Showing papers in "Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts in 2012"

Why do ideas get more creative across time? An executive interpretation of the serial order effect in divergent thinking tasks.

Abstract: The serial order effect—the tendency for later responses to a divergent thinking task to be better than earlier ones—is one of the oldest and most robust findings in modern creativity work. But why do ideas get better? Using new methods that afford a fine-grained look at temporal trajectories, we contrasted two explanations: the classic spreading activation account and a new account based on executive and strategic aspects of creative thought. After completing measures of fluid intelligence and personality, a sample of young adults (n = 133) completed a 10-min unusual uses task. Each response was time-stamped and then rated for creativity by three raters. Multilevel structural equation models estimated the trajectories of creativity and fluency across time and tested if intelligence moderated the effects of time. As in past work, creativity increased sharply with time and flattened slightly by the task's end, and fluency was highest in the task's first minute and then dropped sharply. Intelligence, however, moderated the serial order effect—as intelligence increased, the serial order effect diminished. Taken together, the findings are more consistent with a view that emphasizes executive processes, particularly processes involved in the strategic retrieval and manipulation of knowledge, than the simple spreading of activation to increasingly remote concepts.

Assessing creativity with self-report scales: A review and empirical evaluation.

Abstract: This article reviews recent developments in the assessment of creativity using self-report scales. We focus on four new and promising scales: the Creative Achievement Questionnaire, the Biographical Inventory of Creative Behaviors, the revised Creative Behavior Inventory, and the Creative Domain Questionnaire. For each scale, we review evidence for reliability, validity, and structure, and we discuss important methodological features for users to consider. We then present new analyses of each scale based on a large, diverse sample. We evaluate each scale’s item-level and scale-level psychometric features, using both classical test theory and item response theory, and we examine how the scales converge. All four scales performed well and covaried highly with each other. Based on the latest generation of tools, self-report creativity assessment is probably much better than creativity researchers think it is.

Counting the Muses: Development of the Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS)

Abstract: If one takes a domain-specific approach to studying creativity, 1 key question is to determine the most important domains to measure. One approach is to look at common perceptions of creativity. Building on past studies that used self-report questionnaires, this study presents a new instrument, the Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale. A factor analysis of 2,318 college student responses led to 50 items and 5 broad domains: Self/Everyday, Scholarly, Performance (encompassing writing and music), Mechanical/ Scientific, and Artistic. Coefficient alphas and coefficients of congruence were generally strong. Correlations between the 5 creativity domains and the Big Five personality factors were consistent with past research, lending evidence of convergent validity.

Associative abilities underlying creativity.

Abstract: Empirical approaches to cognitive ability claim that divergent thinking represents a useful estimate for the potential of creative thought. According to associative approaches, the ability to fluently retrieve and combine remote associations was suggested to facilitate creative solutions. Taken together, these approaches suggest a close relationship of associative processes and divergent thinking, which so far, however, has not been properly tested. Therefore, the present study examines the validity of associative abilities with respect to divergent thinking, and also, on a more general level, with respect to creativity and intelligence. Four different word-association tasks were employed to assess associative fluency, associative flexibility, dissociative ability, and the ability of associative combination. The sample comprised 150 students from studies with varying amount of creativity-related demands. Associative abilities were found to explain about half of the variance of divergent thinking ability. Latent variable modeling confirmed the significance of dissociation and associative combination for creativity, but also substantiates the relevance of basic associative retrieval processes for intelligence. It is concluded that associative abilities represent valid elementary cognitive abilities underlying creativity.

Pretend play, creativity, and emotion regulation in children.

Abstract: The aim of this study was to examine relationships among pretend play, creativity, emotion regulation, and executive functioning in children. Pretend play processes were assessed using the Affect in Play Scale (APS), which measures children’s cognitive and affective processes, such as organization of a plot or use of emotions. Sixty-one female participants, in kindergarten through fourth grade, were assessed using the APS to measure pretend play ability, a divergent thinking task (the Alternate Uses Test), a storytelling task to assess creativity, a measure of executive functioning (the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, Short Form; WCST-64), and parent report on the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC). Using correlational analyses, pretend play significantly related to creativity as measured by divergent thinking and storytelling, and related to emotion regulation. Affect expression in play was significantly related to affect expression in storytelling suggesting cross-situational stability. Divergent thinking ability was significantly related to creativity in storytelling. In general the magnitudes of the correlations were of medium effect size. No significant relationships were found with executive functioning. The results of this study support theories that suggest play, creativity, and emotion regulation are linked.

Can sad music really make you sad? Indirect measures of affective states induced by music and autobiographical memories.

Abstract: The present study addressed music’s disputed ability to induce genuine sadness in listeners by investigating whether listening to sad music can induce sadness-related effects on memory and judgment. Related aims were to explore how the different mechanisms of music-induced emotions are involved in sadness induced by familiar, self-selected music and unfamiliar, experimenter-selected music, and whether the susceptibility to music-induced sadness is associated with trait empathy. One hundred twenty participants were randomly assigned into four conditions with different tasks: listening to unfamiliar sad or neutral music, or to self-selected sad music, or recalling a sad autobiographical event and writing about it. The induced affective states were measured indirectly using a word recall task and a judgment task where participants rated the emotions expressed by pictures depicting facial expressions. The results indicate that listening to sad music can indeed induce changes in emotion-related memory and judgment. However, this effect depends, to some extent, on the music’s relevance to the listener, as well as on the personality attributes of the listener. Trait empathy contributed to the susceptibility to sadness induced by unfamiliar music, while autobiographical memories contributed to sadness induced by self-selected music.

Physiological Correlates of Aesthetic Perception of Artworks in a Museum

Abstract: Arts experts are commonly skeptical of applying scientific methods to aesthetic experiencing, which remains a field of study predominantly for the humanities Laboratory research has however indicated that artworks may elicit emotional and physiological responses Yet, this line of aesthetics research has previously suffered from insufficient external validity We therefore conducted a study in which aesthetic perception was monitored in a fine-art museum, unrestricting to the viewers’ freedom of aesthetic choice Visitors were invited to wear electronic gloves through which their locomotion, heart rate and skin conductance were continuously recorded Emotional and aesthetic responses to selected works of an exhibition were assessed using a customized questionnaire In a sample of 373 adult participants, we found that physiological responses during perception of an artwork were significantly related to aesthetic-emotional experiencing The dimensions ‘Aesthetic Quality’, ‘Surprise/Humor’, ‘Dominance’ and ‘Curatorial Quality’ were associated with cardiac measures (heart rate variability, heart rate level) and skin conductance variability This is first evidence that aesthetics can be statistically grounded in viewers’ physiology in an ecologically valid environment, the art gallery, enhancing our understanding of the effects of artworks and their curatorial staging

Art galleries, episodic memory and verbal fluency in dementia: an exploratory study

Abstract: Aesthetic responses associated with viewing visual art have recently been shown to have positive effectsfor people with dementia. The current exploratory study investigated how structured viewing of paintingsin a public art gallery, followed by an art-making visual response, might affect cognition. Through anovel use of audio recordings and content analysis, utilizing a mixed-methods pre-post design with4-week follow-up, the study sought to explore if art viewing and art making, in an art gallery setting, hadan impact on episodic memory and verbal fluency. The findings suggested that episodic memory couldbe enhanced through aesthetic responses to visual art, although effects on verbal fluency were moreambiguous. Family caregivers (FC), who were also part of the study, substantiated these findings but alsoreported that their family member with dementia showed improved mood, confidence, and reducedisolation during the art gallery sessions. The results support the need for additional research to furtherinvestigate the potential positive impact of visual art and aesthetic stimulation on people with a dementia.Keywords: aesthetics, content analysis, dementia, verbal fluency, episodic memorySupplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0027499.supp

Liking unfamiliar music: Effects of felt emotion and individual differences.

Abstract: We examined liking for excerpts of unfamiliar music taken from a wide variety of genres. The excerpts varied in tempo (fast or slow) and mode (major or minor). Listeners provided liking ratings for each excerpt as well as ratings of their emotional responses (intensity, happiness, and sadness). We also measured personality and history of music lessons. In general, listeners tended to like music associated with stronger feelings and happy feelings, and to dislike music that evoked sad feelings. Mixed happy and sad feelings were evoked by music with inconsistent cues to happiness and sadness. Listeners who scored high on Agreeableness had more intense emotional responses to music in general, whereas stronger sad feelings were evoked among those who scored high on Agreeableness or Neuroticism. Listeners who liked music that made them feel sad tended to score high on Openness-to-Experience or low on Extraversion, whereas liking for music that evoked mixed feelings was associated positively with music training. The results confirm that liking for music varies as a function of the emotions it evokes and individual differences in personality and music training.

