Results from Multiple Forms of Investigation into

Conventionality and Structure in the Creative Process

Investigator: David Armstrong

Advisors:

Don Morgenson (WLU), Colin Lee (WLU),

John Jamieson (LU), Brian O’Connor (LU),

Michael Stones (LU)

Assistance:

Stephanie Lind (UBC), Chris Mushquash (Dalhousie)

• The common conception seems to be that structure limits creativity.

• For example, schools for the gifted can have very loose structures in their activities, and marketing firms often engage in unconstrained brainstorming of ideas.

• Postmodernism has broken all usual conceptions in the arts, yet artists continue to use neo-classical forms or use seemingly nonsensical boundaries for their work (e.g. writing each chapter of a novel excluding a chosen vowel throughout).

• Selected results from a series of investigations are presented bearing on the effect of structure in the creative process

Correlates of Musical Structure

• This study was designed to examine the effects of tonality on creative processes and products in music making.

• Tonality is the extent to which a melody will come back to a home base and the tension within the melody and chord progressions that make this home base sound relaxed.

• Meyer1 believes that the reason atonal music does not appeal to a large number of listeners is that it lacks the unifying harmonic attributes that provide the redundancy necessary for meaningful perception (i.e. the music will always come back to this tonal centre).

• This is what Lee referred to as “pulling out the rug of tonality from a client, leaving them with nothing to fall back on but their own creativity”2

1. 1967, as cited in Radocy, R., & Boyle, J. (1988). Psychological foundations of musical behavior (2nd ed.). Springfield, IL: Thomas Books.

2. Lee, C. A. (2000, March). Whole-tone scale and atonality as a musical resource. Lecture given at Wilfrid Laurier University,

Waterloo, Ontario.

• 5 participants from Intro Psychology, 3 from fourth-year atonal music history course to ensure wide range (Wilfrid Laurier University)

• Participant and Research Assistant freely improvise after warm-up, with Research Assistant initiating tonal/atonal condition (Research Assistant playing piano, Participant playing Orff Metalophone). After each five-minute improvisation (a tonal and an atonal improvisation counterbalanced across participants), the researcher interviewed the participant about the experience.

• In the second session the audiotape of the original session was played for the participant, and they were asked questions about the experience and the music itself again.

• Music was commented on by research assitant and graduate-level musicologist specializing in 20th century music. Transcripts of interviews were subject to qualitative thematic analysis. Conclusions were checked with participants for comment.

Methods: Study 1

Lack of structure enhancing creativity?

• Participants reported that they had more options in the atonal improvisation, and thus reported feeling more creative. – “I felt [the atonal improvisation] was slightly more creative…I felt more

free to do things because I wasn’t restricted to [just] the white keys. So I felt more free that I could do more of what I wanted to do – sort of like I had more space” (P3).

– “[The tonal improvisation] felt like a very rigid box” (P7).– “…just using different beats, different keys, I didn’t stick in one area, I

kinda tried to incorporate everything [in the atonal improvisation]” (P4).– “I would have liked it [the tonal improvisation] to be maybe more creative

in the sense of…just because the only things that did work were the completely tonal ones, just like the C G C E and whatever and I was getting upset that nothing else really sounded good” (P9).

– “I guess because so much of [the music in the atonal improvisation] sounds so unfamiliar that when we found something, you know, something that we were kind of playing together with, there’s more of a tendency to stick with that and therefore develop that, develop one idea. It seemed more cohesive to me, than the other one” (P7).

Role of individual differences

• Appraisal of atonal improvisation seemed to vary person’s expectations of how to structure. Possible that if structure of the medium did not match the expectant structure, there was a lower evaluation of the product.– “I would definitely say [laughing], I'm quite distraught now that I've come

here [after the atonal improvisation]. I'm going to go home feeling really low about myself, and I probably, was just thinking about writing my [old music] teacher a letter and going, 'Oh my goodness, what was I...[laughing]…you should see me now” (P6).

– “I definatly felt a lot more confident [in the tonal improvisation] about what I could do so that I it would be…. instead of sort of just having a whole bunch of stuff I don't know and what sounds good with what and being hesitant to play” (P6).

