principles of creative problem solving

Principles of Creativity

Dr. Michael J. McNamara

 Purpose of the Unit: ◦ ‘Meaning’ and ‘measurements’ of creativity; ◦ Creative confidence ◦ Creative Mindset

 Tasks for the Week: ◦ Watch my lecture on “Creative Confidence”

posted in SLATE’s Course Media Gallery ◦ Watch David Kelley’s Ted talk: “How to Build

Your Creative Confidence” ◦ Read the very short article by Sweet et al.

“Developing Creative Confidence” available on SLATE

◦ Brainstorm about what ‘new thing’ you might engage with for the Creativity Assignment (due June 4)

◦ Join us for the Debrief Meeting in SLATE’s Virtual Classroom (evite forthcoming).

◦ No assignments/exercise due this week

 Psychologist, University of Nebraska (and later USC) ◦ During WW2, Chief of the Psychological Research

Unit at the U.S. Army Air Forces Training Command Headquarters in Fort Worth

◦ Oversaw the Stanine (Standard Nine) Project in 1943- aimed at identifying intellectual abilities crucial to flying a plane.

◦ Preliminary Findings: there are 9 intellectual abilities crucial to being a good pilot some of which are not captured by IQ.

 1950 Presidential Address to the American Psychological Association- need for research to isolate the various and discrete factors of thinking ◦ Need to separate out creativity and others skills

from the factors measured by IQ

 Structure of Intellect theory= a total of 90 discrete intellectual abilities and 30 behavioral abilities.

 Divergent- in ‘different directions’ as opposed to choosing among predetermined/traditional ones.

 Divergent thinking- the thought process of developing many different possible solutions, answers, or responses to a problem.

 Occurs in a spontaneous, ‘free- flowing’ manner’ such that many ideas are generated and many possible solutions are explored.

 “Divergent Thinkers” are always looking for more options.

 Scoring: 1. Fluency- the total number of interpretable,

meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus ◦ Add up all responses

2. Flexibility- the number of different categories of relevant responses ◦ Identify and Count the categories in the

responses

3. Originality- the statistical rarity of the responses ◦ Each response is compared to the total amount

of all responses from test-takers. 5% are unusual (1pnt); 1% are unique (2pnts)

4. Elaboration- the amount of detail in the responses ◦ 1 point per detail

 Examinees are asked to come up with many possible items that contain a specific component.

◦ Scoring is comprised of four components:

1. Fluency

2. Flexibility

3. Originality

4. Elaboration

 Name things with wheels.

 Florence- a prodigy, the highest IQ score in the entire school.

 Poole- a solid C student

Malcolm Gladwell’s in “Outliers”; paraphrasing the research of Liam Hudson

 Florence: ◦ (Brick): Building things. Throwing.

 Poole: ◦ (Brick): To us in smash-and-grab raids. To help

hold a house together. To use in a game of Russian routlette if you want to keep fit at the same time (brick at ten paces, turn and throw). To hold the eiderdown on a bed tie a brick at each corner. As a breaker of empty Coke bottles.

 Florence: ◦ (Blanket): Keeping warm, smothering fires, tying to

trees and sleeping in (a hammock), improvised stretcher.

 Poole: ◦ (Blanket): To use on a bed. As a cover for sex in the

woods. As a tent. To make smoke signals with. As a sail for a boat, cart, or sled. As a substitute for a towel. As a target for shooting practice for short- sighted people. As a thing to catch people jumping out of burning skyscrapers.

FLUENCY- lots of ideas

FLEXIBILITY- thinking broadly; different types/categories of ideas/ perspectives

ORIGINALITY: unique and novel or unheard of before. Combinations (new arrangements of old/un-related ideas), transformation, or transcendence

UTILITY: useful. The ability to see if the solution actually solves the problem.

SURPRISE: brings familiar things together in an unfamiliar/unexpected way. Think beyond conventional boundaries or categories, loosen up the associations

BEAUTY: appealing, captivating and aesthetically satisfying

 The Asch Experiment (Asch Clip) ◦ Solomon Asch, Swarthmore

College-

◦ 1950s “Conformity Experiments”

 Key Question

 To what degree are an individual’s opinions and responses influenced by those of a majority group?

 The Asch Experiment (Asch Clip) ◦ Key Question

 To what degree are an individual’s opinions and responses influenced by those of a majority group?

◦ Finding:  In the control group, with no

pressure to conform to confederates, the error rate was less than 1%.

 Overall, in the experimental group, 75% of the participants gave an incorrect answer to at least one question.

1. Rauth et al. (2010): “a development of trust in one’s own creative skills”

2. Kelly Bros. (2013): “Creative confidence is the ability to come up with breakthrough ideas combined with the courage to act on them”…

3. Kelly Bros. (2012): “Confidence doesn’t simply mean believing your ideas are good. It means having the humility to let go of ideas that aren’t working and to accept good ideas from other people”

 Openness to experience: single strongest and most consistent personality trait that predicts creative achievement,”

 “For artists and innovators of all stripes, novel experiences provide the crucial tissue of real-world material that can be spun into original work.”

 And instills a self-confidence, resiliency and perseverance in the individual; ‘new things’ can be discovered, achieved, and overcome

 Be ‘intentional’ about creativity

 To be more creative, the Kelleys argue, “the first step is to decide you want to make it happen”

 Be-Creative Effect: just being told to ‘be creative’ before a divergent thinking task makes the responses more creative”

 Kelley’s “Embrace a bias towards action”  Consistently constructing interactive

experiences in an effort to see how things work ◦ Intellectual exploration ◦ Physical tinkering ◦ Engagement in new surroundings ◦ Building prototypes

 “Our culture opens us to allowing lots of failures while harvesting the learning. It’s what separates an innovation culture from a normal corporate culture.” (Scott Cook, Founder, Intuit)

 Adopting a Hypothesis-testing Mindset: ◦ Develop new hypotheses from the knowledge you’ve

acquired and test them in the search for new solutions

◦ Take apart a product or process that interests you ◦ Travel to learn about different lifestyles and local

behavior.

 Creativity & Divergent Thinking ◦ Fluency ◦ Flexibility ◦ Originality ◦ Value/Utility ◦ Surprise & Beauty

 Conformity ◦ Ash Line Studies

 Creative Confidence ◦ Choosing Creativity ◦ Openness to Experience (Risk) ◦ Bias towards Action (Hypothesis

Testing Mindset)

 Week 3 : Creative Cognition  Topics:  - The Pillars of Cognition  - Consciousness, Perception and Attention  -Dual Process Creativity (Type 1 and Type 2

Thinking) 

 Required Readings:  Sowden, P. T., Pringle, A., & Gabora, L. (2015).

The shifting sands of creative thinking: Connections to dual-process theory. Thinking & Reasoning, 21(1), 40-60. (SLATE) Pages 1-10 & 14-16 only