Confronting Sadness Through Art-Making: Distraction Is More Beneficial Than Venting

Abstract: in the distraction condition they were asked to draw an image unrelated to the film (a house). In Study 2 we induced a negative mood by asking participants to think of the saddest event they had experienced and then assigned them to one of three conditions: venting, distraction, and sitting - a new condition in which participants just sat quietly. This latter condition allowed us to assess the effect of passage of time. In both studies, positive and negative affect were measured before and after the assigned activity. In both studies, mood improved significantly more in the distraction than in the venting or sitting condition. We argue that the mood elevating effects of art-making are stronger when art is used to distract than when used to vent.

The relations of gender and personality traits On different creativities: A dual-process theory account

Abstract: In the present study we examine the ways in which gender and personality traits are related to divergent thinking and insight problem solving. According to the dual-process theory account of creativity, we propose that gender and personality traits might influence the ease and choice of the processing mode and, hence, affect 2 creativity measures in different ways. Over 300 participants’ responses on the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (Chen, 2006), HEXACO Personality Inventory (Ashton & Lee, 2009; Lee & Ashton, 2004), Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (Yu, 1993), and performance while conducting insight-problem tasks, are collected. The results show that Openness was positively correlated with divergent thinking performance, whereas Emotionality was negatively correlated with insight problem-solving performance. Women performed better on divergent thinking tests, whereas men’s capabilities were superior on insight problem tasks. Furthermore, Openness exhibited a mediating effect on the relationships between gender and divergent thinking. The relationships among gender, personality, and creative performance, as well as the implications of these findings on cultural differences and real-field creativity, are discussed.

Personality traits, intelligence, humor styles, and humor production ability of professional stand-up comedians compared to college students

Abstract: Individual differences in humor production ability are understudied, especially among experts. This is the first quantitative study of personality traits, humor production ability, humor styles, and intelligence among stand-up comedians. It analyzes data from 31 comedians and 400 college students with regard to the Big Five personality traits (NEO-FFI-R), the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), a humor production task, verbal intelligence, and, for the comedians, a measure of professional success. Comedians scored higher than students on verbal intelligence, humor production ability, and each of the four styles of humor. Among comedians, openness, agreeableness, and extraversion correlated positively with affiliative humor, and intelligence correlated negatively with self-defeating humor. Professional success was predicted positively by affiliative humor and negatively by self-defeating humor.

Emotional Cues in American Popular Music: Five Decades of the Top 40

Abstract: Some musical characteristics are cues to happiness (fast tempo, major mode); others are cues to sadness (slow tempo, minor mode). Listening to music with inconsistent emotional cues leads to mixed feelings and perceptions, or simultaneous happy and sad responding. We examined whether emotional cues in American popular music have changed over time, predicting that music has become progressively more sad-sounding and emotionally ambiguous. Our sample comprised over 1,000 Top 40 recordings from 25 years spanning five decades. Over the years, popular recordings became longer in duration and the proportion of female artists increased. In line with our principal hypotheses, there was also an increase in the use of minor mode and a decrease in average tempo, confirming that popular music became more sad-sounding over time. Decreases in tempo were also more pronounced for songs in major than in minor mode, highlighting a progressive increase of mixed emotional cues in popular music.

Perceptual Constancies and Visual Selection as Predictors of Realistic Drawing Skill

Abstract: Traditionally, two theories have been proposed to understand realistic drawing: (a) a bottom-up perspective emphasizing accurate perception achieved by suppressing perceptual constancies and other sources of misperception, and (b) a top-down view emphasizing knowledge-facilitated selection of information important for object depiction. This study compares the predictive validity of the two. Artists and nonartists completed tasks measuring the ability to suppress shape and size constancies, a limited line-tracing task measuring visual selection performance, and a freehand drawing task assessing realistic drawing ability. Evidence is reported that shows both bottom-up and top-down factors are associated with drawing accuracy. Artists outperformed nonartists on drawing and limited-line tracing accuracy and made smaller size (but not shape) constancy errors; drawing accuracy was positively correlated with limited-line tracing and negatively correlated with size-constancy errors in a depth cue condition. We propose integrating the two traditional approaches into a unified perspective emphasizing visual attention, rather than early perception, in explaining drawing accuracy.

