How Groups Generate Creative Ideas? Interview with Roni Reiter-Palmon

In the interview with Roni Reiter-Palmon, one of most prolific creativity researchers, we discuss her career, main areas of research interest, chosen research methods and share her thoughts about the future of research on creativity and effectiveness in scientific work.

Creative Personal Identity and Creative Mindsets, and Their Implications for Creative Potential and Metacognition: A Latent Variable and a Latent Class Approach

The amount of attention given to creative beliefs has increased in recent years. This article suggests that the selection of one´s best ideas from a set of self-generated alternatives should be included as an indicator of metacognition; something known as creative metacognition accuracy. The present investigation examined the role of creative mindsets and creative personal identity on the selection of one´s best idea, creative self-efficacy, and potential, under two conceptualizations of these beliefs: latent variables and latent classes. College business students completed a battery of questionnaires assessing creative mindsets, creative personal identity, and creative self-efficacy. In addition, participants completed a divergent thinking task involving improvement of smartphones an-d were asked to choose their best idea. Two independent judges also selected the best idea from participants’ set of self-generated ideas. Under the latent class conceptualization, a class with high levels of growth mindset and creative personal identity, and low levels of a fixed mindset showed higher levels of accurate idea selection and creative self-efficacy than the rest of the classes. Similarly, under the latent variable conceptualization, creative personal identity had a positive influence on accurate idea selection and creative self-efficacy.

Collaborative Musical Creativity between Students and Adults: The Sonorous Paella

While creativity is a key element of contemporary curriculum frameworks around the world, it is still insufficiently fostered in formal education settings. This study analyzes a project for collaborative musical creativity, entitled The Sonorous Paella. Participants (N = 12) were eight Year 4 secondary students, two professional musicians, an artist-in-residence, and a music teacher. Drawing on a graphic musical score, the participants worked together for 1.5 months to produce a group composition and performance. They were provided with various sound producers (instruments, everyday objects, technological devices) and were encouraged to flexibly utilize the physical space to maximize collaborative participation. Field notes and pictures taken during working sessions and rehearsals, audio recordings from the final concert, and individual interviews with all participants were qualitatively analyzed. In response to the three study objectives, we conclude that: (1) the design of this collaborative project was consistent with current research-based creativity discourses; (2) drawing on the quality and originality of the final concert, the project fostered the musical creativity of the group; and (3) participants’ perceptions of and opinions about their creativity learning processes were unanimously positive. Our final aim is to inspire music teachers in designing curriculum units that foster collaborative musical creativity.

Visual Art Gifted Child in Pre-School and Early School Years

Visual arts media in pre-school and early school years and development of children’s drawing are well researched. However, when one considers that children are endowed with a talent for visual arts, the research is not as comprehensive and clear-cut. The signs of freedom of expression and imagination, intuitiveness and originality, an inclination to individual work, high sensitivity, and other indicators begin to show soon after visual art gifted (VAG) children enter the representative stages of visual arts. This article was based on a longitudinal case study that was carried out to show some aspects of the functioning of a VAG child in pre-school and early school years and to make some suggestions on how to consider the needs of VAG children.

“The Story is My Life”: Bridging Symbol to Self in a Novel Creative and Reflective Writing Task

This article describes the development and testing of a novel creative and reflective writing task. Following the rationale of sand-tray and play therapies, participants were asked to meaningfully incorporate four objects from a randomly generated matrix of options into a creative short story. They then composed a second story that incorporated four possessions from home associated with important memories. Afterwards, participants produced interpretive statements or reflections on what the stories meant to them. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted based on narrative data from 15 young adult participants in Canada. Our goals were to: (a) explore the extent to which object familiarity was associated with qualitative differences in stories and interpretations, and (b) investigate for connections between features of participants’ stories and depth of interpretation. Analysis of creative stories resulted in a scheme of four response categories with ten subcategories. Participants’ interpretations of their own stories were coded based on self-described sources of inspiration, such as critical life episodes or popular media. Results are accompanied with excerpts of participants’ stories and reflections, and percentage comparisons are reported. Findings are presented in dialogue with established interpretive frameworks originating in depth psychology. Manipulation of object familiarity resulted in demonstrable differences at the levels of word length, point of view, narrative forms and features, self-disclosure, and reflection. Use of familiar objects in such a task appears to be a largely untapped resource that shows promise as a route to insight.

