TY - JOUR
T1 - Beyond Openness
T2 - A Variety of Creative Experiences Increases Flexibility and Originality of Visuospatial Divergent Thinking
AU - Koutstaal, Wilma
AU - Brown, Lucy
AU - Lu, Kunbo
AU - Posson, Keelin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Despite strong empirical evidence linking openness to experience and creative ideation, exactly how openness is associated with the generation of novel ideas is unclear. Additionally, although many studies examine verbally-prompted divergent thinking, less attention has been devoted to creative idea generation in response to perceptual or visuospatial stimuli. The current study assesses if individuals’ voluntary engagement in a wider range of creativity-related activities contributes to flexible and original idea generation on less-often explored perceptually-based divergent thinking tasks, and if more varied experience provides incremental predictive value for flexibility and originality beyond what is predicted by openness. The study further newly compares human-based ratings of flexibility and originality with automated computational assessment of the semantic distance between participants’ responses (“SemDis”) for two perceptually-based stimulus sets. Hierarchical linear regression analyses of the responses of 132 young adults revealed that variety of creative activities was significantly predictive of idea flexibility and originality, over-and-above the contribution of openness. For both stimulus sets, SemDis was strongly positively correlated with human-rated flexibility and originality, demonstrating the applicability of this automated measure to perceptually-prompted divergent-thinking tasks. The findings underscore the value of both openness and providing opportunities for engaging in varied creativity-related activities for fueling innovative thinking.
AB - Despite strong empirical evidence linking openness to experience and creative ideation, exactly how openness is associated with the generation of novel ideas is unclear. Additionally, although many studies examine verbally-prompted divergent thinking, less attention has been devoted to creative idea generation in response to perceptual or visuospatial stimuli. The current study assesses if individuals’ voluntary engagement in a wider range of creativity-related activities contributes to flexible and original idea generation on less-often explored perceptually-based divergent thinking tasks, and if more varied experience provides incremental predictive value for flexibility and originality beyond what is predicted by openness. The study further newly compares human-based ratings of flexibility and originality with automated computational assessment of the semantic distance between participants’ responses (“SemDis”) for two perceptually-based stimulus sets. Hierarchical linear regression analyses of the responses of 132 young adults revealed that variety of creative activities was significantly predictive of idea flexibility and originality, over-and-above the contribution of openness. For both stimulus sets, SemDis was strongly positively correlated with human-rated flexibility and originality, demonstrating the applicability of this automated measure to perceptually-prompted divergent-thinking tasks. The findings underscore the value of both openness and providing opportunities for engaging in varied creativity-related activities for fueling innovative thinking.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85182818263&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85182818263&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10400419.2023.2300575
DO - 10.1080/10400419.2023.2300575
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85182818263
SN - 1040-0419
JO - Creativity Research Journal
JF - Creativity Research Journal
ER -