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Openness to Experience and Creative AchievementBy Scott Barry Kaufman | November 25, 2013 |   1

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Openness to experience– the drive for cognitive exploration of inner and outer experience– is the personality trait most consistently associated with creativity.But there are many different forms of cognitive exploration.

Just to name a few, openness to experience comprises intellectual curiosity, complex problem solving and reasoning, imagination, artistic and aesthetic interests, and emotional and fantasy richness.

Recent research suggests that the various forms of engagement that comprise openness to experience can be broken down into two main aspects:

o Intellect: cognitive engagement with abstract and semantic information primarily through reasoning.

o Openness: cognitive engagement with sensory and perceptual information.But can we break down openness to experience even further, and are the distinctions useful for our understanding of creative achievement?

I think so.

Four Factors of Openness to ExperienceThat was the main question motivating my recent paper “Opening up Openness to Experience: A Four-Factor Model and Relations to Creative Achievement in the Arts and Sciences.”I administered multiple measures of cognitive ability, personality, and thinking styles to 146 British high school students. I intentionally used a wide-ranging test battery, including measures of verbal, spatial, and fluid reasoning, working memory, the NEO Personality Inventory, Big Five Aspect Scales, and Rational-Experiential Inventory.Using a statistical technique called the Bass-Ackwards technique, I found that openness to experience can be most parsimoniously broken down into four factors:

o Explicit Cognitive Ability: This factor consisted primarily of traditional measures of intelligence (i.e., IQ tests), including fluid reasoning, mental rotation, verbal analogical reasoning, and working memory. I called this factor “Explicit Cognitive Ability” instead of “Intelligence” because I don’t think that traditional measures of intelligence do a good job capturing implicit forms of cognition. For instance, I’ve shown that implicit learning ability is not well correlated with performance on traditional measures of intelligence (see “Implicit Learning as an Ability“). This factor didn’t show any relations to any personality variables other than openness to experience.

o Intellectual Engagement: The essence of this factor was a drive to engage in ideas, rational thought, and the search for truth. Those scoring high on this factor tended to be more industrious, assertive, and persevering– dispositions associated with goal-directed behavior. Note that there was no correlation between this factor and compassion.

o Affective Engagement: The essence of this factor was a preference for using emotions, gut feelings, and empathy to make decisions. Those scoring high on this factor tended to be more volatile, compassionate, enthusiastic, assertive, and

impulsive. In fact, the correlation between this factor and compassion was quite high– .64.

o Aesthetic Engagement: The essence of this factor was a preference for aesthetics, fantasy, and emotional absorption in artistic and cultural stimuli. A common theme of this factor was a search for beauty. Those scoring high on this factor tended to be more compassionate, enthusiastic, assertive, and impulsive, but they also tended to be less conscientious — particularly less industrious and orderly. Also, this factor wasn’t as strongly related to compassion as affective engagement.

Creative AchievementNow that we have a good feel for the flavor of these four factors, let’s see how they are related to different forms of creative achievement.

I investigated ten different domains of creativity: Visual Arts, Music, Dance, Architectural design, Creative writing, Humor, Inventions, Scientific Discovery, Theater and film, and Culinary Arts.

Collapsing across the arts and sciences, this is what I found:

The two main factors most strongly associated with Intellect– Intellectual Engagement and Explicit Cognitive Ability– were more relevant to creative achievement in the sciences than the arts, whereas the two main factors most strongly associated with Openness– Affective Engagement and Aesthetic Engagement– were more relevant to creative achievement in the arts than the sciences. What’s more, these results suggest that Affective Engagement may be detrimental to creative achievement in the sciences.

Interestingly, when I considered all four factors at the same time, I found that Intellectual Engagement was a better predictor of scientific creative achievement than Explicit Cognitive Ability.

