ABSTRACT This study examined whether the effects of problem construction on creative problem‐solving differed between individuals and groups. A 2 (collaboration: individual vs. three‐person group) × 2 (problem construction: present vs. absent) between‐participants experiment was conducted on 175 university students who solved an ill‐defined problem. We assessed creative outcomes (solution originality and usefulness) and process measures (fluency and flexibility of problem restatements and ideas). The results revealed that problem construction did not enhance the originality or usefulness of final solutions. However, this increased the number and diversity of generated ideas, particularly in groups. Groups engaging in problem construction produced more problem restatements than individuals. Furthermore, mediation analysis indicated that part of the group advantage in idea fluency was explained by their greater production of problem restatements. These findings suggest that problem construction in groups activates more diverse problem representations, which stimulate idea generation. Overall, collaboration and problem construction synergistically boosted idea productivity but did not improve the creativity of final solutions.
ABSTRACT Although creativity is frequently conceptualized as an individual trait or a collection of skills, increasing evidence highlights the decisive role of environmental conditions in shaping creative development. This paper proposes the Creative Greenhouse as a systems‐ecological framework for understanding how creative resilience could be cultivated through the calibrated interaction of care, challenge, constraint, and temporal rhythm within designed learning environments. Drawing on ecological theory, creativity research, and pedagogical design, the framework reframes creativity as an emergent property of adaptive systems rather than a fixed learner attribute, positioning the school as an intentionally designed Creative Greenhouse within the learner's wider developmental field. The framework specifies how psychological safety, productive tension, ethical boundaries, and cyclic structures of exploration and reflection can collectively support learners in navigating uncertainty and sustaining creative engagement over time. The Creative Greenhouse provides conceptual guidance for designing educational ecosystems that balance support with purposeful disturbance. Implications for curriculum design, classroom practice, and future empirical inquiry are discussed, including avenues for operationalizing the framework through design‐based and longitudinal research.
ABSTRACT We thank Atroszko and Luszuk for engaging with our article “The silver lining of workaholism: its impact on employees' creativity and presenteeism”, which discusses the mechanisms and boundary conditions through which workaholism relates to employee creativity and presenteeism. We value commentary and rejoinders as an important part of cumulative science—particularly in domains such as workaholism where definitions, underlying mechanisms, and practical implications remain actively debated. In that spirit, we offer several clarifications where we believe the commentary misreads our intent and overextends a primarily pathological interpretation of workaholism. At a high level, our study does not “promote” workaholism. Rather, consistent with calls in the literature to avoid rigid “good versus bad” classifications, we model a more balanced empirical account: workaholism can be associated with creativity under certain processes/conditions, while simultaneously carrying costs (e.g., presenteeism). Below, we respond to the major issues raised in the commentary.
ABSTRACT We conducted a theoretical exploration into how human‐LLM collaboration can facilitate the emergence of creativity through the lens of concepts —a notion that is central in the philosophical discussions regarding human knowledge creation. Kant considers concepts to be an epistemological tool that transforms people's perceptual, intuitive experiences into knowledge, while Hegel further postulates that concepts have a broader, ontological meaning: through concepts, individuals' experiences are socialized to a collective level, becoming part of the external world which, in turn, can be experienced and learned by others. Specifically, we first reviewed the philosophical discussions revolving around concepts and discussed how creativity is reflected in and can be facilitated through concept generation. We then reviewed the development of artificial intelligence and mapped it onto the development of human intelligence. We identified the commonalities and unique strengths of humans (providing drive to start and constraints to stop based on human embodiment) and artificial intelligence (carrying out extensive exploration of new concepts to supply potential options for reaching a creative goal). Based on these insights, we proposed a hybrid cycle of concept generation as a general framework or working approach to achieve human‐AI creativity —a form of creativity that humans alone cannot reach.
Despite decades of research on creativity, the creative potential of Black children has long been marginalized, undervalued, and overlooked within educational systems. While creativity is a well-established construct, its intersection with culture, particularly Black culture, remains insufficiently explored in gifted and general education literature. This narrative literature review presents a selective historical synthesis of scholarship on Black intelligence and creativity, tracing the systemic barriers that have informed educational access and recognition. Building on this foundation, the manuscript conceptualizes Black creativity as a distinct and culturally grounded educational construct and concept. Through the integration of historical context, theoretical insights, and policy considerations, this review advances a reimagined approach and framework for identifying and nurturing creativity in Black students, one that informs more equitable gifted eligibility, identification, and programming practices.
