Creativity or creativities: A study of domain generality and specificity

A series of studies investigated domain generality and specificity in creativity. Preliminary studies developed behavior report measures based on act-frequency and life-space approaches. The main studies examined two aspects of generality and specificity in creativity. A first group of studies analyzed the structure of creative behavior and the second group of studies concerned personality correlates of creativity. Dimensions of creative behavior were identified in a factor analysis of behavior reports and referred to creative life-style, arts, and intellectual achievement. Moreover, these dimensions were replicated in college students and professional adults. Groups of individuals with similar patterns of behavior were identified in a cluster analysis and described as conventional, everyday creative, artist, scholar, and renaissance people. A systems approach to personality was employed to select creativity relevant traits based on prior research and theories of creativity. Selected traits concerned global personality, emotions and motivation, cognition, social expression, and self-regulation. Creative behaviors were related to multiple areas in personality, which supported conceptions of creativity as a syndrome requiring multiple resources in the person (Amabile, 1996; Mumford & Gustafson, 1988; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). Regression and discriminant function analyses showed that it was possible to identify both traits general to different dimensions and patterns in creativity and traits that are specific to one dimension or pattern in creative behavior

Emotion regulation strategies and mental health symptoms during COVID-19 : the mediating role of insomnia

Objectives: COVID-19 has become a major source of stress for people around the world. Stressful life events play a role in the pathogenesis of sleep disorders such as insomnia which is considered a risk factor for anxiety and depression. Emotion regulation is an important factor linked with sleep and mental health problems. Therefore, the main goal of the present study was to examine whether insomnia could constitute a media tion mechanism that explains the relationship between emotion regulation strategies (rumination, reappraisal, suppression) and stress-induced mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Material and Methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted among young (M±SD 24.8±2.24) individuals (N = 281, 85.4% women) during the time of the third wave of infections in Poland. Data were collected by means of self report questionnaires, including the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire; Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire; Athens Insomnia Scale; Depres sion, Anxiety and Stress Scale. The direct and indirect effects of emotion regulation strategies on depression, anxiety, and stress were calculated using a bootstrap estimation technique. Results: All analyzed indirect effects were significant. The results show that insomnia mediates the relationships between all 3 emotion regulation strategies and stress, anxiety and depression. Conclusions: The presented results shed the light on the role of in somnia on the relationships between emotion regulation strategies and emotional states experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the present study suggests that educational and therapeutic interventions aimed at improving emotion regulation might be useful for improving symptoms of insomnia and, through it, symptoms of affective disorders

Editorial: Creativity and Innovation in Times of Crisis (COVID-19)

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 has brought the world society, economy and people\u27s daily lives into a crisis. At the time we are writing the editorial, this crisis has been accompanying us for almost 2 years and will still have far-reaching consequences beyond the spread of the disease. The focus of the current Research Topic is the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on creativity and innovation and vice versa, as well as their relationship to resilience and coping. We are pleased to have received many submissions from authors representing different disciplines and countries. Through rigorous reviews, 34 articles contributed by 131 authors from 12 different countries were accepted. Articles include both theoretical papers and empirical studies involving samples from almost one hundred different countries and regions. These papers discuss a variety of aspects of creativity and innovation under the COVID-19 crisis situations which can be categorized into three major themes: • The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on creativity and innovation • The role of creativity in dealing with COVID-19 • Creative and innovative responses in times of COVID-19 In this Editorial, we give a brief introduction to the papers around these three themes. Readers are recommended to refer to the original papers to obtain more details about the wonderful theories or studies

Breadth of Emotion Vocabulary in Middle Schoolers

How many different emotion words can middle schoolers think of to describe major categories of emotional experiences? While most existing ability tests of emotion understanding and vocabulary are based on word recognition, the goal of this study was to assess prompted emotion word generation. Students in 5th-8th grades (N=236) were asked to list all feeling words they can think of to describe five major emotion groups (happiness, calm, sadness, anger and nervousness). They also completed an ability measure of emotion understanding, the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test – Youth Version (MSCEIT-YV). When asked to generate emotion descriptors, students produced a range of responses, from specific target emotion words (e.g., joy and pleasure describing the ‘happy’ category), to descriptors of closely associated emotions (e.g., love and pride describing the ‘happy category), to non-emotion descriptors (e.g., laughing or dancing describing the ‘happy’ category). Students produced 1472 unique responses (M=27.3, SD=10.9), with target emotion responses accounting for 22.4 % of responses (M=12.23, SD=4.8). Most target emotion responses were generated for the happiness-related feelings (54 different terms), and the fewest for calm-related feelings (25 terms). Older students and girls performed better on both measures of emotion understanding. Positive correlations were found between the scores on MSCEIT-YV scale and the overall number of target emotion responses, r=.25, p\u3c.01, as well as the overall number of associated emotion responses, r=.19, p\u3c.01. This study offers an important approach to learning about emotion vocabulary by providing an insight into emotion word generation among early adolescents