Creative Thinking in Music: Its Nature and Assessment Through Musical Exploratory Behaviors

Abstract: Creative thinking in music has received only limited attention in the psychology of art and creativity, yet it appears to be one of the most important issues in the field of music education. As creative thinking in music exists in the general population and increasing evidence suggests the positive effects of active engagement with music, it seems that research on this topic offers promising implications beyond musical education itself. However, there is a lack of suitable measures of creative ability in music for individuals without prior musical training, and many important facets, such as the original use of sound material, are often disregarded in existing assessments. To fill these conceptual and empirical gaps—a prerequisite to any research on musical creativity—we present a new multimethod framework for its evaluation: the Musical Expression Test (MET). This method combines a systematic observational approach with a focus on musical exploratory behaviors and a product-based assessment of musical pieces resulting from musical activities, involving a sound-production set and a computer-based recording system. A study with the MET on a sample of adolescents with and without musical training is presented and provides the first empirical evidence of the MET’s reliability, convergence between behavioral and product-based assessment, and suitability for individuals without particular musical skills. A typology of product-based “creative styles” and their behavioral correlates is presented. The potential uses and implications of the MET for the future of musical creativity assessment and research are discussed.

Is Empathy Related to the Perception of Emotional Expression in Music? A Multimodal Time-Series Analysis

Abstract: Recent theories of empathy highlight perception-action components as a basis for automatic responses to perceived emotions. Since music is universally based on human actions and often elicits strong emotions, it was hypothesized that empathy influences audiovisual estimations of emotional expression. In this study, the performance and perception of a string quartet was investigated using time-series analyses. Quartet musicians rated video presentations of their own performance, resulting in relationships between visual-only and auditory-only judgments as well as acoustical intensity measures. Independent observers accurately perceived the string quartet’s expressive intentions in multimodal presentations. Observers with higher affective and overall empathy were more accurate at estimating the musicians’ intentions. It is argued that empathy—via the perception of bodily motion—has an impact on the appreciation of performing arts such as music.

Foresight, Insight, Oversight, and Hindsight in Scientific Discovery: How Sighted Were Galileo's Telescopic Sightings?

Abstract: Galileo Galilei’s celebrated contributions to astronomy are used as case studies in the psychology of scientific discovery. Particular attention was devoted to the involvement of foresight, insight, oversight, and hindsight. These four mental acts concern, in divergent ways, the relative degree of “sightedness” in Galileo’s discovery process and accordingly have implications for evaluating the blind-variation and selective-retention (BVSR) theory of creativity and discovery. Scrutiny of the biographical and historical details indicates that Galileo’s mental processes were far less sighted than often depicted in retrospective accounts. Hindsight biases clearly tend to underline his insights and foresights while ignoring his very frequent and substantial oversights. Of special importance was how Galileo was able to create a domain-specific expertise where no such expertise previously existed—in part by exploiting his extensive knowledge and skill in the visual arts. Galileo’s success as an astronomer was founded partly and “blindly” on his artistic avocations. The investigation closes by briefly discussing Antonie van Leeuwenhoek’s similar creation of microscopic biology. This parallel case indicates that Galileo’s telescopic astronomy was probably not unique as an illustration of how scientific discovery works in practice.

From Cognitive Style to Creativity Achievement: The Mediating Role of Passion

Abstract: This article examines the mediating effect of passion on the relationship between the cognitive style of students and their creative achievement in the design field. Previous studies demonstrated the relationship between cognitive style and creativity. The additional hypothesis in this article is that passion has a mediating effect in the process. Moreover, the communicative competence factor serves as a control variable in providing a fuller discussion. A total of 276 design students took part in a questionnaire survey. The estimation results from both the hierarchical regression analysis and structural equation model show that harmonious passion is positively related to creative achievement, but that obsessive passion is not. Harmonious passion plays a mediating role between innovative cognitive style and creative achievement. Further implications of our findings for design and education are discussed.

