2013 AP Month References, Resources and Research

Parenting Creatively: The (H)eart of Parenting

Benefits of Creativity

Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health-y

TB Kashdan, J Rottenberg – Clinical psychology review, 2010 – Elsevier

Traditionally, positive emotions and thoughts, strengths, and the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for belonging, competence, and autonomy have been seen as the cornerstones of psychological health. Psychological flexibility spans a wide range of human abilities to: recognize and adapt to various situational demands; shift mindsets or behavioral repertoires when these strategies compromise personal or social functioning; maintain balance among important life domains; and be aware, open, and committed to behaviors that are congruent with deeply held values. In many forms of psychopathology, these flexibility processes are absent. In hopes of creating a more coherent understanding, we synthesize work in emotion regulation, mindfulness and acceptance, social and personality psychology, and neuropsychology.

The relationship between innovation and subjective wellbeing

P Dolan, R Metcalfe – Research policy, 2012 – Elsevier

Innovation should improve people’s lives. The links made between innovation and subjective wellbeing (SWB) have, however, rarely been made. We use a representative survey of the British population and new primary data to explore the relationship between innovation and SWB. We show that creativity and SWB are correlated. This applies to questions related to self-reported creativity and for working in creative environments.

Understanding individual compassion in organizations: the role of appraisals and psychological flexibility-y

P Atkins, S Parker – Academy of Management Review, 2011 – amr.aom.org

We develop an expanded model of the components of compassionate responding that includes noticing, appraising, feeling, and acting. Specifically, mindfulness processes support the capacity to be compassionate while values processes motivate effort to engage in compassionate action.

Creativity and ethics: The relationship of creative and ethical problem-solving

MD Mumford, EP Waples, AL Antes… – Creativity research …, 2010 – Taylor & Francis

Students of creativity have long been interested in the relationship between creativity and deviant behaviors such as criminality, mental disease, and unethical behavior. In this study we wished to examine the relationship between creative thinking skills and ethical decision-making among scientists.

Cognition: Creative versus Dogmatic

J Bornstein – The Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology, 2012 – Wiley Online Library

Creative thinking, the opposite of dog- matism, can be described as flexible, adaptive, abstract, and multidimensional. …Cognitive complexity can be linked to creative thinking. …

Many people find that one of the most serious blocks to resolving a problem through negotiation, mediation, or other conflict resolution processes is dogmatic or black-and-white thinking. Conflict resolution practitioners refer to the need for parties to use “and” rather than “either/or” logic to move beyond rigid adherence to positions, to understand the needs and concerns of the other, to generate creative options together, and to shape integrative solutions. That is, a more complex, flexible, dialectical, and creative form of thinking is required to reach solutions to conflict that are inclusive of the needs of all parties.

Creativity related to parenting

Parenting as a Creative Collaboration: A Transpersonal Approach

D Netzer, M Brady – Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 2009 – Taylor & Francis

This article discusses the authors’ dialogue and collaborative writing regarding their professional views on the subject of parenting. The authors, one with a background in neuroscience and the other with a background in art therapy, propose that the metaphorical meaning of parenting as a creative process of conception, gestation, birth, and nurturance can be extended beyond parent-child dynamics. This approach facilitates growth and healing for both parents and children through a collaborative relationship that emphasizes transpersonal values such as creativity and interconnectedness.

Reciprocal Associations between Parenting Challenges and Parents’ Personality Development in Young and Middle Adulthood

R Hutteman, W Bleidorn, G Keresteš, I Brković… – European journal of …, 2013 – bib.irb.hr

Having children affects many aspects of people’s lives. However, it remains unclear to what degree the challenges that come along with having children are associated with parents’ personality development. We addressed this question in two studies by investigating the relationship between parenting challenges and personality development in mothers of new-borns (Study 1, N = 556) and the reciprocal associations between (mastering) parenting challenges and personality development in parents of adolescents (Study 2, N = 548 mothers and 460 fathers). Mastering parenting challenges in the form of high parenting self-efficacy, was found to be associated with increases in Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability, and vice versa. In sum, our results suggest that mastering the challenges associated with the social role of parenthood is one of the mechanisms underlying personality development in young and middle adulthood.

