Can creativity be measured

Creativity and measuring are not two words that go together very well. It’s a common conception that trying to define creativity will limit its freedom. We at Psycon, however, decided to take the bull by the horns and bend creativity into a form that can be measured. Research Manager Mikael Nedeström describes in his article how and on what basis this definition was made.

Creativity and measuring are two concepts that are not naturally compatible. To many people, measuring, analysis and rationality are the polar opposites of creativity. It feels like there is this “unbearable freedom of creativity” that will vanish if you attempt to measure, weigh and package creative activities. Nevertheless, Psycon Oy decided to carry out a creativity study and take creativity by the horns by defining and measuring it.

In the history of psychology, creativity has traditionally been one of the most difficult things to define, study and measure. It is easy to say what creativity is not, or that you will know it when you come across it. At least every artist and psychologist is sure to have an educated opinion and hands-on experience. However, empirical and systematic research demands a viable definition in order to get past armchair contemplation. Agreeing on a definition has proven surprisingly difficult.

A history of mishmash

The theoretical background of creativity research is unusually multifaceted, even if it is restricted to psychology alone. Proposals for the approximation of creativity have relied on a wide variety of traditional subjects of psychological research: thinking styles, intelligence research and personal characteristics. In contrast, sometimes creativity has been defined as a feature that differs from all these. Somebody even defined it as an indefinable feature.

In practice, creativity research has been marred by various simplifications and subjective definitions, as each researcher has found a perspective that he or she has considered the best. Some have emphasised the thinking and person involved in the creative process, whereas others have focused on the end product alone. A third approach has been to treat creativity as just a problem-solving process.

Creativity in the fuzzy zone

When approaching the concept of creativity from the psychological viewpoint, the historically best defined background can perhaps be found in thinking styles – i.e., cognitive styles. This interpretation places creativity somewhere between intelligent capabilities and personality – in the same fuzzy zone where, for example, emotional intelligence has lately been positioned. The fuzziness of the zone is not a fault of creativity itself; it is more due to the very limited number of categories in traditional differential psychology.
One perception based on thinking styles is creativity as divergent thinking. Divergent thinking consists of the fluency, flexibility and originality of the way of thinking. When these are combined, the result is creative thinking. One of the benefits of this view is its diversity. It does not forcibly try to return creativity to, say, personality or intelligence but genuinely admits the diversity of the concept.

In addition, there is empirical evidence of the potential of divergent thinking in predicting creativity. Thus, it is likely to be an essential – albeit not necessarily sufficient – prerequisite for the existence of creative activities.

When we combine divergent thinking with abilities and the right motivation, we get a credible recipe for creativity, at least on a psychological level. This view merges three important components: an innovative way of thinking (divergent thinking), the ability to process the necessary information (intelligence) and the motivation to achieve something concrete (creative need and other personality factors).

Psycon’s creativity study

The decision was made to study the creative thinking of Psycon Oy’s personal assessment clients who consented to performing extra tasks during the assessment day. The study was part of a Master's thesis in Psychology for the University of Helsinki. The thesis research supplemented an earlier analysis of the ability of personal assessment tests to predict divergent thinking (Furnham & Nedeström, 2010).

The study involved 121 assessment clients, who represented the entire Psycon clientele fairly extensively. It included seven different tests and each client’s self-assessment of his/her creative tendencies. In addition to the more conventional tests, the study addressed the participant’s aesthetic complexity preference and performance in the “think outside the box” test. In addition to these results, the study concentrated on the links of training, gender and age with divergent thinking.

Since there were a great variety of variables studied, the number of results was also large. The strength of the material was the fact that it combined methods based on both performance and self-assessment. The most interesting result was found when studying the mutual correlation between components measuring creativity; this revealed the structure of creativity and self-assessment’s relationship to various tests.

Divergent thinking has connections in many directions

Both personality and intelligence were strongly connected with the tasks measuring creativity. Intelligence was connected with the participant’s self-assessment of his/her creativity, flexibility of thinking and performance in the “think outside the box” test. Openness to new experiences was connected with the participant’s complexity preference, self-assessment and divergent thinking.

The experiential and imaginative cognitive style were also connected with divergent and original thinking. In addition, the power of imagination was connected with the flexibility of thinking, an important ingredient of divergent thinking. Basically, all these ingredients were interlinked, exactly as could be predicted on the basis of educated assumptions.

All in all, the idea of the significance of divergent thinking in defining creativity seemed highly promising. The number of connections found to personality and abilities was just right: while their direction and strength supported the theoretical assumptions on the importance of divergent thinking, they did not entirely explain away its significance. On the whole, the results are an important addition to the earlier, unstructured and non-empirical creativity discussion.

Although the findings are fairly theoretical so far, the future is also likely to see direct applications in personal assessment, as the connections were studied by means of currently used, validated methods. Indeed, Psycon Oy is developing a tool for surveying a new combined variable (divergent thinking + creative need + intelligence). The tool is already being tested, and the predictions it provides of an individual’s creativity seem very promising.

Creativity as a resource – just a cliché?

When we start talking about creativity as a resource, we usually move to a world of clichés and sales talk. But there seems to be a certain truth in the idea. The ways of thinking behind creativity appear to be exactly the same as those whose significance in the current organisational atmosphere is always stressed.

In rapidly changing situations, the ability to adapt to the unpredictable, intellectual openness and flexible problem-solving are definitely also important on a practical level. In personal assessments in particular, a proper definition and measuring tool for these properties are practical methods of increasing the accuracy of the assessments.

Mikael Nederström
firstname.lastname@psycon.fi

Literature:

Katarina Pekkonen (2010).
Luovuus – sen osa-alueet ja niiden yhteydet älykkyyteen, kognitiivisiin tyyleihin ja persoonallisuuteen. Pro gradu thesis. University of Helsinki, Department of Psychology.

Furnham, A. & Nedeström, M. (2010).
Ability, demographic and personality predictors of creativity. Personality and Individual Differences, 48, 957–961.
The experiential and imaginative cognitive style were connected with divergent and original thinking.
Teaser. Creativity is not just a scientific-historical or psychological curiosity.