Research on creativity and motivation has tended to focus on the core split between intrinsic motivation (e.g., passion and personal growth) and extrinsic motivation (e.g., duty and extrinsic rewards). Building on recent efforts to examine the nuances and boundaries of this dichotomy, we asked university students to answer open-ended questions about their motives for engaging in general creative activities and creative writing. They also completed a set of measures assessing creative agency, creativity motivation, creative activities and achievements, and literary abilities. The qualitative analysis of responses revealed a set of 12 motives for engaging in creative activities that was consistent across general and writing domains (analytical sample: N = 510): Requirement, Fun, Happiness & Passion, Coping with Stress, Challenge & Growth, Expression, Connection with Others, External Self, Boredom, Thinking & Problem Solving, Inspiration, and Prosocial. We also examined the prevalence of creativity motives, their co-occurrences, and motivation profiles across general and writing domains. Three distinct motivation profiles were identified for general creative activities (“Affective–Social,” “Pragmatic Problem Solving,” and “Achievement–Growth”), whereas the two profiles identified for creative writing closely mirrored the intrinsic–extrinsic dichotomy. In addition, we found several creativity-related attributes and sociodemographic factors that predicted the reporting of different creative motives. Overall, our results emphasize the multiplicity of motives for engaging in creative activities and point to the need for future research examining their roles in creative behavior and the dynamic processes underlying creativity.

This study introduces a methodologically novel approach to creativity research by simultaneously exploring creative production, creative consumption, and creative practice within a unified research design. This integration allows for the first systematic analysis of the patterns of creative engagement across these three dimensions, revealing how they co-occur and interact across multiple domains within a university student sample. Participants reported on their creative achievements, time investment, aspirations, comparison standards, and audience orientations across 11 creative domains. Correlation and logistic regression analyses revealed broadly consistent evidence of within-domain alignment: individuals who produced something creative in a given domain were generally more likely to consume creative content from that domain. Domains such as literature, visual arts, and film/video & TV showed stronger cross-domain connections, whereas science and sports were more domain-bound. Creative consumption exhibited a more generalized structure, indicating stronger interrelationships among domains, while creative production clustered into smaller, domain-specific groupings. Engagement in creative practice was positively associated with both production and consumption within domains, underscoring the possible interdependence of these forms of participation. Breadth of creative production and consumption showed limited predictive potential with respect to self-reported creative achievements. Analyses of preference alignments indicated slightly higher coherence in production than in consumption, suggesting that creative production may involve more deliberate and integrated preference structures. Together, these findings illustrate the tight interrelation of creative production, creative consumption, and creative practice as dimensions of creative engagement. This integrative approach broadens the conceptual and empirical scope of creativity research beyond its traditional production-centric focus.

The same dataset can be analysed in different justifiable ways to answer the same research question, potentially challenging the robustness of empirical science1-3. In this crowd initiative, we investigated the degree to which research findings in the social and behavioural sciences are contingent on analysts' choices. We examined a stratified random sample of 100 studies published between 2009 and 2018, in which, for one claim per study, at least five reanalysts independently reanalysed the original data. The statistical appropriateness of the reanalyses was assessed in peer evaluations, and the robustness indicators were inspected along a range of research characteristics and study designs. We found that 34% of the independent reanalyses yielded the same result (within a tolerance region of ±0.05 Cohen's d) as the original report; with a four times broader tolerance region, this indicator increased to 57%. Of the reanalyses conducted, 74% reached the same conclusion as the original investigation, 24% yielded no effects or inconclusive results and 2% reported the opposite effect. This exploratory study indicates that the common single-path analyses in social and behavioural research should not be simply assumed to be robust to alternative analyses4. Therefore, we recommend the development and use of practices to explore and communicate this neglected source of uncertainty.

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.