Who's afraid of red, yellow and blue? Need for cognitive closure predicts aesthetic preferences

Abstract: We investigated the relationship between need for cognitive closure (NFC), that is, the need for a clear, predictable and unambiguous world, and aesthetic preferences. Study 1, a correlational field study, reveals that individual differences in NFC are related to liking for a play with an open ending, such that individuals high in NFC liked the ending of this play less than their low-NFC counterparts. Study 2 demonstrates that high-NFC individuals prefer figurative paintings to abstract paintings. In Study 3, NFC was experimentally varied by means of a time-pressure manipulation. Participants who judged paintings under time-pressure (high NFC) showed a stronger preference for figurative rather than abstract paintings, compared with participants in the control condition (low NFC). We discuss implications and outline directions for future research.

An investigation of the expressive and representational drawing development in National Curriculum, Steiner and Montessori schools

Abstract: Little is known about how children's drawing ability may vary between different educational approaches. This study investigated the expressive and representational drawing ability of British National Curriculum, Steiner, and Montessori pupils aged 5 to 9 years old. Ability was measured from performance on specified drawing tasks. One hundred and 35 children participated, 45 from each educational establishment consisting of 15 from each of the three age groups, 5-, 7- and 9-year-olds. Participants completed three expressive drawings (depicting a happy, sad, and angry mood) and three representational drawings (observational drawing of a wooden mannequin, a house from memory and a free drawing). Results indicated that for expressive drawings Steiner pupils generally depicted more content themes, used formal properties more expressively, and produced higher quality expressive drawings than Montessori and National Curriculum pupils. Where there were differences between National Curriculum and Montessori pupils the Montessori children tended to do better than the National Curriculum pupils on these measures. Although representational drawing development varied in younger Steiner pupils compared to their National Curriculum and Montessori peers, no differences were observed among the oldest children attending the three schools. The positive relationship between expressive and representational drawing performance was the strongest in Steiner pupils. The results suggest the art program in Steiner education is more conducive to nurturing expressive drawing ability than those delivered in Montessori and National Curriculum education, with seemingly no disadvantage in representational drawing ability in the primary school years.

The recognizability of individual creative styles within and across domains.

Abstract: We present a set of studies that tested the hypothesis that creative style is recognizable within and across domains. Art students were shown two sets of paintings, the first by five famous artists and the second by their art student peers. For both sets, they guessed the creators of the works at above-chance levels. In a similar study, creative writing students guessed at above-chance levels which passages were written by which of five famous writers, and which passages were written by which of their writing student peers. When creative writing students were asked to produce works of art, they guessed at above-chance levels which of their peers produced which artwork. Finally, art students who were familiar with each other's paintings guessed at above-chance levels which of their peers produced which non-painting artwork. The findings support the hypothesis that creative styles are recognizable not just within but also across domains. We suggest this is because all of an individual's creative outputs are expressions of a particular underlying uniquely structured self-organizing internal model of the world.

Reader responses to literary depictions of rape

Abstract: This study explored reader responses to different literary depictions of rape. Four literary excerpts were used and divided as aesthetic versus nonaesthetic (style) and allusive versus explicit (detail). The general question was how readers would react to literary fragments depicting rape and whether the level of aesthetics and the level of explicitness influenced readers' thoughts and feelings. An open-ended question asked readers to report how the style had influenced their thoughts and feelings, whereas 7-point scales addressed the following variables: experienced distance, perceptions of realism and of beauty, emotional versus intellectual reaction, empathy, tension, and arousal. In a 2 (detail: explicit vs. allusive) × 2 (style: aesthetic vs. nonaesthetic) within-participant design (N = 34), gender functioned as a between-participants variable. Results indicate that the personal tendency to feel engaged with fiction overrides effects of aesthetics and explicitness. Principal-components factor analysis suggests that readers who are easily engaged with the characters feel unsettled when reading rape scenes they find brutal and intellectualize to handle these feelings. These “high empathizers” are not likely to be detached or to appreciate the fragment negatively: once absorbed, they will try to take something positive even from an unsettling experience.