Recent studies suggest that women's divergent thinking, an indicator of creative potential, peaks during ovulation, potentially as a signal to attract mates. However, given that arousal is a key factor facilitating creative cognition, this increase may be a by-product of general heightened arousal during ovulation. This hypothesis has not been fully explored, as most research relies on self-reported measures of arousal, which is a significant limitation. Thus, the role of arousal in linking ovulation to divergent thinking remains unclear. To address this question, we conducted an intraindividual study measuring electrodermal activity (EDA) as a physiological indicator of arousal. Women of reproductive age (N = 69) participated in four sessions involving divergent thinking tasks across different phases of their menstrual cycle. Results indicate that electrodermal reactivity mediates the relationship between menstrual cycle phases and the originality of ideas. Additionally, reducing arousal through relaxation during ovulation decreased idea originality. These findings support the hypothesis that increased state-dependent creative potential during ovulation may be a by-product of heightened arousal.
Creative cognition research has flourished in recent decades, revealing how extraordinary creative outcomes emerge from ordinary cognitive processes. However, the field faces fragmentation that hinders consensus and integration. This research agenda, developed through a collaborative workshop of 50 European researchers at the Lorentz Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands, identifies four critical challenges for advancing creative cognition research. Challenge 1 addresses theoretical concerns around defining core research terms like divergent thinking, emotions, and metacognition. Challenge 2 focuses on identifying different types and domains of knowledge that influence creative performance. Challenge 3 emphasizes measuring dynamic interactions between cognitive, affective, and metacognitive processes over time. Challenge 4 calls for incorporating environmental and interpersonal contexts, including collaboration, technology, and embodied cognition. These challenges highlight the need for collaborative approaches to develop standardized measures, synthesize existing findings, and foster methodological innovations. By working together as a research community, we can build more comprehensive theories and effective methods for understanding creativity's cognitive foundations while embracing rather than reducing its inherent complexity.
Trait self-regulation, as the effort to monitor and alter thoughts, feelings, and behavior using feedback from the body (interoception), is important for creativity. But what about the role of state self-regulation in everyday life situations? We investigated the dynamic interactions between state self-regulation, creative idea generation, as well as interoceptive skills in the cardiac domain as a potentially mediating mechanism. In this study, n = 77 participants took part in an ecological momentary assessment for four consecutive days. Participants answered 10 random prompts a day, including items on self-regulation, divergent thinking, and cardiac interoception tasks. Consistent with the preregistered hypotheses, we found that creative performance was higher in situations with higher state self-regulation and higher interoceptive accuracy. Furthermore, state self-regulation was positively associated with interoceptive accuracy. Findings indicate that moments with higher self-regulation may be beneficial for creative thoughts, partly due to better access to one's own body, indicating greater body-mind coherence.
In a fast-changing world, overcoming cognitive rigidity is critical to generating creative solutions to complex challenges. Cognitive flexibility plays a crucial role in creative problem-solving by enabling individuals to shift between thought processes, inhibit usual responses, and explore alternative solutions. However, the measurement of flexibility and originality in international assessments such as PISA remains challenging due to cultural variations. Thus, this manuscript highlights the limitations of traditional measures, which fail to account for cross-cultural differences and highlight that a qualitative perspective is essential to better understand flexibility and rigidity (i.e., fixation effects) in creativity. To address these limitations, we introduce a solution-mapping framework based on Concept-Knowledge theory, which enables the identification of fixation patterns and alternative exploration pathways. This approach provides a structured and scalable method for analyzing creative solutions across different cultural contexts. The C-K mapping tool is one of the instruments used in the OECD's re-scoring project. However, the theoretical framework underlying its development and its relationship to cognitive models of creativity has received little explicit discussion. Clarifying this framework is the primary objective of the present manuscript. This methodology offers new insights into cross-cultural problem-solving strategies, helping to enhance global creativity assessment in educational contexts.
Creativity is increasingly recognized as an essential skill for higher education to prepare students for the workplace. As the world is becoming increasingly globalized with international trades, study abroad programs, and communication technologies, higher education faces the challenge of enhancing creativity skills while making sense of individuals' multicultural experiences (MCEs). Previous studies have highlighted the roles of both MCE and empathy, but few have examined how their interaction may influence creativity. The present study investigated whether empathy moderates the relationship between Taiwanese University students' multicultural experience and two dimensions of creativity: everyday creativity and creative ideation. Path analysis indicated significant moderation effects for everyday creativity (beta = -0.175, p = 0.045) and creative ideation (beta = -0.202, p = 0.021). Simple slope and Johnson-Neyman analyses suggested that empathy was more strongly associated with the two facets of creativity primarily among students with limited multicultural experience. The findings indicated that empathy may function as a potential compensatory resource on which students who lack MCE may rely when engaging in creative behaviors and generating novel ideas. The study contributed to current research on creativity by providing an exploratory perspective on the interaction between social-emotional skills and multicultural experiences in influencing creativity.
