Creativity Lecture Notes

Vocabulary flashcards summarising key terms from the lecture on creativity, including definitions, types, determinants, assessment methods, and their relationship to intelligence.

Creativity

The capacity to generate ideas or products that are both novel and appropriate to the circumstances.

Novelty (Novel)

Quality of being original, imaginative, and not previously produced.

Appropriateness

Usefulness, relevance, or fitness of an idea or product to its task or context.

Artistic Creativity

Producing aesthetically interesting or emotionally evocative artefacts such as paintings, music, design, or fashion.

Scientific / Methodological Creativity

Ingenious ways of testing hypotheses, designing experiments, inventing apparatus, or formulating theories.

Everyday ("Little-c") Creativity

Thinking outside the box to solve mundane, day-to-day problems (e.g., reorganising a kitchen, inventing shortcuts).

Interpersonal Creativity

Applying emotional intelligence to relationships, including creative conflict resolution and novel expressions of empathy or support.

Professional / Workplace Creativity

Innovation, process improvement, strategic thinking, and new product development in occupational settings.

Divergent Thinking

Generating many acceptable answers; the thinking style measured by creativity tests.

Convergent Thinking

Finding the single best or correct answer; the focus of traditional intelligence tests.

Fluency (Creativity Score)

The total number of responses produced in a creativity test.

Flexibility (Creativity Score)

The variety or shifts among different categories of responses.

Originality (Creativity Score)

The uniqueness or rarity of responses compared with others’ answers.

Elaboration (Creativity Score)

The amount of detail, embellishment, or sophistication within each idea.

Expertise (Domain-Specific Knowledge)

Extensive background knowledge and practice within a field; a prerequisite for most creative breakthroughs.

Intrinsic Motivation

Acting for inherent interest or satisfaction rather than external rewards, fostering persistence and creativity.

Risk-Taking Attitude

Willingness to abandon safe, known solutions and tolerate uncertainty or possible failure.

Supportive Environment

An intellectually and emotionally encouraging context that provides resources, feedback, and psychological safety for experimentation.

Creativity Tests

Assessments that require divergent thinking and are scored on fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration.

Unusual Uses Test

Creativity task asking for as many uses as possible for a common object (e.g., a paper clip).

Consequences Task

Creativity exercise prompting participants to list all outcomes that might occur if a hypothetical event happened.

Pattern Meanings Task

Test requiring interpretation of ambiguous patterns or shapes.

Tests of Ingenuity

Problem-solving tasks (e.g., tying two strings together) that assess creative resourcefulness.

Genetic Influence on Creativity

Approximately 20 % of variability in creativity is attributed to genetic factors, as shown by twin studies.

Intelligence–Creativity Relationship

Intelligence correlates weakly to moderately with creativity (.10–.50) and is necessary but not sufficient for creative performance.