Last week I began this four part blog by summarising my first three blogs, whilst also adding in some additional content. These blogs focused upon the concepts of metacognition, rational thinking, confidence, integration and comprehension of information, critical thinking, creativity, self-regulated learning, and depth of understanding. I hope to use these basic concepts to further my talks over both this week and the next two weeks in order to create a comprehensive guide to areas of psychology that have real-world application and potential within our education system.
In this blog, I will talk about the link between creativity, its relationship with intelligence, personality types, and happiness. This post summarises important background reading for my next post, which shall be on problem solving and creative thinking, how they interact with each other and metacognition (Feldhusen, 1995 is a good place to start, although I shall be talking about that next week as well). I believe that the skills of problem solving and creative thinking will lead to cognitive flexibility, and that this will interact with metacognition overall, each skill helping train a person’s mind to become better at the other skills. I will also propose methods for teaching and increasing these skills to those in the education system as well.
We have already seen from my previous posts how important creativity is. From Torrance’s study it has become evident that creativity is at least, if not more important than intelligence in helping individuals succeed. A follow up study performed on Torrance’s original participants fifty years later shows that intelligence is still useful, yet only in areas of public achievement. Intelligence had no effect upon personal achievement however, whilst creativity did (Runco et al, 2010). This should come as no surprise to us, the correlation between IQ scores and creativity test scores is negligible (Kim, 2005), which implies that creative ideation and intelligent thought are very different ways of thinking. I will continue to talk about creativity, and how to nurture it within this study, as the topics I have talked about during this series of posts all aim to help an individual achieve personal success.
In 1999, Shapiro and Weisberg found that the personality traits of openness and flexibility (which is similar to cognitive flexibility, but not quite the same thing. Confusing, I know, but I’ll avoid shortening cognitive flexibility to just flexibility to avoid any misunderstanding) lead to creativity. In the study, this was seen more in people with hypomania without depression than those with depression, yet they also saw this effect happen within the normal population, indicating a link between happiness and creativity. The happier you are, the more creative you are it seems. Lyurbomirsky and King (2005) conducted a meta-analysis of studies that researched correlations between creativity and other concepts and found that chronically happy people are more creative than those who are not, which reinforces the findings of Shapiro and Weisberg, indicating that extended periods of happiness seem key to creative thinking.
Torrance’s study indicated that not just artistic minds are creative. Indeed, with the creative children that seem to have done so well in life, he may well have missed a specific part of their personality when testing their creativity. Feist (1998) found that both scientists and artists are considered more open on the Big Five personality questionnaire than the average person. Here’s where we can pull everything together:
Openness is correlated with happiness, (Furnham and Petrides, 2003), which as we already know is correlated with creativity. We also know that openness and flexibility lead to happiness. In terms of how a person thinks, it seems then that the creativity nurtured by this mindset appears to thrive best when one is happy. This means that people with this mindset will pursue a career or set of ideas that intrigues them, as this is what they wish to be most creative about, that which makes them happy, which goes to ex explain how children from Torrance’s study grew up to be scientists, and not just artists.
Whilst this open and flexible way of thinking can foster artistic talent (Guildford, 1957), it specifically aids one in being cognitively flexible (Spiro and Jeng, 1990; DeYoung, Peterson, and Higgins, 2005), as their creativity applies to the approaches they take to their given field. As such, an open and flexible mindset is one that we should help move people towards in our education system in order to allow them to attain their full potential.
DeYoung, C. G., Peterson, J. B., & Higgins, D. M. (2005). Sources of openness/intellect: Cognitive and neuropsychological correlates of the fifth factor of personality. Journal of personality, 73(4), 825-858.
Feist, G. J. (1998). A meta-analysis of personality in scientific and artistic creativity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(4), 290-309.
Feldhusen, J. F. (1995). Creativity: A Knowledge Base, Metacognitive Skills, and Personality Factors. Journal of Creative Behavior, 29(4), 255-68.
Furnham, A., & Petrides, K. V. (2003). Trait emotional intelligence and happiness. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 31(8), 815-823.
Guilford, J. P. (1957). Creative abilities in the arts. Psychological review, 64(2), 110.
Kim, K. H. (2005). Can only intelligent people be creative? A meta-analysis. Prufrock Journal, 16(2-3), 57-66.
Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success?. Psychological bulletin, 131(6), 803.
Runco, M. A., Millar, G., Acar, S., & Cramond, B. (2010). Torrance tests of creative thinking as predictors of personal and public achievement: A fifty-year follow-up. Creativity Research Journal, 22(4), 361-368.
Shapiro, P. J., & Weisberg, R. W. (1999). Creativity and bipolar diathesis: Common behavioral and cognitive components. Cognition and Emotion, 13, 741–762.
Spiro, R. J., & Jehng, J. C. (1990). Cognitive flexibility and hypertext: Theory and technology for the nonlinear and multidimensional traversal of complex subject matter. Cognition, education, and multimedia: Exploring ideas in high technology, 205.
If controlling student behaviour and exact learning strategy breaks creativity, then I would consider openness and flexibility as principles, not behaviours. They cannot be forced or manipulated, but can be taught and fostered. I found some research about how openness was fostered in a school by Whitt et al (2001).
It was the schools commitment to have an open (non-discriminatory racial) environment, which was overtly controlled to change student’s perceptions on the matter. They held programs to increase cultural awareness, and connect students from different races. For creativity, you could hold workshops and events to give students an experiential view of why alternative teaching models such as the MUSIC model are more effective for them. The defining factor is the schools commitment (Whitt et al, 2001).
Whitt et al (2001) and Astin (1993) also found that the study of quantitative subjects (such as maths) has a negative impact on openness. Consider the ethic of the ‘stack it high, sell it cheap’ approach of modern education. It is entirely quantitative. That also connects to the environment the school chooses to generate; a quantitative pedagogy creates quantitative, closed off students.
Whitt, E. J., Edison, M. I., Pascarella, E. T., Terenzini, P. T., & Nora, A. (2001). Influences on student’s openness to diversity and challenge in the second and third years of college. Journal of higher education, 172-204. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2649321?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102880013901
Astin, A. W. (1993). Diversity and multiculturalism on the campus: How are students affected?. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 25(2), 44-49.
I did some digging and found a study by Furnham & Petrides (2003) which compared trait emotional intelligence, happiness, personality and cognitive ability. They also included the Big Five personality traits. They found that cognitive ability (like you said) had no effect on happiness, but trait emotional intelligence explained more than 50% of the total variance in happiness.
Expanding on this theme, I investigated how EI because it’s undoubtedly linked to what you’re studying. EI is ability of identifying and assessing your own emotions and those of others and groups (it can be split into ability EI and trait EI). Some have argued that EI may have more validity in assessing intelligence than IQ and the Big Five personality traits. Anyway before I get to into that, Furnam & Petrides found that students with high EI were less likely to have unauthorised absences from school and display less deviant behaviour. More applicable to what you’re studying, they also found that students with higher EI performed better academically because EI itself is composed of emotion-self, self-perceived ability and dispositions. To cut a long story short, higher EI involves more evaluation of your own behaviour which aids in learning.
Hope this gives you another avenue to investigate.
References:
Furnham, A., & Petrides, K. V. (2003). Trait emotional intelligence and happiness. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 31(8), 815-823.
Chris, would you not say that taught and manipulated are the same thing? Whilst I understand that manipulation has negative connotations behind it, I would state that you can manipulate it in a person. I call openness a behaviour as within the context of cognitive flexibility it is a process that you would perform in order to view the other approaches to a subject or topic.
I am slightly confused by this “stack it high, sell it cheap” ethic you speak of in modern education, if you are speaking of mass education then I agree, cognitive flexibility is hampered by linear media, and what you say about tutoring mathematics makes sense. For many areas of mathematics, there is only one answer, yet this is not the only subject taught in schools. Subjects such as English and history would teach the use of cognitive flexibility and nonlinear media due to their subjective nature. The conflict of these subjects would teach students that there are times for one to use these skills, and times when one should not.
You are correct when you say that multicultural experiences do increase openness. As there is a link between openness and creativity (Dollinger, Urban, and James, 2004), it would be safe to assume that being exposed to these multicultural experiences does boost creativity in an individual. It is not quite this simple however. Leung and Chiu (2008) found that multicultural experiences increase creativity in those that are more open, as when the person is more open, a higher creative potential occurs than those who are less open.