Most previous studies on creativity and motivation looked into the effects of intrinsic andextrinsic motivations on creativity. However, there have been newer motivation approachesrelated to work orientation and needs that may offer a chance to gain new insight into howpeople think about creativity. The present study used a hypothetical hiring scenario to assesslayperson beliefs about creativity, conscientiousness, intelligence, and the likelihood of hiringpotential candidates who endorsed one of six work orientations (Job, Career, Calling, Kinship,Passion, and Autonomy). In addition, the study accounted for potential domain effects bydifferentiating between art- and business-related hiring contexts. Data were gathered among279 university students (62% females). The results suggested that hiring likelihood andratings of a hypothetical employee’s intelligence and conscientiousness were more associatedwith the orientations of Calling, Career, and Passion; however, creativity was moreassociated with Autonomy. Job orientation received the lowest ratings for all rated qualities.The findings were mostly consistent across domains of arts and business. Nonetheless, therelationship between hiring probability and hypothetical employees’ creativity andintelligence did vary by domain. We discuss the implications of the results and outlinefruitful directions for future research

The Short Scale of Creative Self (SSCS) is a creativity measure that differentiates between creative personal identity (CPI) and creative self-efficacy (CSE). It has been applied in many research contexts and adopted for use in many languages. Although its factor structure is usually interpreted as favoring an independent clusters two-factor CFA model, there were surprisingly few efforts to understand the nature of the consistently high correlation between the factors of CPI and CSE. The present study sought to examine the extent to which the high overlap between CPI and CSE factors in the SSCS may be attributed to overlooked issues of structural validity. The analyses were based on the Italian SSCS. The factor analysis of multiple datasets collected on the samples of Italian adolescents (N = 1,642) and adults (N = 951) revealed multiple issues with local model fit for CSE items and challenged the applicability of the independent clusters two-factor CFA model to Italian SSCS. Two alternative, yet complementary, factor models are proposed for the Italian SSCS. We define generalizability limits of our findings, discuss the measurement implications, and outline directions for future psychometric evaluations of SSCS.

Researchers and educators interested in creative writing need a reliable and efficient tool to score the creativity of narratives, such as short stories. Typically, human raters manually assess narrative creativity, but such subjective scoring is limited by labor costs and rater disagreement. Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable success on creativity tasks, yet they have not been applied to scoring narratives, including multilingual stories. In the present study, we aimed to test whether narrative originality-a component of creativity-could be automatically scored by LLMs, further evaluating whether a single LLM could predict human originality ratings across multiple languages. We trained three different LLMs to predict the originality of short stories written in 11 languages. Our first monolingual model, trained only on English stories, robustly predicted human originality ratings (r = .81). This same model-trained and tested on multilingual stories translated into English-strongly predicted originality ratings of multilingual narratives (r >= .73). Finally, a multilingual model trained on the same stories, in their original language, reliably predicted human originality scores across all languages (r >= .72). We thus demonstrate that LLMs can successfully score narrative creativity in 11 different languages, surpassing the performance of the best previous automated scoring techniques (e.g., semantic distance). This work represents the first effective, accessible, and reliable solution for the automated scoring of creativity in multilingual narratives.

Psychological studies on close relationships have often overlooked cultural diversity, dynamic processes, and potentially universal principles that shape intimate partnerships. To address the limited generalizability of previous research and advance our understanding of romantic love experiences, mate preferences, and physical attractiveness, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural survey study on these topics. A total of 404 researchers collected data in 45 languages from April to August 2021, involving 117,293 participants from 175 countries. Aside from standard demographic questions, the survey included valuable information on variables relevant to romantic relationships: intimate, passionate, and committed love within romantic relationships, physical-attractiveness enhancing behaviors, gender equality endorsement, collectivistic attitudes, personal history of pathogenic diseases, relationship quality, jealousy, personal involvement in sexual and/or emotional infidelity, relational mobility, mate preferences, and acceptance of sugar relationships. The resulting dataset provides a rich resource for investigating patterns within, and associations across, a broad range of variables relevant to romantic relationships, with extensive opportunities to analyze individual experiences worldwide.