ImplicationsI think these findings have some important implications. The first thing that jumped out at me is the importance of separating IQ from intellectual curiosity. While Explicit Cognitive Ability and Intellectual Engagement were related, the more important variable driving high levels of creative achievement in the sciences was Intellectual Engagement. These findings are consistent with the work of Sophie von Stumm and colleagues who found that a “hungry mind” was a core predictor of academic achievement.Another thing that jumped out at me were the different associations with compassion. The two factors that were most strongly associated with compassion– Affective Engagement and Aesthetic Engagement– were also the factors most strongly associated with creative achievement in the arts. I’d like to see much more research on the linkages among openness to experience, compassion, and creativity, including a wider range of creative domains (e.g., leadership, social entrepreneurship).

My findings also have implications for dual-process theories of human cognition.In recent years, dual-process theories of cognition have become increasingly required for explaining cognitive, personality, and social processes. Although the precise specifications of the theories differ, there are some unifying themes.“Type 1” processes consist of a “grab-bag” of different (and not necessarily correlated) processes, including affect, intuition, evolutionary evolved modules, implicit learning, latent inhibition, and the firing of learned associations. According toKeith Stanovich and Maggie Toplak, the defining feature of Type 1 processing is autonomy: “the execution of Type 1 processes is mandatory when their triggering stimuli are encountered, and they are not dependent on input from high-level control systems.”In contrast, the defining feature of “Type 2” processes is the ability to sustain decoupled representations—in other words, to sustain thinking while keeping real-world representations separate from cognitive representations. According to Stanovich and Toplak, “decoupling processes enable one to distance oneself from representations of the world so that they can be reflected upon and potentially improved.”

The results of my study suggest that Intellect– Explicit Cognitive Ability and Intellectual Engagement– is more strongly related to Type 2 processing relative to Type 1 processing, whereas Openness– Affective Engagement and Aesthetic Engagement– is more strongly related to Type 1 processing relative to Type 2 processing. Although one notable exception is engagement with fantasy and imagination, which most certainly recruits more of a balanced mix of Type 1 and Type 2 processes.It might be fruitful for researchers to place openness to experience within this dual-process framework.

ConclusionThese results support the need to separate different forms of cognitive engagement when trying to predict creative achievement. Different forms of engagement are related to different modes of information processing. What’s more, people differ in their drive to engage in various aspects of the human experience, and these drives are related to different forms of creative achievement.

© 2013 Scott Barry Kaufman, All Rights ReservedNote: My colleagues and I have since replicated the basic associations among Intellect and Openness with creative achievement in the arts and sciences across multiple samples, using wider age ranges. We are currently writing up those results for publication, and I will be happy to share them with you once the data is published.image source: eye on psych

About the Author: Scott Barry Kaufman is a cognitive psychologist investigating the development of intelligence and creativity. His latest book is Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined. Follow on Twitter @sbkaufman.

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Learning to Think Outside the Box

Creativity Becomes an Academic DisciplineBy LAURA PAPPANOFEB. 5, 2014Photo

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Students in creative studies at Buffalo State College posted key points to being a creative thinker. CreditBrendan Bannon for The New York Times

IT BOTHERS MATTHEW LAHUE and it surely bothers you: enter a public restroom and the stall lock is broken. Fortunately, Mr. Lahue has a solution. It’s called the Bathroom Bodyguard. Standing before his Buffalo State College classmates and professor, Cyndi Burnett, Mr. Lahue displayed a device he concocted from a large washer, metal ring, wall hook, rubber bands and Lincoln Log. Slide the ring in the crack and twist. The door stays shut. Plus, the device fits in a jacket pocket.

The world may be full of problems, but students presenting projects for Introduction to Creative Studies have uncovered a bunch you probably haven’t thought of. Elie Fortune, a freshman, revealed his Sneaks ’n Geeks app to identify the brand of killer sneakers you spot on the street. Jason Cathcart, a senior, sported a bulky martial arts uniform with sparring pads he had sewn in. No more forgetting them at home.

“I don’t expect them to be the next Steve Jobs or invent the flying car,” Dr. Burnett says. “But I do want them to be more effective and resourceful problem solvers.” Her hope, she says, is that her course has made them more creative.

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Cyndi Burnett teaches Introduction to Creative Studies at Buffalo State College.CreditBrendan Bannon for The New York Times

Once considered the product of genius or divine inspiration, creativity — the ability to spot problems and devise smart solutions — is being recast as a prized and teachable skill. Pin it on pushback against standardized tests and standardized thinking, or on the need for ingenuity in a fluid landscape.