Leung, A. K. Y., & Chiu, C. Y. (2008). Interactive effects of multicultural experiences and openness to experience on creative potential. Creativity Research Journal, 20(4), 376-382.
Dollinger, S. J., Urban, K. K., & James, T. A. (2004). Creativity and openness: Further validation of two creative product measures. Creativity Research Journal, 16(1), 35-47.
In one of my previous blog posts (I want to be an astronaut) I talked about the purpose of education and the importance of taking a macro-perspective on education because structure follows strategy (Chandler, 1962). You said that your previous blog posts “aim to help an individual achieve personal success” and this is one of the purposes of education. Zimmerman (2000) emphasizes the importance of the role of self-efficacy in academic motivation through influencing key factors such as the “choice of activities, level of effort, persistence, and emotional reactions“. Thus happiness in the form of “self-knowledge and self-evaluative feelings” (Zimmermann, 2000) being closely related to the construct of self-efficacy plays an important role in education.
It is important to note that there are different types of happiness (Seligman, 2004). Seligman (2004) distinguished between three “happy” lives, all of which are characterized by different sources of happiness. In the meta-analysis by Lyubomirsky, King and Diener (2005) that you mentioned the authors state that the “amount of time that people experience positive affect […] defines happiness”. Positive affect may positively influence creativity but an investigation of the interaction between other kinds of happiness (as proposed by Seligman, for example) and creativity would be worth the effort.
Martin Seligman’s TED talk:
References
Chandler, A.D. Jr. (1962). Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success?. Psychological bulletin, 131(6), 803.
Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Self-Efficacy: An Essential Motive to Learn. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 82-91.
I liked the idea of this blog and I wanted to look into the link between motivation and creativity. A study by Amabile (1985) found that intrinsic motivation lead to higher levels of creativity compared to extrinsic motivation. This shows that intrinsic motivation is more important for creative ideas. A study by Ryan and Deci (2000a) suggested that intrinsic motivation was important for self-determination theory. They believe that there are three things that individuals need to innate behaviour by themselves: competence, autonomy and relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2000a). In a further study, Ryan and Deci (2000b) found that when those three conditioned were met, it lead to increased self-motivation and mental health. I would argue that it is the facilitator’s job to help individuals achieve these three conditions, which can have wide ranging implications from academic achievement to their well-being.
References
Amabile, T. M. (1995). Motivation and creativity: Effects of motivational orientation on creative writers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48(2), 393-399.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000a). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 54-67.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000b). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.
I found a very interesting study done by Goodall (2013), which stated that education seems to decrease creativity. I feel that when Furnham and Petrides (2003) stated openness and flexibility is correlated with happiness and happiness is related to creativity (Lyurbomirsky and King, 2005). According to Leland & Kasten (2002) the school system at the moment is not an open and flexible system. According to Cubberley, (1916) the current system is like a factory, with strict guidelines on its workers (students) on what to do and how long how to do it. At the end of you blog you quite rightly state that our education system should move to wards a more open and flexible mind-set. Well a new education model, which I looked at in my last blog (Psuf10, 2013), was the inquiry model (Leland & Kasten, 2002). It is based on active learning and student based learning (Leland & Kasten, 2002).
Hopefully if schools start moving towards this model, the creativity will increase along with student happiness.
Leland, C. H., & Kasten, W. C. (2002). Literacy education for the 21st century: It’s time to close the factory. Reading &Writing Quarterly, 18(1), 5-15.
Goodall, H. L. (2013). The War We Lost and the Revolution Yet to Come.Cultural Studies↔ Critical Methodologies, 13(3), 194-200.
urnham, A., & Petrides, K. V. (2003). Trait emotional intelligence and happiness.Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 31(8), 815-823.
Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success?. Psychological bulletin, 131(6), 803.
Psuf10. (2013, November 1). Boulevard of broken theories: An introduction to the inquiry model. [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://psuf10.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/boulevard-of-broken-theories-an-introduction-to-the-inquiry-model/#comment-105
Cubberley, E. P. (1916). Public school administration: A statement of the fundamental principles underlying the organisation and administration of public education. Houghton Mifflin Company.
Reblogged this on Thoughts about Higher Education and commented:
Well thought out and well presented. Good job Duncan!
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