– When reviewing tape: (So why are you laughing right there?) I don’t know…it doesn’t sound very good. I guess maybe I’m stuck, I don’t know, just where to go from there. It doesn’t sound very musical. This one sounds a lot worse then the first one [the tonal improvisation]. Just music wise, I guess. (Does it represent any moods?) It just sounds like chaos, just kind of tinkering around, it doesn’t sound like – there’s not very much melody or anything to it (P5).

Discussion: Study 1

• Neither medium structure or participant’s experience with atonal music was perfectly related with personal or observer rated creativity

• The effects of medium structure on personal evaluation of creative product interact with individual differences

• Rather than the medium or experience, examine whether there a relationship between openness to new ideas and creativity.

Personality and Creativity• Openness to experience (being unconventional and having aesthetic

and intellectual interests) has been linked to self- and observer-rated and ideation fluency tests1,2,3

• Little research into whether NEO personality traits are associated with quality of creative solutions (novelty, practicality)

• How does having unconventional expectations/attitudes relate to what or how a person is creative?

• Evaluate using creative problem solving as a measure of creative achievement– Creative thought involves not only the generation of alternative

solutions but also the identification of viable, new, alternative solutions, therefore all creative thought represents a form of creative problem solving4

1. McCrae, R. R. (1987). Creativity, divergent thinking, and openness to experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 1258-1265.

2. George, J. M., & Zhou, J. (2001). When openness to experience and conscientiousness are related to creative behaviour: An interactional approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 513-524.

3. King, L. A., McKee Walker, L., & Broyles, S. J. (1996). Creativity and the five-factor model. Journal of Research and Personality, 30, 189-203.

4. Mumford, M. D., Baughman, W. A., & Sager, C. E. (2003). Picking the right material: Cognitive processing skills and their role in creative thought. In M. A. Runco (Ed.) Critical creative processes (pp. 19-68). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press

Methods: Study 2• 114 Lakehead University undergraduate students, 80 female and 34 male

participants (median years of age = 22) completed the questionnaires • Creative accomplishment was measured through solving a creative problem

(CPS) drawn from Redmond and colleagues1 in which subjects are asked to develop an advertising campaign for a new product. Using anchored rating scales, judges were asked to rate each question on the – quality (CPS Quality) and – originality (CPS Originality) of the response – CPS Quality and CPS Originality were then summed to provide the overall score,

CPS Total. • Participants also completed the NEO-FFI, a self-report measure of

personality, consisting of fifty questions with five subscales, three of which are reported here: – Neuroticism describes the extent to which individuals rate themselves as having

anxious and depressive feelings, and self-blame. – Extraversion is the extent to which individuals rate themselves as experiencing

positive affect, being sociable and active. – Openness to experience describes the extent to which individuals rate

themselves as being unconventional and having aesthetic and intellectual interests2

1. Redmond, M. R., Mumford, M. D., & Teach, R. J. (1993). Putting creativity to work: Leader influences on subordinate creativity. Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 55, 120-151.

2. Saucier, G. (1998). Replicable item-cluster sub-components in the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 70, 263-276.

Differential relationships of personality

Table 1. Intercorrelations Between Creativity Measures___________________________________________________________Measure Neuroticism Extraversion Openness ___________________________________________________________1. CPS Quality .00 -.07 .37**2. CPS Originality .20* -.25* .30**___________________________________________________________Note. ** Correlation significant at the .01 level. * Correlation significant at the .05 level.

• Being flexible and open to new ideas was related both to the quality (practicality) and novelty of creative solutions to a problem

• Experiencing anxiety/depressive feelings and being introverted was related to novel ideas, but not quality of ideas

Discussion: Study 2• Introversion and dysphoria being related to original

ideas consistent with new research suggesting – depressive rumination mediated depressive feelings and

creativity (self and objectively rated)1 and – an inverted-U relationship between a continuum of

depressive pathology and creative achievement2

• Unconventional attitudes, introversion and dysphoria are related to creative achievement, but it is unclear how they affect the cognitive processes that cause creative achievement.

• What role does reasoning (‘pruning of ideas’) play, and how does psychopathology relate to creative cognition?

1. Verhaeghen, P., Joormann, J., & Khan, R. (2005). Why we sing the blues: The relation between self-reflective rumination, mood, and creativity. Emotion, 5, 226-232.

2. Richards, R., Kinney, D. K., Lunde, I., Benet, M., & Merzel, A. P. L. (1988). Creativity in manic-depressives, cyclothymes, their normal relatives and control subjects. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 97, 281-288.

