Intuition as an Influence on Creative Problem-Solving: The Effects of Intuition, Positive Affect, and Training

Abstract

Intuition may be a critical component of creative thought. To test this hypothesis, a measure of individual differences in intuition was developed. After completing this measure, 320undergraduates were asked to work on a domain relevant creative problem-solving task under conditions where positive and neutral affect were induced and they were exposed to one of three different types of training. It was found that intuitive people produced more creative problem solutions, but that positive affect and training offset the advantage intuitive people showed in creative problem-solving. The implications of these findings for understanding the nature of intuition, and its role in creative problem-solving, are discussed. Intuition 3Intuition as an Influence on Creative Problem-Solving:The Effects of Intuition, Positive Affect, and TrainingCreative thought is a complex, elusive, construct (Mumford & Gustafson, 1988). Over the years, as we have made progress in our understanding of creative thought (e.g. Brophy, 1988;Scott, Lonergan, & Mumford, 2005;Ward, Patterson, & Sifonis, 2004), scholars have begun to ask new questions about the attributes of people that might contribute to creative problemsolving. The attributes considered in these studies have included errors (Mumford, Blair, Dailey, Leritz, & Osburn, 2006), mental models (Johnson-Laird, 1983), insight (Sternberg & Davidson, 1995), and intuition (Policastro, 1995). Although all of these attributes might influence creative problem-solving, and eventual creative achievement, intuition appears to be especially important (Bowers, 1987;Perkins, 1992).One illustration of the potential impact of intuition on creative problem-solving and creative achievement may be found in Gardner and Nemirovsky, (1991). They conducted an indepth case study of two emergent creators -Georg Cantor, a mathematician and Sigmund Freud, a psychologist. They found that in the identification of unconscious local coherences in complex fields, their definition of intuition was a key influence of the contributions made by both these scholars. Other investigators, including Agor (1989), Bastick (1982), and Simonton (1980, have all also argued that intuition may be integral to creative problem-solving in the arts, life sciences, and management.Although there is reason to suspect that intuition might play a critical role in creative thought, and ultimately creative achievement, direct evidence demonstrating the impact of intuition on creative problem-solving is not available (Shirley & Langan-Fox, 1996). Moreover, the cognitive operations that make intuition possible remain unclear (Langan-Fox & Shirley, Intuition 4 2003;Policastro, 1995). With these points in mind, our intent in the present study was two-fold.First, we hoped to show that intuition was related to creative problem-solving. Second, we hoped to examine the mechanisms giving rise to intuition -specifically examining the role of positive affect and training. IntuitionIntuition has been defined in different ways by various investi...

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