The current study investigates attitudes toward one form of sex for resources: the so-called sugar relationships, which often involve exchanges of resources for sex and/or companionship. The present study examined associations among attitudes toward sugar relationships and relevant variables (e.g., sex, sociosexuality, gender inequality, parasitic exposure) in 69,924 participants across 87 countries. Two self-report measures of Acceptance of Sugar Relationships (ASR) developed for younger companion providers (ASR-YWMS) and older resource providers (ASR-OMWS) were translated into 37 languages. We tested cross-sex and cross-linguistic construct equivalence, cross-cultural invariance in sex differences, and the importance of the hypothetical predictors of ASR. Both measures showed adequate psychometric properties in all languages (except the Persian version of ASR-YWMS). Results partially supported our hypotheses and were consistent with previous theoretical considerations and empirical evidence on human mating. For example, at the individual level, sociosexual orientation, traditional gender roles, and pathogen prevalence were significant predictors of both ASR-YWMS and ASR-OMWS. At the country level, gender inequality and parasite stress positively predicted the ASR-YWMS. However, being a woman negatively predicted the ASR-OMWS, but positively predicted the ASR-YWMS. At country-level, ingroup favoritism and parasite stress positively predicted the ASR-OMWS. Furthermore, significant cross-subregional differences were found in the openness to sugar relationships (both ASR-YWMS and ASR-OMWS scores) across subregions. Finally, significant differences were found between ASR-YWMS and ASR-OMWS when compared in each subregion. The ASR-YWMS was significantly higher than the ASR-OMWS in all subregions, except for Northern Africa and Western Asia.

The so-called cross-modal correspondence effect is a special case of multisensory integration; it manifests as faster and more accurate responses to simultaneously presented stimuli of different modalities that are congruent in certain features (e.g., high-pitch sound - high spatial location), as opposed to incongruent ones. This study assessed the extent to which individual emotional characteristics - both transient (induced emotional states) and stable (cognitive strategies of emotional regulation) - could influence the mechanisms of this effect. We tested whether (1) specific psychophysiological variables (as biomarkers of induced emotional states) could predict the magnitude of the cross-modal (audiovisual) correspondence effect and (2) this magnitude could be related to manifestation of various emotion regulation strategies. Participants (N = 27) filled out an emotion regulation questionnaire and watched videos invoking positive, negative, or neutral emotional states before completing the main task, in which they were presented with tones of lower and higher frequency (1000 and 2000 Hz) and written words that differed in emotional valence and were associated with different parts of vertical space. Their task was to identify the pitch (low/high) of the presented sound. To assess participants' emotional states psychophysiologically, electrical skin conductance and photoplethysmogram were recorded continuously throughout the experiment. Twoway mixed ANOVA and linear regression were used for data analysis. We found that psychophysiological indices diverged depending on the intended valence (negative/positive) of emotional videos; however, they could not predict the magnitude of the cross-modal correspondence effect. Positive refocusing and rumination strategies predicted the dynamics of psychophysiological indicators, whilst none of emotion regulation strategies modulated the magnitude of the cross-modal correspondence effect. The present results should be taken with due caution in light of potential type II errors and are open to alternative interpretations, which should be addressed in future research.

Cross-modal correspondence effect (i.e., facilitated processing of congruent stimuli from different modalities) occurs not only when simple multi-modal sensory stimuli are processed together, but also during their simultaneous processing with words with emotional and spatial connotations. We tested a hypothesis that the magnitude of cross-modal correspondence effect, arising from concurrent processing of basic sensory and verbal stimuli, is differentially modulated by individual’s emotional state. Thirty-six volunteers (26 females, 18–34 years old) watched videos that evoked positive, negative, or neutral emotional states. This was followed by the main task in which they were presented with sounds of different pitch (low: 1000 Hz; high: 2000 Hz) simultaneously with words that differed in their emotional valence and were associated with different parts of space (low/high). The participant’s task was to identify the pitch (low/high) of the non-verbal sound stimuli. Two-way mixed ANOVA and subsequent pairwise comparisons (Student's t-test for dependent samples) were used to compare both mean reaction times and estimated parameters of the ex-Gaussian distribution. The results showed that the audiovisual correspondence effect became manifested in faster responses to congruent stimulus combinations compared with non-congruent ones (t(35) = -3.20, p = .005, dz = -0.53, 95% CI [-0.89, -0.18]). However, we did not find a large size effect of the induced emotional state on the magnitude of this correspondence effect (F(4, 68) = 0.49, p = 0.744, = .001). This result may be explained either by robustness of cross-modal correspondence effect and its resilience to emotional influence or by specific limitations of present study design.