The effects of implicit and explicit security priming on creative problem solving

M Mikulincer, PR Shaver, E Rom – Cognition and Emotion, 2011 – Taylor & Francis

According to our model of attachment dynamics in adulthood (Mikulincer & Shaver,2007a), a sense of attachment security allows a redistribution of attention and other resources, away from self-protection and toward attractive attachment-unrelated activities, including exploration, learning, and creative behaviour. This

idea and our findings imply that creative problem solving is a somewhat effortful process that requires attentional and cognitive resources and can be interfered with by worries and anxieties as well as other emotional and cognitive demands.

Creativity in Children

Creativity in children as function of parent occupation and socio-economic status-y

JP Rothe, SU Ugale – International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 2011 – irjs.info

Creativity in children as function of parent occupation and socio-economic status was not proved.

The Relationship Between Parenting Styles and Creativity in a Sample of Jamaican Children

DD Fearon, D Copeland, TF Saxon – Creativity Research Journal, 2013 – Taylor & Francis

Results revealed that the authoritarian style of parenting is the most salient predictor of creativity in children and that this relationship was negative. Because creativity is linked to critical thinking, the implications of this study is especially pertinent to the Jamaican population, which is noted for its authoritarian style of parenting.

Parenting Style, Perfectionism, and Creativity in High-Ability and High-Achieving Young Adults

AL Miller, AD Lambert… – Journal for the Education …, 2012 – jeg.sagepub.com

The current study explores the potential relationships among perceived parenting style, perfectionism, and creativity in a high-ability and high-achieving young adult population. Correlations suggested positive relationships between (a) permissive parenting style and creativity and (b) authoritarian parenting style and socially prescribed perfectionism. Furthermore, negative relationships were also found between authoritarian parenting style and creativity.

The Effect of Parenting Styles and Personality on Primary School Children’s Social Creativity and Social Preferences

GUCFANCZ DongjingYANG… – Chinese Journal of …, 2012 – en.cnki.com.cn

Improving parenting styles and developing children’s extroversion and passion for problem-solving can help to improve their social creativity and peer status.

Observing young children’s creative thinking: engagement, involvement and persistence

S Robson, V Rowe – International Journal of Early Years Education, 2012 – Taylor & Francis

Results showed that activities such as gardening and construction were as valuable for supporting creative thinking as ones traditionally associated with creativity, for example, music and painting. Outdoor play of all kinds and socio-dramatic play were particularly effective contexts. All adults played a significant role in facilitating children’s initial engagement in activities, and at supporting their speculative thinking and use of prior knowledge. Teachers were often more successful than other adults in supporting the acquisition of new knowledge. Child-initiated activities featured the highest levels of involvement, and were associated with trying out and analysing ideas, flexibility and originality, imagining and hypothesising. This was particularly evident in group or pair play. Children were also more persistent in child-initiated activities. Evidence of risk-taking behaviour was low, although more apparent in child-initiated activities than adult-initiated activities, or activities in which adults were present.

[PDF] Relationship among Creativity, Motivation and Creative Home Environment of Young Children-y

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships among creativity, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and creative home environment. The results of this study were as follows: First, there were significant positive relationships between the intrinsic motivation and the creative personality of the young children but there were no statistically significant relations between the intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and the creative thinking ability. Second, the intrinsic-high/extrinsic-high motivation group was higher than any other types of motivation groups in creative personality. Third, there were significant relationships between the creative thinking ability and creative personality with the creative home environment.

The relationship between creativity and behavior problems among underachieving elementary and high school students

KH Kim, J VanTassel-Baska – Creativity Research Journal, 2010 – Taylor & Francis

The results indicated that, among underachievers, there is a relationship between behavioral problems and students’ scores on the 3 measures of creative potential. An understanding of these students and their behavior will help us promote creative students’ academic and lifelong success in classrooms.

Possibility Thinking: culminative studies of an evidence-based concept driving creativity?-y

A Craft, T Cremin, P Burnard, T Dragovic… – Education 3- …, 2012 – Taylor & Francis

The authors have, for some years, studied the concept of ‘possibility thinking’ (PT), or ‘what if’ and ‘as if’ thinking in children aged 3–11, which generates novelty – and the pedagogical strategies which foster it. They have argued, on the basis of previous qualitative studies, that ‘PT’ is at the core of creativity in education. The study reveals some features of PT in both sites (question-posing [Q-P], question-responding [Q-R], self-determination, intentional action, development, being imaginative, play/playfulness, immersion and innovation) to differing degrees of strength. Risk-taking was absent in both and a new feature, collaboration, evident in both.

