Psychological Differentiation and Mobility as Related to Creativity

Abstract

To study the relationship of psychological differentiation and creativity while taking into account the dimension of mobility and the association between differentiation and mobility, 186 male undergraduates were given the Embedded Figures Test and human figure drawings in order to assess psychological differentiation. Also, mobility, the ability to shift on demand from conventional, common modes of thought to unusual, less regulated thinking, was measured by means of word association and object sorting. The Revised Biographical Inventory and the Remote Associates Test assessed creativity. Results showed a tendency for more differentiated individuals to be more mobile. Performance on the remote associates was consistently related to the differentiation measure as predicted as were scores on human drawings. Over-all, creativity was more closely related to differentiation than was mobility. The data did not support the predicted interaction between psychological differentiation and creativity with mobility as a moderator variable.

The Relationship of Mobility‐Fixity To Creativity Formal Reasoning and Intelligence

“…(It is interesting to note that Bloomberg (I971) suggests the replication of his study on these lines). Del Gaudio (1976) also came to a similar conclusion by pointing out that, '...studies in this area have employed only one measure of psychological differentiation, most often the Embedded Figures Test or the Rod and Frame Test A limitation of this approach is that the selected differentiation measure may not represent the breadth of the psychological differentiation dimension sufficiently to demonstrate its relationship to creativity'. (p.832).…”

“…(p.832). Del Gaudio (1976) reported a significant correlation between mobility (Object Sorting Test of Clayton and Jackson, 1961) and creativity (Remote Associates Test by Mednickand Mednick, 1967) and field independence (Embedded Figures Test and Human Figure Drawings by Witkin, et al 1962). However, no significant correlation was obtained when the Word Association Test (Palermo and Jenkins, 1964) was used as a measure of mobility.…”

Understanding, Measuring, and Enhancing Individual Creative Problem-Solving Efforts

“…Top scorers on the Remote Associates Test had the widest span of attention and thought along multiple lines, and scientists rated more creative sought information from a wide range of sources and fields (Kasperson, 1978;Mendelsohn, 1976). Flexible and field-independent thinking (mobility and differentiation) predicted scores on varied creativity measures (Baker-Sennett & Ceci, 1996;Barron & Harrington, 1981;Brophy, 1968b;Del Gaudio, 1976;Noppe, 1985;Noppe & Gallagher, 1977). Children who tested as field independent showed fantasy, imagination, and expression in their play (Saracho, 1992).…”

“…Research about the traits of creative people focused on divergent thinkers (e.g., Barron & Harrington, 1981;Del Gaudio, 1976;Noppe & Gallagher, 1977). Persons who did best on exercises and problems that needed divergent thought had more differentiated and remotely associated ideas, used more intuitive thought, and wanted to know about a wider range of subjects than persons who performed best on tasks using convergent thought.…”