Breadth of emotion vocabulary in early adolescence

Studies of emotion vocabulary and understanding typically focus on early childhood. Yet, emotion abilities continue to develop into adolescence, making it an important and underinvestigated area of research. This study presents evidence that adolescents’ emotion vocabulary undergoes active development, becomes more broad and sophisticated, varies by gender, and is not captured adequately by recognition-based approaches. Adolescents were asked to generate emotion words for five emotion categories—happy, relaxed, angry, sad, and nervous. Responses included emotion words (e.g., joyous) and nonemotion terms such as metaphors (e.g., boiling), social experiences (e.g., underappreciated), and personality traits (e.g., shy). Girls generated significantly more responses than boys. Older adolescents generated significantly more emotion words (e.g., describing someone who is happy as joyful, exuberant or ecstatic), while younger adolescents produced more nonemotion responses (e.g., describing someone who is happy as smiley, friendly, or full of life). Students’ grade, total number of responses they produced, and performance on the recognition test of emotion understanding predicted their emotion vocabulary

Intended persistence:Comparing academic and creative challenges in high school

How do high school students approach academic and creative challenges? This study compares the content of academic and creative challenges for 190 high school students, and examines students’ intentions to persist. Students reported experiencing academic and creative challenges in different areas: academic challenges were described primarily in math/science and English, with themes related to time management and striving to improve, while creative challenges were described overwhelmingly in art and music and concerned problem solving difficulties. Students reported more interest and intention to persist in the creative than academic challenges. Interest was the strongest predictor of persistence across both academic and creative challenges. The divergent perceptions of creative and academic challenges suggest that capitalizing on the creative elements of academic assignments could boost student interest and subsequent persistence

Not so black and white: Memory for ambiguous group members.

Exponential increases in multiracial identities, expected over the next century, create a conundrum for perceivers accustomed to classifying people as their own- or other-race. The current research examines how perceivers resolve this dilemma with regard to the own-race bias. The authors hypothesized that perceivers are not motivated to include ambiguous-race individuals in the in-group and therefore have some difficulty remembering these individuals. Both racially ambiguous and other-race faces were misremembered more often than own-race faces (Study 1), though memory for ambiguous faces was improved among perceivers motivated to include biracial individuals in the in-group (Study 2). Racial labels assigned to racially ambiguous faces determined memory for these faces, suggesting that uncertainty provides the motivational context for discounting ambiguous faces in memory (Study 3). Finally, an inclusion motivation fostered cognitive associations between racially ambiguous faces and the in-group. Moreover, the extent to which perceivers associated racially ambiguous faces with the in-group predicted memory for ambiguous faces and accounted for the impact of motivation on memory (Study 4). Thus, memory for biracial individuals seems to involve a flexible person construal process shaped by motivational factors

Artificial Intelligence & Creativity: A Manifesto for Collaboration

With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), the field of creativity faces new opportunities and challenges. This manifesto explores several scenarios of human–machine collaboration on creative tasks and proposes “fundamental laws of generative AI” to reinforce the responsible and ethical use of AI in the creativity field. Four scenarios are proposed and discussed: “Co-Cre-AI-tion,” “Organic,” “Plagiarism 3.0,” and “Shut down,” each illustrating different possible futures based on the collaboration between humans and machines. In addition, we have incorporated an AI-generated manifesto that also highlights important themes, ranging from accessibility and ethics to cultural sensitivity. The fundamental laws proposed aim to prevent AIs from generating harmful content and competing directly with humans. Creating labels and laws are also highlighted to ensure responsible use of AIs. The positive future of creativity and AI lies in a harmonious collaboration that can benefit everyone, potentially leading to a new level of creative productivity respecting ethical considerations and human values during the creative process