“The reality is that to survive in a fast-changing world you need to be creative,” says Gerard J. Puccio, chairman of the International Center for Studies in Creativity   at Buffalo State College, which has the nation’s oldest creative studies program, having offered courses in it since 1967.

“That is why you are seeing more attention to creativity at universities,” he says. “The marketplace is demanding it.”

Critical thinking has long been regarded as the essential skill for success, but it’s not enough, says Dr. Puccio. Creativity moves beyond mere synthesis and evaluation and is, he says, “the higher order skill.” This has not been a sudden development. Nearly 20 years ago “creating” replaced “evaluation” at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning objectives. In 2010 “creativity” was the

factor most crucial for success found in an I.B.M. survey   of 1,500 chief executives in 33 industries. These days “creative” is the most used buzzword in LinkedIn profiles two years running.

Traditional academic disciplines still matter, but as content knowledge evolves at lightning speed, educators are talking more and more about “process skills,” strategies to reframe challenges and extrapolate and transform information, and to accept and deal with ambiguity.

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Annoyed by restroom doors that are always broken? Matthew Lahue, a junior, designed the Bathroom Bodyguard.CreditJim Lahue

Creative studies is popping up on course lists and as a credential. Buffalo State, part of the State University of New York, plans a Ph.D. and already offers a master’s degree and undergraduate minor. Saybrook University in San Francisco has a master’s and certificate, and added a specialization to its psychology Ph.D. in 2011. Drexel University in Philadelphia has a three-year-old online master’s. St. Andrews University in Laurinburg, N.C., has added a minor. And creative studies offerings, sometimes with a transdisciplinary bent, are new options in business, education, digital media, humanities, arts, science and engineering programs across the country.

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Suddenly, says Russell G. Carpenter, program coordinator for a new minor in applied creative thinking at Eastern Kentucky University, “there is a larger conversation happening on campus: ‘Where does creativity fit into the E.K.U. student experience?’ ” Dr. Carpenter says 40 students from a broad array of fields, including nursing and justice and safety, have enrolled in the minor — a number he expects to double as more sections are

added to introductory classes. Justice and safety? Students want tools to help them solve public safety problems and deal with community issues, Dr. Carpenter explains, and a credential to take to market.

The credential’s worth is apparent to Mr. Lahue, a communication major who believes that a minor in the field carries a message. “It says: ‘This person is not a drone. They can use this skill set and apply themselves in other parts of the job.’ ”

On-demand inventiveness is not as outrageous as it sounds. Sure, some people are naturally more imaginative than others. What’s igniting campuses, though, is the conviction that everyone is creative, and can learn to be more so.

Just about every pedagogical toolbox taps similar strategies, employing divergent thinking (generating multiple ideas) and convergent thinking (finding what works).The real genius, of course, is in the how.

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Edwin Perez's FaceSaver keeps your phone from falling.CreditCyndi Burnett

Dr. Puccio developed an approach that he and partners market as FourSight and sell to schools, businesses and individuals. The method, which is used in Buffalo State classrooms, has four steps: clarifying, ideating, developing and implementing. People tend to gravitate to particular steps, suggesting their primary thinking style. Clarifying — asking the right question — is critical because people often misstate or misperceive a problem. “If you don’t have the right frame for the situation, it’s difficult to come up with a breakthrough,” Dr. Puccio says. Ideating is brainstorming and calls for getting rid of your inner naysayer to let your imagination fly. Developing is building out a solution, and maybe finding that it

doesn’t work and having to start over. Implementing calls for convincing others that your idea has value.

Jack V. Matson, an environmental engineer and a lead instructor of “Creativity, Innovation and Change,” a MOOC that drew 120,000 in September, teaches a freshman seminar course at Penn State that he calls “Failure 101.” That’s because, he says, “the frequency and intensity of failures is an implicit principle of the course. Getting into a creative mind-set involves a lot of trial and error.”