Spreading one’s Wings, Milestones, Deus ex Machina: Self-creation as a Process of Changing Your Life with the Examples of Narrations Provided by Women

This paper presents narrative-biographic research conducted with participation of women who declare that they have introduced important changes into their lives. The qualitative data was collected using narrative interviews as well as a tool to examine changes in the biographic perspective; namely, Line of life. In the presented paper, the authors reconstructed biographical self-creation, meaning the ways of life in which important changes are a central category of a story about life. The authors reconstruct three different ways of narrators’ lives – “spreading one’s wings,” “milestones,” “deus ex machina,” and a case study that describes the process of self-creation and introduction of important changes into a life in more detail.

Assessing Creativity from the Viewpoint of Law

Originality is the main criterion for creating an author’s work. However, authors are often influenced by previous works of other authors that they have seen, heard or experienced. The aim of this study is to identify criteria for determining creativity in authors’ works, trying to find and define the difference between accidental influence and deliberate misappropriation or plagiarism. This article does not claim an in-depth analysis of creativity and originality from a social science perspective. It is more a scientific essay on creativity from a law science point of view, so that further research can be carried out in the field of authorship and its determination. In order to find an answer to the research question (Where does influence end and plagiarism begin?), theoretical framework and knowledge about creativity were observed, international and national laws were studied, case law from different countries was researched, materials of international conferences were examined, as well as information accessible on the Internet on copyright issues was observed. The research used a descriptive method to investigate the works of various researchers on the types of mutual influence, regulatory framework and court practice in this field, as well as a grammatical, systemic, teleological, and historical interpretation of legal norms to assess the inadequacy of existing legal norms and propose the necessary amendments in legislative enactments. The main result of this study is understanding that the factor of consciousness or subconscious forms the main criteria. If the influence is unintentional, the copyright of the original work is not infringed, but if repetition is intentional, when it goes beyond originality, the new work is considered to be an appropriation of authorship or plagiarism.

Creativity in Humans, Robots, Humbots

This paper examines three ways that robots can interface with creativity. In particular, social robots which are designed to interact with humans are examined. In the first mode, human creativity can be supported by social robots. In a second mode, social robots can be creative agents and humans serve to support robot’s productions. In the third and final mode, there is complementary action in creative work, which may be collaborative co-creation or a division of labor in creative projects. Illustrative examples are provided and key issues for further discussion are raised.

Creativity in Virtual Teams: A Review and Agenda for Future Research

As communication technology capabilities have improved and the globalization of the workforce has resulted in distributed teams, organizations have been shifting towards virtual teams and virtual meetings over the last decade. This trend has been accelerated with current work-from-home orders due to COVID-19. Even though virtual collaboration has, in the past, been the focus of multiple studies, there are some surprising gaps in our knowledge. For instance, there are few empirical studies examining the impact of virtual devices and tools on creative problem-solving. While there is a substantial body of research on electronic brainstorming and the use of virtual tools for idea generation, less is known about earlier processes such as problem construction or later processes such as idea evaluation and idea selection. Furthermore, as a dynamic process, creativity and innovation is heavily influenced by the people engaged in the process and their collaborative environment, yet there is a gap in the literature regarding the type of virtual tools used in the process (i.e., audio + video vs. audio alone, or the use of file-sharing technologies). In this paper, we will review the current literature on virtual teams, virtual meetings, and creativity. We will then explore theoretical frameworks such as media richness theory that can help us understand how virtuality and virtual tools may influence team creativity across the dynamic range of the creative problem-solving process. Finally, given the limited research in the domain of virtual team creativity we provide questions to help guide future research. Research questions will help identify those areas where virtual teams may be beneficial for creativity and areas where virtual teams may be likely to perform less effectively on creative tasks.

Self-Regulation in Creative Learning: Agentic Perspective

Creativity is agentic, and so is learning. People create and learn new things most effectively when they are convinced that they can respond appropriately to the task (creative confidence) and value the activity at hand. This investigation explores the role of the relatively understudied aspect of creative agency: self-regulatory strategies. In a longitudinal study, we tested whether self-regulation strategies, previously found to be essential drivers of academic achievement and learning in general (rehearsal, elaboration, critical thinking, and metacognition), might also support creativity in learning. Specifically, we tested sequential mediation, where creative confidence and self-regulation longitudinally mediated the relationship between creative potential (divergent thinking) and effective application of creative skills to solve problems embedded in school subjects. Our findings confirm that self-regulatory strategies predict providing creative solutions to school tasks (a proxy of creative learning) and mediate the relationship between divergent thinking, creative confidence, and creative learning.