Creative cognition• Creativity and its component skills vary widely not only between

individuals, but also within individuals. These different creativity skills are independent of each other, following their own developmental trajectories1

• Researchers have suggested an information-processing model to explain how we can solve problems that require novel solutions2

– Results from combining and reorganizing their existing knowledge structures to come up with a new knowledge structure from which they generate creative solutions

• Creative cognition thus refers to a series of abilities which all interact to produce creative achievements3, including– attention deployment influencing exposure to information specific to the

creative process– Ideational fluency (divergent thinking) which produces a number of

creative options– Reasoning (convergent thinking) which evaluates the options and

selects the most appropriate given the problem parameters1. Baer, J. (2003). Evaluative thinking, creativity, and task specificity: Separating wheat from chaff is not the same as finding needles in haystacks. In M. A. Runco (Ed.),

Critical creative processes (pp. 129-151). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. 2. Mumford, M. D., Mobley, M. I., Uhiman, C. E., Reiter-Palmon, R., & Doares, L. M. (1991). Process analytic models of creative capacities. Creative Research Journal, 4,

91-122.

3. See Runco, M. A. (2004). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 657-687.

Method: Study 3• Used participants from Study 2 (N=114)• The creative problem solving measure used in Study 2 was

employed as a dependent measure• Creative cognition measured using

– Attention Deployment: An updated Remote Associates Test1, in which participants find connections between three seemingly unrelated words, was used. A total score was obtained by summing all of the correct answers.

– Ideation Originality: Product Improvement subtest from the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking2; number of responses that are not on a list of common responses in manual

– Ideation Fluency: Product Improvement subtest from the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT)2; number of relevant responses

– Reasoning / Convergent thinking: Six deductive reasoning problems developed by Ansburg1 were used. A total score was obtained by summing the number of correct responses

1. Ansburg, P. I., & Hill, K. (2003). Creative and analytic thinkers differ in their use of attentional resources. Personality and Individual Differences, 34, 1141-1152.

2. Torrance, P. E., & Ball, O. E. (1984). Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: Streamlined Manual, Figural A and B. Bensenville, IL: Scholastic Testing Services.

Model of Creative CognitionIntercorrelations Between Creativity Measures________________________________________________________________Measure Remote Assoc. Idea Fluency Idea Originality Reasoning________________________________________________________________CPS Quality .28** .19 .29** .28**CPS Originality .19 .17 .37** .15CPS Total .25* .19 .35** .22* _______________________________________________________________ Note. ** Correlation significant at the .01 level. * Correlation significant at the .05 level.

• Regression analyses supported the conception of a multi-stage process in which creative cognition variables interact with each other to predict creative accomplishment, order consistent with proposed model R2 = .35 (IO, IO*IF*DR); R2 = .17 (RAT, DR, RAT*IF)

• Provides further evidence for reasoning, or ability to synthesize information, may act as a filtering mechanism in the production of creative thought, i.e. creativity not an unbridled generative enterprise1

1. Baer, J. (2003). Evaluative thinking, creativity, and task specificity: Separating wheat from chaff is not the same as finding needles in haystacks. In M. A. Runco (Ed.), Critical creative processes (pp. 129-151). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press

The point where novelty, deduction, and fluency converge

Deductive Reasoning

4.99.25

CP

S T

ota

l

8

7

6

5

4

3

Ideation Fluency

+ 1 SD = 10.53

- 1 SD = 3.89

Deductive Reasoning

4.99.25

CP

S T

otal

8

7

6

5

4

3

Ideation Fluency

+ 1 SD = 10.53

- 1 SD = 3.89

Low TTCT Originality (M-1(SD)) High TTCT Originality (M+1(SD))

• Reasoning (synthesizing information) particularly important in situations in which fewer novel ideas are being produced (decreased fluency)

Discussion: Study 3• Creativity not an unbridled passionate generative

enterprise • Interventions only aimed at idea generation

(unstructured time for the gifted, brainstorming) are short sighted

• A multi-stage process assumes one should flexibly engage in each stage

• Presumably, success would depend upon going back to subsequent stages and re-editing based on demands of situation

• People having traits associated with mental illness have been seen as more creative, yet may vary in their ability to use environmental feedback.

• Are people with ‘sub-syndromal’ schizophrenia more creative? Are there differences in the way they edit?

