Highly engaged but burned-out: intra-individual profiles in the US workforce

Purpose: This study used the job demands-resources model to investigate intraindividual engagement–burnout profiles, and demands–resources profiles. Methodology: A representative sample of the U.S. workforce was surveyed online. Latent profile analysis (LPA) and configural frequency analysis examined intra-individual profiles and their inter-relations. Findings: A negative inter-individual correlation between engagement and burnout suggested that burnout tends to be lower when engagement is high, but intra-individual analyses identified both aligned engagement–burnout profiles (high, moderate, and low on both variables), and discrepant profiles (high engagement–low burnout; high burnout–low engagement). High engagement and burnout co-occurred in 18.8% of workers. These workers reported strong mixed (positive and negative) emotions and intended to leave their organization. Another LPA identified three demands–resources profiles: (1) low demands–low resources, but moderate self-efficacy, (2) low workload and bureaucracy demands but moderate information processing demands–high resources, and (3) high demands–high resources. Workers with high engagement–high burnout profiles often reported high demands– high resources profiles. In contrast, workers with high engagement–low burnout profiles often reported profiles of high resources, moderate information processing demands, and low other demands. Originality/value: This study examined the intersection of intra-individual engagement–burnout profiles and demands–resources profiles. Previous studies examined only one of these sides or relied on inter-individual analyses. Interestingly, many employees appear to be optimally engaged while they are burned-out and considering to leave their job

A Standardised Procedure for Evaluating Creative Systems: Computational Creativity Evaluation Based on What it is to be Creative

Computational creativity is a flourishing research area, with a variety of creative systems being produced and developed. Creativity evaluation has not kept pace with system development with an evident lack of systematic evaluation of the creativity of these systems in the literature. This is partially due to difficulties in defining what it means for a computer to be creative; indeed, there is no consensus on this for human creativity, let alone its computational equivalent. This paper proposes a Standardised Procedure for Evaluating Creative Systems (SPECS). SPECS is a three-step process: stating what it means for a particular computational system to be creative, deriving and performing tests based on these statements. To assist this process, the paper offers a collection of key components of creativity, identified empirically from discussions of human and computational creativity. Using this approach, the SPECS methodology is demonstrated through a comparative case study evaluating computational creativity systems that improvise music

The mediating role of self/everyday creativity and depression on the relationship between creative personality traits and problematic social media use among emerging adults

Personality is one of the important contributory factors in the development of problematic technology use. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the direct and indirect associations of creative personality traits with problematic social media use via self/everyday creativity, depression, and loneliness. A total of 460 Turkish emerging adults aged between 18 and 26 years (61% female) were surveyed. Findings indicated that (i) task-orientedness was indirectly associated with problematic social media use via self/everyday creativity, (ii) self-confidence was directly and indirectly associated with problematic social media use via self/everyday creativity and depression, (iii) risk-taking was indirectly associated with problematic social media use via depression, and (iv) self/everyday creativity and depression were directly associated with problematic social media use. The present study is the first to suggest that creative personality traits (i.e., task-orientedness, self-confidence, and risk-taking) and self/everyday creativity are associated with problematic social media use and that these factors should be taken into account when considering the etiology of problematic social media use

Modelling creativity: identifying key components through a corpus-based approach

Creativity is a complex, multi-faceted concept encompassing a variety of related aspects, abilities, properties and behaviours. If we wish to study creativity scientifically, then a tractable and well-articulated model of creativity is required. Such a model would be of great value to researchers investigating the nature of creativity and in particular, those concerned with the evaluation of creative practice. This paper describes a unique approach to developing a suitable model of how creative behaviour emerges that is based on the words people use to describe the concept. Using techniques from the field of statistical natural language processing, we identify a collection of fourteen key components of creativity through an analysis of a corpus of academic papers on the topic. Words are identified which appear significantly often in connection with discussions of the concept. Using a measure of lexical similarity to help cluster these words, a number of distinct themes emerge, which collectively contribute to a comprehensive and multi-perspective model of creativity. The components provide an ontology of creativity: a set of building blocks which can be used to model creative practice in a variety of domains. The components have been employed in two case studies to evaluate the creativity of computational systems and have proven useful in articulating achievements of this work and directions for further research

Non-verbal IQ Gains from Relational Operant Training Explain Variance in Educational Attainment: An Active-Controlled Feasibility Study

Research suggests that training relational operant patterns of behavior can lead to increases in general cognitive ability and educational outcomes. Most studies to date have been under-powered and included proxy measures of educational attainment. We attempted to extend previous findings with increased experimental control in younger children (aged 6.9–10.1 years). Participants (N = 49) were assigned to either a relational training or chess control group. Over 5 months, teachers assigned class time to complete either relational training or play chess. Those who were assigned relational training gained 8.9 non-verbal IQ (NVIQ) points, while those in the control condition recorded no gains (dppc2 = .99). Regression analyses revealed that post-training NVIQ predicted reading test scores (conducted approximately 1 month later) over and above baseline NVIQ in the experimental condition only, consistent with what we might expect in a full test of far transfer towards educational outcomes

Emotional intelligence and emotional creativity

Three studies examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and emotional creativity (EC) and whether each construct was predictive of creative behavior. It was hypothesized that the relationship between EI and EC corresponds to the relationship between cognitive intelligence and creative ability. Therefore, EI and EC were expected to be two distinct sets of abilities. Intercorrelations and confirmatory factor analyses supported the hypothesis. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that EC, but not EI, would correlate with behavioral creativity. Self‐report measures of EC significantly correlated with laboratory and self‐reported creativity measures in both studies, while ability measures of EC only correlated with self‐reported artistic activity. EI was uncorrelated with creative behavior

Scaffolding Positive Creativity in Secondary School Students

Guided by research in creativity studies, moral development, and positive youth development, this paper proposes four principles to guide education toward positive creativity: (1) building prosocial motivation, (2) building emotion skills to build persistence, (3) building an understanding of creativity as dynamic, and (4) building self-concept of positive creativity. To illustrate applying these theoretically derived principles to teaching positive creativity, we provide examples from the inspirED program for secondary school students, which aims to build a more positive social and emotional climate through student-led creative projects. The four phases of the inspirED program—Assess the problems, Brainstorm ideas, Complete a project, and Debrief the project’s impact—are mapped onto the four principles of teaching for positive creativity