Reciprocity between narrative, questioning and imagination in the early and primary years: examining the role of narrative in possibility thinking-y

T Cremin, K Chappell, A Craft – Thinking Skills and Creativity, 2012 – Elsevier

The new analysis reveals that narrative plays a foundational role in PT, and that reciprocal relationships exist between questioning, imagination and narrative, layered between children and adults.

Moods, emotions and creative thinking: a framework for teaching

DP Newton – Thinking Skills and Creativity, 2012 – Elsevier

When planning and teaching, attention is generally given to cognition while the effect of mood and emotion on cognition is ignored. But students are not emotionless thinkers and the effect can make a difference to their thought. This is particularly evident when attempting to foster creative thinking. This article draws on research to describe aspects of creative thought and problem-solving, moods and emotions, and some of their interactions.

The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking

KH Kim – Creativity Research Journal, 2011 – Taylor & Francis

The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was developed in 1966 and renormed five times: in 1974, 1984, 1990, 1998, and 2008. The total sample for all six normative samples included 272,599 kindergarten through 12th grade students and adults. Analysis of the normative data showed that creative thinking scores remained static or decreased, starting at sixth grade. Results also indicated that since 1990, even as IQ scores have risen, creative thinking scores have significantly decreased. The decrease for kindergartners through third graders was the most significant.

Factors Influencing Creativity

The dual pathway to creativity model: Creative ideation as a function of flexibility and persistence

BA Nijstad, CKW De Dreu, EF Rietzschel… – European Review of …, 2010 – Taylor & Francis

The dual pathway to creativity model argues that creativity—the generation of original and appropriate ideas—is a function of cognitive flexibility and cognitive persistence, and that dispositional or situational variables may influence creativity either through their effects on flexibility, on persistence, or both.

[PDF] Effects of Task Switching on Creativity Tests

C Roda, G Stojanov, D Kianfar – 2013 – ac.aup.fr

The results indicate that interruptions hinder creativity. However, the extent by which creativity is thwarted depends both on the creative activity considered and the quality of the task interrupting it. Unexpectedly, we found no evidence that interruptions may improve creativity but we believe that this effect may be possible under conditions that were not reflected by our experiment.

Incubation and creativity: Do something different

KJ Gilhooly, G Georgiou, U Devery – Thinking & Reasoning, 2012 – Taylor & Francis

The results supported a role for unconscious work during incubation periods in creative thinking tasks and did not support the hypotheses that incubation effects are due to selective forgetting or attention shifting.

Inspired by Distraction Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation-y

B Baird, J Smallwood, MD Mrazek, JWY Kam… – Psychological …, 2012 – pss.sagepub.com

These data suggest that engaging in simple external tasks that allow the mind to wander may facilitate creative problem solving.

[PDF] Does incubation enhance problem solving? A meta-analytic review-y

UN Sio, TC Ormerod – Psychological bulletin, 2009 – psy.cmu.edu

Although some researchers have reported increased solution rates after an incubation period

(i.e., a period of time in which a problem is set aside prior to further attempts to solve), others have failed

to find effects. The analysis examined the contributions of moderators such as problem type, presence of

solution-relevant or misleading cues, and lengths of preparation and incubation periods to incubation

effect sizes. The authors identified a positive incubation effect, with divergent thinking tasks benefiting

more than linguistic and visual insight tasks from incubation. Longer preparation periods gave a greater

incubation effect, whereas filling an incubation period with high cognitive demand tasks gave a smaller

incubation effect.

Rational versus intuitive problem solving: How thinking “off the beaten path” can stimulate creativity.

E Dane, M Baer, MG Pratt… – … , Creativity, and the Arts, 2011 – psycnet.apa.org

We compared the effects of rational versus intuitive problem solving on creativity. We argued that the relative effectiveness of these approaches depends upon an individual’s typical thinking style such that individuals will be more creative when they adopt a problem-solving approach that differs from their typical style of thinking (e.g., individuals who avoid rational thinking will exhibit higher creativity when they are instructed to rely on rational problem solving). In support of our hypothesis, we found that problem-solving approach and individual differences in thinking style interact such that creativity is highest when individuals use a nontypical problem-solving approach.