Love is a phenomenon that occurs across the world and affects many aspects of human life, including the choice of, and process of bonding with, a romantic partner. Thus, developing a reliable and valid measure of love experiences is crucial. One of the most popular tools to quantify love is Sternberg’s 45-item Triangular Love Scale (TLS-45), which measures three love components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. However, our literature review reveals that most studies (64%) use a broad variety of shortened versions of the TLS-45. Here, aiming to achieve scientific consensus and improve the reliability, comparability, and generalizability of results across studies, we developed a short version of the scale—the TLS-15—comprised of 15 items with 5-point, rather than 9-point, response scales. In Study 1 ( N = 7,332), we re-analyzed secondary data from a large-scale multinational study that validated the original TLS-45 to establish whether the scale could be truncated. In Study 2 ( N = 307), we provided evidence for the three-factor structure of the TLS-15 and its reliability. Study 3 ( N = 413) confirmed convergent validity and test–retest stability of the TLS-15. Study 4 ( N = 60,311) presented a large-scale validation across 37 linguistic versions of the TLS-15 on a cross-cultural sample spanning every continent of the globe. The overall results provide support for the reliability, validity, and cross-cultural invariance of the TLS-15, which can be used as a measure of love components—either separately or jointly as a three-factor measure.

The present study aimed to integrate evidence on the relationship among divergent thinking (DT), broad retrieval ability (Gr), and processing speed (Gs) with a three-level meta-analytic approach. The analysis was conducted on 536 effect sizes obtained from 41 studies with an overall sample of 9055 participants. Results indicated moderate mean correlations for both the DT–Gr (r = .48, 95% CI: [.40, .56]) and the DT–Gs relationship (r = .33, 95% CI: [.21, .43]). Notably, the correlation between DT and Gr was significantly higher than between DT and Gs, and the former remained significant even after controlling for the Gr–Gs correlation (r = .36, 95% CI: [.27, .46]). Moderation analyses revealed that the DT–Gr link was moderated by the modality of DT tests, whereas the DT–Gs link was moderated by the modality of DT tests and type of DT instruction. Overall, these findings support the claim on the essential role of broad retrieval ability and processing speed in creative idea production.

Creativity research commonly involves recruiting human raters to judge the originality of responses to divergent thinking tasks, such as the alternate uses task (AUT). These manual scoring practices have benefited the field, but they also have limitations, including labor-intensiveness and subjectivity, which can adversely impact the reliability and validity of assessments. To address these challenges, researchers are increasingly employing automatic scoring approaches, such as distributional models of semantic distance. However, semantic distance has primarily been studied in English-speaking samples, with very little research in the many other languages of the world. In a multilab study (N = 6,522 participants), we aimed to validate semantic distance on the AUT in 12 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. We gathered AUT responses and human creativity ratings (N = 107,672 responses), as well as criterion measures for validation (e.g., creative achievement). We compared two deep learning-based semantic models-multilingual bidirectional encoder representations from transformers and cross-lingual language model RoBERTa-to compute semantic distance and validate this automated metric with human ratings and criterion measures. We found that the top-performing model for each language correlated positively with human creativity ratings, with correlations ranging from medium to large across languages. Regarding criterion validity, semantic distance showed small-to-moderate effect sizes (comparable to human ratings) for openness, creative behavior/achievement, and creative self-concept. We provide open access to our multilingual dataset for future algorithmic development, along with Python code to compute semantic distance in 12 languages.

According to the embodied cognition view, abstract concepts, including emotional ones, are grounded in our sensorimotor experience of the physical environment. For example, emotionally positive words (happiness) are associated with the upper part of vertical space, whereas the nega-tive ones (desperation) are linked with the lower parts of physical space. Interactions between different represen-tational domains are expressed, among others, in the so-called cross-modal corre-spondence effect - facilitation of stimulus processing in one modality by congruent aspects of information presented in anoth-er modality (e.g., high-pitch sound - high vertical location). The present study attempted, for the first time, to induce this effect using auditory stimuli of varied pitch and emotional words with defined spatial connotations. Thirty-six volun-teers (26 women, 18-34 years old) were simultaneously presented with 1000 or 2000 Hz tones and words of varied emo-tional valence that had been rated for their spatial associations in vertically ori-ented space. The participants' task was to identify the pitch of the presented tone as high or low. The analysis of reaction times using a linear mixed-effects model demon-strated statistically significant differences between congruent (e.g., emotionally pos-itive word - high tone) and noncongru-ent conditions, as well as between congru-ent and neutral conditions. The effect of cross-modal correspondence was also evaluated for each stimulus word as well as for high and low tones separately, showing its specificity to high-pitch sounds and a subset of words. In sum, the results showed a cross-modal correspon-dence effect that spans across different levels of cognitive processing: from per-ceptual analysis of auditory signals to ver-bal semantic processing of complex abstract ideas. Importantly, we also present a set of Russian-language nouns rated for their spatial and emotional properties that can be used in future psycho-and neurolinguistic studies on embodied semantics.

