating…

Group diversity is an active topic in research as studies examine how differences in background, culture, job position, gender, and ethnicity can all impact group creativity. One relatively overlooked component is how diversity in academic knowledge affects group and individual creativity. In this study, 56 graduate students from a research…

This study delved into the structuring of design briefs and investigated the impact of employing visual analogies compared to text analogies. We aimed to contribute to the growing body of research investigating the role of analogies in design problem-solving. To do this, we conducted a controlled experiment at a university with 135 undergraduate…

Creativity is a fundamental human accomplishment from scientific advances to composing music. The left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) are important metacontrol hubs in flexibility and persistence brain states, respectively. Those hubs are related to divergent thinking, insight problem-solving, and…

Fixation is one of the major obstacles that individuals face in creative idea generation contexts. Several studies have shown that individuals unintentionally tend to fixate to the examples they are shown in a creative ideation task, even when instructed to avoid them. Most of these studies used examples formulated with high level of specificity.…