Why do creative ideas and solutions to unresolved problems benefit from taking a break? The idea of unconscious work as an explanation is so appealing that even after reading this paper, which states clearly that unconscious work is a fantasy based on no clear theory and no clear empirical evidence, some readers will claim that we are saying the…

Creativity is increasingly seen as a key human capability that can be deliberately developed. Correspondently, a proliferation of tools, techniques, and methods are available in the academic and popular literatures. Creative problem-solving (CPS) is one framework among these, and has a 70-year history of research and development. This essay…

This study explores how exposure to creative coursework during one's education can influence a variety of educational, career, and community involvement outcomes for arts alumni. Data were drawn from over 40,000 undergraduate-level arts alumni from the 2015, 2016, and 2017 administrations of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). A…

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…

The OECD's PISA program assesses 15-year-old students globally in key competencies every 3 years, providing influential data on education quality and spurring policy debates. In the latest cycle, the innovation domain focused on creative thinking, assessing over 140,000 students across 60+ countries, in the largest study of adolescent creativity…

Understanding the impacts of digital media such as video games is critical for scholarship during the digital transformation. While the literature on the effects of video games continues to grow, there is little work on positive effects, including creativity, either as an outcome from or process within games. Video games are a media type that…

In recognition of the capability of text-mining models to quantify aspects of language use, some creativity researchers have adopted text-mining models as a mechanism to objectively and efficiently score the Originality of open-ended responses to verbal divergent thinking tasks. With the increasing use of text-mining models in divergent thinking…

Recent evidence suggests that constraints can facilitate creative thinking rather than hinder it. This research tested how individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) affect the creativity of ideas generated under conditions of low and high constraint. Participants generated short sentences with either low or high constraints placed on…

Fostering students' mathematical creativity is important for their understanding and success in mathematics courses as well as their persistence in STEM, but it necessitates intentional instructional actions, such as designing and implementing tasks that have the potential to foster creativity. As teaching innovation requires support for…

Emergency situations are generally described as combining both threat and time pressure. Creative solutions to deal with such situations are important. The present studies (N[subscript total] = 1190) investigated how people are able to produce creative solutions in an emergency. Our first study was correlational, and assessed individual creativity…

Despite an established body of research characterizing how creative individuals explore their "external" world, relatively little is known about how such individuals navigate their "inner mental life", especially in unstructured contexts such as periods of awake rest. Across two studies, the present manuscript tested the…

Creativity has an important role in many scientific processes which constitute a large and complex structure. It is difficult to identify and measure. Students' creativity can be enhanced through specific education programs. The aim of this study was to develop a science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics (STEAM) design process program for…

The idea of a "creativity crisis" is widely accepted in the creativity and education literature. Its popular interpretation as a decline in creativity across generations originates from Kim's (2011) influential analysis of the re-norming data in the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The present work offers a critical review and…

In this study, flow, both dispositional and state, and movement-based creative processing were investigated in a group of pre-professional and professional dancers (N = 288) who were involved in the creation, rehearsal, and performance of a new dance work(s). Dance is both movement-based and group-based. The Experience of Creativity Questionnaire…

Psychologist J. P. Guildford issued a challenge to study creativity nearly 70 years ago. How well have we done and what might the next steps be in our endeavors to understand creativity? The field of creativity research has examined the internal thinking process of creativity, largely through measures of divergent thinking and remote associates.…