Теория воплощенного познания предполагает укоренение абстрактных, в том числе эмоциональных, концептов в сенсомоторном взаимодействии с физической средой. Так, верхняя область пространства ассоциируется с положительными переживаниями, а нижняя — с отрицательными. Взаимодействие между различными доменами репрезентаций выражается в том числе в эффекте кросс-модального соответствия — фасилитации восприятия в одной модальности конгруэнтными аспектами стимулов в другой. Нами была впервые предпринята попытка вызвать данный эффект с помощью аудиальных стимулов различной высоты и вербальных стимулов, обозначающих эмоциональные состояния и имеющих соответствующие пространственные коннотации. В основной части исследования приняли участие 36 добровольцев, которым в ходе эксперимента одновременно предъявлялись аудиальные (тональные посылки 1000 и 2000 Гц) и вербальные (слова, различающиеся по эмоциональной валентности и соотносимые с различными частями пространственного поля) стимулы. Задача респондентов заключалась в идентификации высоты (низкая/высокая) предъявленного тона. Анализ различий во времени реакции с помощью линейных смешанных моделей показал наличие статистически значимых различий между конгруэнтным (например, эмоционально положительное слово — высокий тон) и неконгруэнтным, а также конгруэнтным и контрольным условиями. Помимо этого было оценено наличие эффекта кросс-модального соответствия для каждого стимульного слова и для обоих звуков по отдельности, что показало его наибольшую выраженность для высокого тона и для части вербальных стимулов. Таким образом, был обнаружен эффект кросс-модального соответствия, возникающий при когнитивной обработке стимулов разной модальности, осуществляемой за счет механизмов разного уровня сложности: от перцептивного анализа аудиальных сигналов до выделения семантики лексических единиц, обозначающих абстрактные идеи. Отдельным результатом работы стало создание базы данных вербальных стимулов с заданными эмоциональными и пространственными параметрами, которые могут быть использованы в широком круге психо- и нейролингвистических исследований.

Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS) is a self-report of creative behavior in five distinct domains. The present study aims to translate K-DOCS into Russian and evaluate its psychometric properties. The psychometric analysis was performed on a sample of adults recruited through Yandex Toloka (N = 1011; Mage = 35.94, SDage = 10.95) from various regions of Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the model with five correlated factors showed the best fit to empirical data. All factors demonstrated good internal consistency and moderate test-retest reliability. The correlation and hierarchical regression analyses for K-DOCS factors, creative achievements by CBI (Creative Behavior Inventory), and personality traits by BFI–2 (Big Five Inventory – 2) yielded evidence for an adequate level of convergent and discriminant validity. We also examined differences across K-DOCS factors among occupations defined by Holland’s typology and attempted to investigate K-DOCS measurement invariance across gender. As a result, we obtained evidence supporting the construct validity of K-DOCS and established its partial measurement invariance across gender. The current study shows that Russian K-DOCS has satisfactory psychometric properties and can serve as a trusted guide into various manifestations of humans’ creative behavior.

Background: Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is a significant socio-biological problem due to its wide prevalence and negative outcomes. In the current study, we aimed to develop an autism scale for early and accurate differentiation of 3- to 4-year-olds at risk for ASD since there is no systematic monitoring of young children in Russia yet. Methods: The total sample (N = 324) included 116 children with ASD, 131 children without ASD (healthy controls), and 77 children with developmental delay (DD). An online survey of specialists working with children was conducted based on a specially designed autism questionnaire consisting of 85 multiple-choice tasks distributed across 12 domains. Initially, each child was assessed by 434 items using a dichotomous scale (0 = no, 1 = yes). Factor and discriminant analyses were performed to identify a compact set of subscales that most accurately and with sufficient reliability predicted whether a child belongs to the ASD group. Results: As a result, four subscales were obtained: Sensorics, Emotions, Hyperactivity, and Communication. The high discriminability of the subscales in distinguishing the ASD group from the non-ASD group was revealed (accuracy 85.5–87.0%). Overall, the obtained subscales meet psychometric requirements and allow for creating an online screening system for wide application.