Large-scale assessments often involve measurements with missing data where for a given student all items of a construct can be missing by design. In such circumstances, researchers are required to make methodological decisions in secondary analysis. A common approach is the use of plausible value estimation, which is designed for population-level inference and thus works well for comparing groups. However, it is less suited to item- or factor-level inquiries, where alternative methods may be preferable. Multiple imputation and full information maximum likelihood are two such alternatives. These methods handle missing data without relying on the same external conditioning variables used in plausible value generation, and instead operate directly on the observed item-level data structure. To date, they remain underused, possibly because their simplicity contrasts with prevailing preferences for complex modeling. This paper compares two analytical paradigms-imputation-based methods (plausible values, multiple imputation) and likelihood-based methods (full information maximum likelihood)-in the context of the 2022 PISA Creative Thinking assessment. We highlight the usefulness of plausible values for population-level comparison, multiple imputation when auxiliary information can be justifiably varied, and full information maximum likelihood for confirmatory modeling. We encourage practitioners to favor simpler approaches, as these often yield comparable results while improving transparency.
How constraints affect individuals' creative potential interests many scientific fields. Education, especially after 2000, actively supports creativity promotion, with creativity occupying a prominent place in Physical Education (PE) curricula of many countries. However, the relationship between research and practice on creativity remains challenging to bridge. While teachers appear willing to promote creativity, they lack knowledge or training on effective implementation. This paper develops a scientifically based approach to promoting creativity in PE, particularly in fundamental movement skills, by transferring the Integrated Constraints in Creativity (IConIC) model to motor contexts and incorporating empirical data from motor creativity and divergent thinking research. The Motor Creativity Instructional Constraints (MOCIN) Framework provides a visual representation of instructional constraints conditions, serving as a reference tool for structuring, applying, or testing constraint-based instructional conditions for creativity promotion through fundamental movement skills. By incorporating empirical evidence from motor and cognitive creativity research, which share common pathways and mechanisms, a comprehensive Principles' Index for creativity promotion through movement exploration is synthesized. The Index provides instructional guidance for PE and movement professionals in motor creativity promotion. This work also highlights new research directions in motor creativity assessment and intervention development, introducing the concept of instructional constraints neutrality for unbiased assessment.
The assessment of creative achievement (CA) can be cumbersome as participants are typically asked to respond to long lists of possible accomplishments that may still miss their very specific achievements. A bottom-up alternative is to let participants openly report their most significant CAs, which, however, involves more complex scoring such as via human ratings. In this study, we investigated whether language models (LMs) can provide an efficient and valid scoring of such open-ended responses. Across two data sets, participants described their three most significant CAs. These responses were rated by human judges and by three LMs (Llama 3.1-8B, Llama 3.3-70B, GPT-4o) using zero-shot prompting. Correlations between human and LM ratings were consistently high (r = 0.53-0.80), and criterion validity evidence of LM-based scores was largely on par with rater-based scores. In addition, we examined zero-shot domain classification of CAs into nine creative domains (e.g., music, visual arts). Classification accuracy was 62.3% overall; closer inspection suggested that automated classification has the potential to unveil conceptual overlaps between domains and to identify CAs involving multiple domains. Taken together, automated scoring of CA via LMs represents a promising and efficient alternative to traditional CA measures by approximating human ratings and providing useful domain classifications.
This article presents an exploratory study on creativity, grounded in the premise that technologies enable individuals to externalize cognitive abilities, emotions, intentions, and actions. As both catalysts and outcomes of creative activity, technologies also serve as mediums for learning, artistic production, and communication. The qualitative study investigates how the creative process evolves in response to shifting tools, with a particular focus on the generative AI platform Midjourney. Drawing on interviews and small-scale image production, it explores human-computer collaboration in the arts through the experiences of two artists and Art Therapy students at Universit & eacute; Paris Cit & eacute;. The findings raise important questions about the central role of human agency at both the initial (preparation) and final (verification) stages of the creative process, while suggesting that AI may exert greater influence during the intermediate phases-Incubation and illumination. They also indicate that the potential of generative AI to foster creativity depends on a constellation of individual and contextual factors, which may either support or hinder its contribution to the creative process.
Transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM) has been employed for cognitive enhancement in healthy individuals. This study aimed to investigate the effects of tPBM applied bilaterally over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on convergent thinking (CT), divergent thinking (DT), and the Stroop test. Additionally, we explored whether Stroop performance mediates the effect of tPBM on creativity. In this double-blind, between-subjects study, 56 healthy participants were randomly assigned to either the tPBM or sham group. tPBM was administered using near-infrared light (810 nm, 40 Hz; 50% duty cycle) over the right and left DLPFC for 20 min. Creativity was assessed at baseline and during stimulation using the Unusual Uses (UU) and Picture Completion (PC) for DT, and the Remote Associates Test (RAT) for CT, and the Stroop test. ANCOVA, controlling for baseline scores, revealed that the tPBM group scored significantly higher than the sham group on the RAT (F = 6.15, p = 0.016) and Stroop (F = 4.89, p = 0.031). However, no significant differences were observed for DT. The findings suggest that tPBM may be effective in enhancing CT, but its effect does not appear to be mediated by improvements in Stroop performance. These results indicate that tPBM could be a promising tool for cognitive enhancement in the healthy population.
The PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Assessment measures the ability to generate diverse ideas, that is, flexibility. However, since test-takers only provide up to three responses, scoring flexibility is challenging. Employed scoring systems rely on dimensions such as linguistic diversity or category systems to quantify how dissimilar a test-taker's responses are. In this work, I will revisit the flexibility scoring in the PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Assessment from the perspective of general diversity measure frameworks, which distinguish variety, balance, and disparity, in the hope of identifying ways to gain more information on test-takers' performances. An empirical illustration demonstrates the potential of diversity scores to better differentiate between different response patterns.
This study developed and validated a parent-report scale to assess preschoolers' everyday creativity in two samples from urban areas of eastern China. In Study 1, 551 parents (children's Mage = 4.76 years, SD = 1.21; 245 girls) of preschoolers completed the Young Children's Inventory of Creative Activities (YCICA). Item analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and reliability testing supported the scale's structure and internal consistency. Study 2 involved 128 preschoolers (Mage = 4.40 years; 59 girls) and their parents from a different region. Parents completed the YCICA and a creative personality scale, while children completed tasks assessing verbal intelligence, divergent thinking, and executive function. Structural equation modeling indicated that creative personality and divergent thinking were significant predictors of everyday creative activities, whereas verbal intelligence and executive function were not significant predictors. These findings suggest that the YCICA is a psychometrically supported tool for assessing and monitoring preschoolers' creativity and may inform educational practice.
This study examined how emotional shifts elicited by virtual environments (VEs) affect individuals' creativity. With the growing use of VEs in educational and interactive settings, understanding their emotional impact on creativity is timely and critical, particularly from a developmental perspective, as emotion regulation and creative potential undergo changes across developmental stages. Studying both adults and children may help identify sensitive periods for fostering creativity through emotional engagement. Adults (N = 106) and children aged seven to nine (N = 121) participated in an online study. Each participant experienced two VEs: a "neutral" control environment and one of two "emotional" environments designed to elicit distinct emotional states. After each VE, participants reported their emotional states and completed a standard creative thinking task. Emotional shifts between the two VEs were analyzed to assess their effects on the subsequent creative thinking task. Results revealed that both adults and children reacted in similar emotional directions to the relevant "emotional" environments. Furthermore, decreases in valence were associated with increases in originality across both age groups. These findings highlight the nuanced, and somewhat counterintuitive role of negative emotional shifts in fostering creative thinking and suggest that such mechanisms may operate similarly in both children and adults.
The media we consume may shape our cognition, emotion, and behavior. While violent media effects on aggression have been studied extensively, one popular media genre has escaped scrutiny until now: true crime, featuring real stories of assault, murder, or serial killings. We investigated the idea that the manifold examples of real human violence in true crime may be linked to people's capacity for malevolent creativity-generating creative ideas for harming others. Yet, in two cross-sectional studies, we found only weak to contradictory evidence for this idea. Using multiple regression models, in Study 1 (n = 160), true crime consumption was only linked to higher fluency on a malevolent creativity test (MCT) in individuals high in trait aggression. In Study 2 (n = 307), links of true crime consumption with malevolent creativity were eclipsed by links to fictional horror, other media preference, and depressive affect. Moreover, both studies found that high true crime consumption seemed to mitigate the link between general creativity and malevolent originality. Although further experimental and longitudinal research is needed, true crime may potentially inhibit consumers from applying their creative potential to uniquely harming others, which may suggest prosocial and empathic motives in true crime consumption.
The Wallas four-stages and Campbell's two-stage Blind-Variation and Selective-Retention (BVSR) represent two classic stage conceptions of creative thought. However, these two stage conceptions can be integrated by taking advantage of a quantitative definition of personal creativity, which is taken as the multiplicative product of originality, utility, and surprise. The three parameters that underlie these criteria (initial probability, final utility, and prior knowledge of that utility) can then form the basis for an eightfold typology of variations, four "blind" and four "sighted." These variations in ideas or responses are then incorporated into the Wallas stages of Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification. The resulting integration has important implications for understanding individual creativity. For example, the quantitative analysis predicts that the occurrence of the Incubation stage is positively correlated with the personal creativity of the outcome.
