Imaging the Creative Unconscious: Reflexive Neural Responses to Objects in the Visual and Parahippocampal Region Predicts State and Trait Creativity

Divergent Thinking Influences the Perception of Ambiguous Visual Illusions

This study investigated the relationships between personality and creativity in the perception of two different ambiguous visual illusions. Previous research has suggested that Industriousness and Openness/Intellect (as measured by the Big Five Aspects Scale) are both associated with individual differences in perceptual switching rates for binocular rivalry stimuli. Here, we examined whether these relationships generalise to the Necker Cube and the Spinning Dancer illusions. In the experimental phase of this study, participants viewed these ambiguous figures under both static and dynamic, as well as free-view and fixation, conditions. As predicted, perceptual switching rates were higher: (a) for the static Necker Cube than the Spinning Dancer, and (b) in free-view compared with fixation conditions. In the second phase of the study, personality type and divergent thinking were measured using the Big Five Aspects Scale and the Alternate Uses Task, respectively. Higher creativity/divergent thinking (as measured by the Alternate Uses Task) was found to predict greater switching rates for the static Necker Cube (but not the Spinning Dancer) under both free-view and fixation conditions. These findings suggest that there are differences in the perceptual processing of creative individuals.

Not Quite Equal Odds: Openness to Experience Moderates the Relation Between Quantity and Quality of Ideas in Divergent Production

Since brainstorming was introduced as a technique in 1953 it has been assumed that the best way to produce good ideas is through the production of many ideas, which has later been named the equal-odds rule. However, this finding that productivity often leads to creative quality has rarely been examined in psychometric studies of creative cognition. To close this knowledge gap, we examined the relationship between individual differences in creative personality, as assessed by the personality trait openness to experience, and both the quantity and quality of ideas produced in a divergent thinking task. Across 154 graduate students we found a positive and significant relationship between creative personality and the number of ideas produced, as well as their creative value. The present results indicate that while quantity does breed quality in creative production, the effect is moderated by individual differences, specifically the personality trait Openness to Experience. As the level of Openness to Experience increases, the relation of quantity of ideas to average Creative value gradually becomes positive and significant. We discuss the possible reasons for and implications of our findings.

The Neural Mechanism Underlying Cognitive and Emotional Processes in Creativity

Creativity is related to both cognition and emotion, which are the two major mental processes, interacting with each other to form psychological processes. Emotion is the major driving force of almost all creativities, sometimes in an unconscious way. Even though there are many studies concerning the relationship between creativity and cognition, there are few studies about the neural mechanisms of the emotional effects on creativity. Here, we introduce a novel model to explain the relationship between emotions and creativities: Three Primary Color model, which proposes that there are four major basic emotions; these basic emotions are subsided by three monoamines, just like the three primary colors: dopamine-joy, norepinephrine-stress (fear and anger), and serotonin-punishment. Interestingly, these three neuromodulators play similar roles in creativity, whose core features are value and novelty (surprise), like the characteristics of the core features of basic emotions (hedonic value and arousal value). Dysfunctions of these neuromodulators may be the reasons for both psychopathology and creativity, in that they can change the thinking styles such as novelty seeking behavior, hyper-connectivity of brain areas, and/or cognitive disinhibition to induce both creativity and psychopathology. This new model will not only help researchers understand the dynamics of basic emotion elements, it can also bring an entirely new perspective into the relationship between psychopathology and creativity.