REM, not incubation, improves creativity by priming associative networks-y

DJ Cai, SA Mednick, EM Harrison… – Proceedings of the …, 2009 – National Acad Sciences

This study shows that compared with quiet rest and non-REM sleep, REM enhances the integration of unassociated information for creative problem solving, a process, we hypothesize, that is facilitated by cholinergic and noradrenergic neuromodulation during REM sleep.

Embodied metaphors and creative “acts”-y

AK Leung, S Kim, E Polman, LS Ong, L Qiu… – Psychological …, 2012 – pss.sagepub.com

Our findings from five studies revealed that both physical and psychological embodiment of metaphors for creativity promoted convergent thinking and divergent thinking (i.e., fluency, flexibility, or originality) in problem solving. Going beyond prior research, which focused primarily on the kind of embodiment that primes preexisting knowledge, we provide the first evidence that embodiment can also activate cognitive processes that facilitate the generation of new ideas and connections

Creative mood swings: divergent and convergent thinking affect mood in opposite ways-y

SA Chermahini, B Hommel – Psychological research, 2012 – Springer

Increasing evidence suggests that emotions affect cognitive processes. Recent approaches have also considered the opposite: that cognitive processes might affect people’s mood. Here we show that performing and, to a lesser degree, preparing for a creative thinking task induce systematic mood swings: Divergent thinking led to a more positive mood, whereas convergent thinking had the opposite effect. This pattern suggests that thought processes and mood are systematically related but the type of relationship is process-specific.

The relationship between stressors and creativity: a meta-analysis examining competing theoretical models.

K Byron, S Khazanchi, D Nazarian – Journal of Applied Psychology, 2010 – psycnet.apa.org

We found a curvilinear relationship between evaluative stress and creativity such that low evaluative contexts increased creative performance over control conditions, whereas highly evaluative contexts decreased creative performance. We found a linearly negative relationship between uncontrollability and creativity such that more uncontrollability decreased creative performance.

Time pressure undermines performance more under avoidance than approach motivation

M Roskes, AJ Elliot, BA Nijstad… – Personality and Social …, 2013 – psp.sagepub.com

Four experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that performance is particularly undermined by time pressure when people are avoidance motivated. The results supported this hypothesis across three different types of tasks, including those well suited and those ill suited to the type of information processing evoked by avoidance motivation. We did not find evidence that stress-related emotions were responsible for the observed effect. Avoidance motivation is certainly necessary and valuable in the self-regulation of everyday behavior. However, our results suggest that given its nature and implications, it seems best that avoidance motivation is avoided in situations that involve (time) pressure.

General, work and neuroscience papers related to creativity

Creativity: A Crime Of Passion By Andrea Kuszewski | December 12th 2009

[PDF] Fundamentals of creativity-y

RA Beghetto, JC Kaufman – Educational Leadership, 2013 – pages.uoregon.edu

A meta-analysis of personality in scientific and artistic creativity-y

GJ Feist – Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1998 – psr.sagepub.com

The 3 major goals of this article are to present the results of the first meta-analytic review of the literature on personality and creative achievement, to present a conceptual integration of underlying potential psychological mechanisms that personality and creativity have in common, and to show how the topic of creativity has been important to personality psychologists and can be to social psychologists. In general, creative people are more open to new experiences, less conventional and less conscientious, more self-confident, self-accepting, driven, ambitious, dominant, hostile, and impulsive. Out of these, the largest effect sizes were on openness, conscientiousness, self-acceptance, hostility, and impulsivity. Further, there appears to be temporal stability of these distinguishing personality dimensions of creative people. Dispositions important to creative behavior are parsed into social, cognitive, motivational, and affective dimensions. Creativity, like most complex behaviors requires an intra- as well as interdisciplinary view and thereby mitigates the historically disciplinocentric attitudes of personality and social psychologists.