Creative Cognition and Schizotypy• Schizotypy (traits of bizarre ideas, bizzare physical

experiences, anhedonia) on a continuum with normal functioning psychosis represents extremes of normal variation in the healthy personality1

• Existing research suggests schizotypics engage in more creative activities than normal controls or schizophrenics, and with success2

• However, there is a decreased sensitivity of schizotypics for matching responses to external demands3,4 – essentially ‘forcing’ a reponse set that no longer matches requirements of the task.

• If reasoning or editing of creative responses is important for creativity, why are a population of individuals with deficits in this area typically more creative?

1. E.g., see Nuechterlein, K. H., Asarnow, R. F., Subotnik, K. L., Fogelson, D. L., Payne, D. L., Kendler, K. S., Neale, M. C., Jacobson, K. C. & Mintz, J. (2002). The structure of schizotopy: relationships between neurocognitive and personality disorder features in relatives of schizophrenic patients in the UCLA Family Study. Schizophrenia Research, 54, 121-130.

2. E.g. Kinney, D. K., Richards, R., Lowing, P. A., LeBlanc, D., Zimbalist, M. E., & Harlan, P. (2000-2001). Creativity in offspring of schizophrenic and control parents: An adoption study. Creativity Research Journal, 13, 17-25.

3. Gooding, D. C., Kwapil, T. R., & Tallent, K. A. (1999). Winsconsin Card Sorting Test deficits in schizotypic individuals. Schizophrenia Research, 40, 201-209.

4. Green, M. J., & Williams, L. M. (1999). Schizotypy and creativity as effects of reduced cognitive inhibition. Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 263-276.

Methods: Study 4• Used participants from Study 2 (N=114)• The creative problem solving measure used in Study 2 was

employed as a dependent measure, creative cognition measures used in Study 3 as predictors

• Chapman scales1 of anhedonia were used, including:– Perceptual Aberration Scale: 28 items to tap grossly schizophrenic-like

distortions in the perception of one’s own body and 7 items for other perceptual distortions

– Magic Ideation Scale: contains 30 items that are purported to measure belief in forms of causation that by conventional standards of our dominant culture are regarded as invalid or magical

– Revised Social Anhedonia Scale: 40 items used to measure schizoid indifference to other people

– Physical Anhedonia Scale: 20 items used to measure a deficiency in experiencing pleasure

1. Chapman, J. P., Chapman, L. J., & Kwapil, T. R. (1995). Scales for the measurement of schizotopy. In A. Raine, T. Lencz, & S. A. Mednick (Eds) Schizotypal personality (pp. 79-106). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Schizotypics poorer in conventional creative cognition

People higher in negative schizotypy (Physical Anhedonia) did worse at creative problem solving, r(114)= -.25

Consistent with the hypothesis, people higher in positive or negative schizotypy did worse at deductive reasoning (Physical Anhedonia, r(114)= -.24 and Perceptual Aberration r(114)= -.23)

Schizotypal symptoms (particularly Physical Anhedonia) predicted creative problem solving, but in opposite direction than expected, R2 = .14

Discussion: Study 4• While previous research shows schizotypics are more

creative, current investigation would suggest this isn’t for cognitive reasons (i.e. motivational, emotional, spiritual?)

• While schizotypics do poorer on tests of convergent thinking typically found to be important to the creative process, one might conceive of situations in which matching solution to the problem increases creativity

• This hypo-evaluation may result in unusual solutions for a problem for which non-schizotypal thinking may have produced a ‘better-fitting’, yet less ‘creative’, solution.

• As these solutions would not be typical of what many people would answer, the judged originality of such a solution would be high.

Summary• Study 1 proposed the effects of medium structure

(tonality) on personal evaluation of creative product (improvisation) interact with individual differences

• Study 2 suggested unconventional attitudes, introversion and dysphoria are related to creative achievement

• Study 3 suggested that while unconventionality is related to creativity, the cognitive process not an unbridled passionate generative enterprise

• Study 4 suggested that there may be different paths to creative achievement (perhaps cognitive rigidity is even beneficial in some situations), and that novel solutions require more investigation along side good quality creative solutions

Future Direction• The study of structure in creativity can examine

– Personality– Cognition– Creative medium

and the interactions therein

• Future investigations are aimed at– The role of structuring tasks/medium in remediation

of writer’s block (or design fixation)– Role of different types of cognitive rigidity (and

remediation) on the relationship between problem solving and anxiety