No abstract

Creative metacognition (CMC) is an understudied component of creative growth. It refers to people's ability to monitor and evaluate their creative functioning. In this study we focus on an important element of CMC, creative metacognitive accuracy: people's ability to recognize and properly assess the creativity of their ideas when solving divergent thinking tasks. More specifically, we explored how creative ability and intelligence interact to explain people's self-ratings of their newly generated ideas' creativity. A large sample of adults (n ϭ 500) completed 3 divergent thinking tasks and immediately after provided general ratings of their responses' creativity. External judges independently rated creativity of all generated responses. Expert-rated creativity was positively linked to participants' creativity self-ratings, yet negatively related to participants' intelligence. More important, creativity and intelligence interacted with each other: self-ratings of creativity corresponded with experts' assessment among more intelligent people, whereas people with lower intelligence overestimated the creativity of their ideas, especially when these ideas were less creative. Thus, a clear effect of metacognitive accuracy was observed among participants with higher intelligence. We discuss the results in the light of potential mechanisms that analytical and creative skills may play for CMC.

This exploratory study aims at integrating the psychometric approach to studying creativity with an eye-tracking methodology and thinking-aloud protocols to potentially untangle the nuances of the creative process. Wearing eye-tracking glasses, one hundred adults solved a drawing creativity test – The Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP) – and provided spontaneous comments during this process. Indices of visual activity collected during the eye-tracking phase explained a substantial amount of variance in psychometric scores obtained in the test. More importantly, however, clear signs of methodological synergy were observed when all three sources (psychometrics, eye-tracking, and coded thinking-aloud statements) were integrated. The findings illustrate benefits of using a blended methodology for a more insightful analysis of creative processes, including creative learning and creative problem-solving.

People differ in how they define creativity. Some people see it as malleable and possible to be developed (so-called growth mindset). Others view creativity as a stable and largely unchangeable characteristic (fixed mindset). In this article, we explore whether and to what extent creative mindsets change when everyday (little-c) or eminent (Big-C) creativity categories are experimentally activated by having participants (N = 501) read short descriptions of everyday and eminent creativity. Consistent with our predictions, thinking about renowned creators (the Big-C condition) led participants to exhibit stronger fixed beliefs compared to when they read descriptions of less prominent, little-c creativity. A reversed pattern was observed in the case of growth mindsets. Specifically, growth mindsets increased when little-c creativity was activated but decreased in the Big-C condition. We discuss implications of our findings for theory, research, and practice.

This paper presents a meta-analysis of the links between intelligence test scores and creative achievement. A three-level meta-analysis of 117 correlation coefficients from 30 studies found a correlation of r = .16 (95% CI: .12, .19), closely mirroring previous meta-analytic findings. The estimated effects were stronger for overall creative achievement and achievement in scientific domains than for correlations between intelligence scores and creative achievement in the arts and everyday creativity. No signs of publication bias were found. We discuss theoretical implications and provide recommendations for future studies.