15 Creative Traits That You Can Master

http://wholelivingdaily.wholeliving.com/author/eric-maisel

How flexibility facilitates innovation and ways to manage it in organizations

AS Georgsdottir, I Getz – Creativity and Innovation Management, 2004 – Wiley Online Library

Flexibility is the capacity to change and to adapt to a challenging environment. It can be either adaptive – when challenges are present in the environment – or spontaneous – a preference for change without any external pressure. Change and adaptation are also key elements of innovation. In this article, we examine how different types of flexibility can play a major part in the innovation process. First, we discuss how flexible cognition and a flexible personality can facilitate the generation of innovations. Second, we discuss how flexibility can be beneficial to the audience for innovations. Lastly, we use the previous discussion of the benefits of flexibility for innovation to illuminate and present some approaches to the improvement of flexibility – both of employees and of the audience – for innovation. These approaches come both from other researchers’ work and from our own original research on the best practices of innovation management in Europe.

Linking empowering leadership and employee creativity: The influence of psychological empowerment, intrinsic motivation, and creative process engagement-y

X Zhang, KM Bartol – Academy of Management Journal, 2010 – amj.aom.org

Synthesizing theories of leadership, empowerment, and creativity, this research built and tested a theoretical model linking empowering leadership with creativity via several intervening variables. Using survey data from professional employees and their supervisors in a large information technology company in China, we found that, as anticipated, empowering leadership positively affected psychological empowerment, which in turn influenced both intrinsic motivation and creative process engagement. These latter two variables then had a positive influence on creativity.

The necessity of others is the mother of invention: Intrinsic and prosocial motivations, perspective taking, and creativity-y

AM Grant, JW Berry – Academy of Management Journal, 2011 – amj.aom.org

Although many scholars believe that intrinsic motivation fuels creativity, research has returned equivocal results. Perspective taking, as generated by prosocial motivation, encourages employees to develop ideas that are useful as well as novel. We found that prosocial motivation strengthened the association between intrinsic motivation and independent creativity ratings.

The creative brain–Revisiting concepts

A Chakravarty – Medical hypotheses, 2010 – Elsevier

Creativity is a complex neuro-psycho-philosophical phenomenon which is difficult to define literally. Fundamentally it involves the ability to understand and express novel orderly relationships. The creative process involves four stages – preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. A high level of general intelligence, domain specific knowledge and special skills are necessary pre-requisites. It is possible that in addition, some creative people might have architectural alternations of specific portions of the posterior neocortex. Associated with such pre-requisites, the process of creative innovation (incubation and illumination stages) necessitates the need for an ability of divergent thinking, a novelty seeking behavior, some degree of suppression of latent inhibition and a subtle degree of frontal dysfunction. The author hypothesizes that these features are often inter-linked and subtle frontally disinhibited behavior is conducive towards creativity by allowing uninterrupted flow of creative thought possessing and opening up new avenues towards problem solving. Perhaps the most essential feature of the creative brain is its degree of connectivity – both inter-hemispheric and intra-hemispheric. Connectivity correlates or binds together functions of apparently structurally isolated domains on brain modules sub-serving different functions. It is felt that creative cognition is a self rewarding process where divergent thinking would promote connectivity through development of new synapses. In addition, the phenomenon of synaesthesia has often been observed in creative visual artists. Creative innovation often occurs during low arousal states and creative people often manifests features of affective disorders. This suggests a role of neurotransmitters in creative innovation. Dopaminergic pathways are involved in the novelty seeking attitude of creative people while norepinephrine levels are depressed during discovery of novel orderly relationships. The relationship between mood and catecholamines and that of creative cognition is often in an inverted U-shaped form. It is hypothesized that that subtle frontal dysfunction is a pre-requisite for creative cognition but here again the relationship is also in an inverted U-form.

[BOOK] Creativity: Theories and themes: Research, development, and practice

MA Runco – 2010 – books.google.com

Embracing the shadow side — fear, shame, self-doubt — of creativity

http://acestoohigh.com/2013/09/30/embracing-the-shadow-side-fear-shame-self-doubt-of-creativity/#more-2724

AP Month Research Archives:

2018 AP Month Research – Love Collective: Sharing Experience and Making Parenting Sweeter

2017 AP Month Research – Word Power: Communication for Connection

2016 AP Month Research – Nurturing Peace: Parenting for World Harmony

2015 AP Month Research  Parental Presence: Birthing Families, Strengthening Society

2014 AP Month Research – Cherishing Parents: Flourishing Children

2013 AP Month Research – Parenting Creatively:  The (H)Art of Parenting

2012 AP Month Research – Relax, Relate, Rejuvenate: Renewed with Parenting Support

2011 AP Month Research – Families at Play

2010 AP Month Research  – Full of Love

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