Self-guided transitions and creative idea search: adaptively choosing flexibility versus persistence in divergent and convergent thinking tasks

Adaptivity allows individuals to flexibly execute cognitive control to meet dynamically changing task demands while adhering to task goals. Such adaptivity is crucial for navigating complex problem spaces such as creative problem-solving. Recent theoretical and empirical investigations of individuals' tendencies towards flexibility versus persistence have begun to address the questions of how adaptivity may be jointly shaped by general (across-situational) predispositions and by task requirements. However, such investigation is hampered by the lack of comparable ways to quantify trait-like tendencies across different task contexts. Using a Self-Guided Transitions paradigm, in which participants are allowed to autonomously choose whether to continue, to switch or to return to working on either of two concurrently presented problem-solving items, this preregistered study provides evidence for both clear within-individual consistency in the proclivity towards flexibility versus persistence, and adaptive modulation of flexibility versus persistence for tasks that predominantly call on divergent versus convergent idea search. Both shifting and dwelling were associated with the generation of more numerous and more original ideas on divergent-thinking tasks - underscoring the creative and ideational rewards to be found both by sometimes staying the course (persistence/exploitation) and sometimes choosing to shift our efforts in a different direction (flexibility/exploration).