His favorite assignments? Construct a résumé based on things that didn’t work out and find the meaning and influence these have had on your choices. Or build the tallest structure you can with 20 Popsicle sticks. The secret to the assignment is to destroy the sticks and reimagine their use. “As soon as someone in the class starts breaking the sticks,” he says, “it changes everything.”

Dr. Matson also asks students to “find some cultural norms to break,” like doing cartwheels while entering the library. The point: “Examine what in the culture is preventing you from creating something new or different. And what is it like to look like a fool because a lot of things won’t work out and you will look foolish? So how do you handle that?”

Creativity is inherent to thinking. Best educators teach how to think within respective disciplines. It is however gratifying to see...

It’s a lesson that has been basic to the ventures of Brad Keywell, a Groupon founder and a student of Dr. Matson’s at the University of Michigan. “I am an absolute evangelist about the value of failure as part of creativity,” says Mr. Keywell, noting that Groupon took off after the failure of ThePoint.com, where people were to organize for collective action but instead organized discount group purchases. Dr. Matson taught him not just to be willing to fail but that failure is a critical avenue to a successful end. Because academics run from failure, Mr. Keywell says, universities are “way too often shapers of formulaic minds,” and encourage students to repeat and internalize fail-safe ideas.

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Chanil Mejia and Yasmine Payton present their big idea, a campus chill spot, in Introduction to Creative Studies. CreditBrendan Bannon for The New York Times

Bonnie Cramond, director of the Torrance Center   for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia, is another believer in taking bold risks, which she calls a competitive necessity. Her center added an interdisciplinary graduate certificate in creativity and innovation this year. “The new people who will be creative will sit at the juxtaposition of two or more fields,” she says. When ideas from different fields collide, Dr. Cramond says, fresh ones are generated. She cites an undergraduate class that teams engineering and art students to, say, reimagine the use of public spaces. Basic creativity tools used at the Torrance Center include thinking by analogy, looking for and making patterns, playing, literally, to encourage ideas, and learning to abstract problems to their essence.

In Dr. Burnett’s Introduction to Creative Studies survey course, students explore definitions of creativity, characteristics of creative people and strategies to enhance their own creativity.These include rephrasing problems as questions, learning not to instinctively shoot down a new idea (first find three positives), and categorizing problems as needing a solution that requires either action, planning or invention. A key objective is to get students to look around with fresh eyes and be curious. The inventive process, she says, starts with “How might you…”

Dr. Burnett is an energetic instructor with a sense of humor — she tested Mr. Cathcart’s martial arts padding with kung fu whacks. Near the end of last semester, she dumped Post-it pads (the department uses 400 a semester) onto a classroom desk with instructions: On pale yellow ones, jot down what you learned; on rainbow colored pads, share how you will use this learning. She then sent students off in groups with orders that were a litany of brainstorming basics: “Defer judgment! Strive for quantity! Wild and unusual! Build on others’ ideas!”

As students scribbled and stuck, the takeaways were more than academic. “I will be optimistic,” read one. “I will look at tasks differently,” said another. And, “I can generate more ideas.”

Asked to elaborate, students talked about confidence and adaptability. “A lot of people can’t deal with things they don’t know and they panic. I can deal with that more now,” said Rony Parmar, a computer information systems major with Dr. Dre’s Beats headphones circling his neck.

Mr. Cathcart added that, given tasks, “you think of other ways of solving the problem.” For example, he streamlined the check-in and reshelving of DVDs at the library branch where he works.

The view of creativity as a practical skill that can be learned and applied in daily life is a 180-degree flip from the thinking that it requires a little magic: Throw yourself into a challenge, step back — pause — wait for brilliance to spout.

The point of creative studies, says Roger L. Firestien, a Buffalo State professor and author of several books on creativity, is to learn techniques “to make creativity happen instead of waiting for it to bubble up. A muse doesn’t have to hit you.”

Laura Pappano is writer in residence at Wellesley Center for Women at Wellesley College and author of several books, including “Inside School Turnarounds.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 9, 2014, on page ED8 of Education Life with the headline: Learning to Think Differently. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe