Sergio Agnoli, Giovanni Emanuele Corazza, Silvia Cagnone, and Mark Runco
ICIE Conference, Krakow (Poland), July 1-4 2015
Abstract
The creative process is a dynamic ensemble of cognitive, motivational, attitudinal, and environmental components aimed at the ideation and realization of novel and valuable ideas. A pressing question in the creativity literature is whether these components could assume different relevance in defining creative achievement in diversified domains. The aim of this work is to analyse the influences of cognitive and attitudinal components in the definition of scientific and artistic creative achievement in graduate students. 155 students from the University of Bologna were asked to complete a series of tasks: the RAT test (Mednick, 1962); verbal, spatial, and numerical problem solving tasks (Dow & Mayer, 2004); verbal, figurative, and realistic divergent tasks (rCAB, 2011); the Raven short-form intelligence test (Arthur & Day, 1994); the TIPI personality questionnaire (Gosling et al, 2003); the CAAC questionnaire (rCAB, 2011), measuring creative achievement in scientific, artistic, and everyday contexts. Adopting a structural equation modelling approach, we are able to justify a unitary creative thinking model that finds the place for both convergent and divergent thinking: the integrated creative thinking model (ICTM). We proved that convergent thinking is essentially defined by problem solving abilities and highly influenced by cognitive abilities measured by the Raven test: it is the main determinant of scientific creative achievement. On the other hand, divergent thinking is defined by fluency and originality in producing alternatives, and highly influenced by personality: it is the main determinant of artistic creative achievement. Convergent thinking abilities are shown to be negative predictors of artistic achievement.