Mark Runco

The reputation of eminent individuals is often quantified by examining the attention they receive in reference works, such as encyclopedias. The present research examined Encyclopedia Britannicas from four different eras. Reputation is typically treated as if it is stable, but the
primary hypothesis of the present research was that they would increase or decrease across volumes (and eras) rather than display perfect transhistorical stability. A series of ANOVAs and ANCOVAs confirmed that increases and decreases, rather than stability, best characterized
the data. Still, the reputational variable calculated for this investigation (which quantified the degree of increase, decrease, or stability of reputations) was associated with earlier indices of posthumous fame. Correlational analyses indicated that the reputational change scores
were related to the educational level and extracurricular activities of the eminent individuals.
Contrary to expectations, there were no domain differences in the likelihood of reputational
stability or change. It is possible that changes reflect cultural shifts. These shifts would in turn
lead to fluctuations in how an individual’s accomplishments fit with the Zeitgeist of a given era.

The theory of the creative class has proven to be useful but may be slanted towards professional levels of creativity. Additionally, differences between (a) objective measures of regional creativity, including the Creativity Index used by Florida (2012) and (b) creativity as measured by
more traditional psychological assessments (that are commonly used in the creativity research) have not been explored. The research reported here does exactly that. It presents analyses of data from a battery of traditional creativity tests that had been administered to 3000 individuals
from across the United States. Testing was completed via Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Data on population density and regional information were also collected. Results indicated that perceptions of community support for creativity were related to but far from redundant with the Florida Creativity Index used in previous research on the creative class. A secondary but important findings was that an analysis using one of the traditional measures of creativity indicated that respondents were significantly more creative outside of school than they were when
they were in school. There were domain differences in this regard. Implications, limitations, and future research are detailed at the end of the article.

Creative things are always original, but they must be more than just original. They must also have some utility, effectiveness, or value. The present research tested the psychoeconomic definition of “value” and examined how value ratings fluctuated when individuals worked in groups or alone. This psychoeconomic definition of value is very different from that found in previous studies. It was based on ratings obtained after the students participating had been told that their grades depended on their teamwork. Previous studies have used hypothetical ratings of value, but here the ratings were meaningful: there was a contingency placed on making a good decision, and that decision focused on creative team-work. This investigation also tested the idea that originality and value are both required for creativity. Psychoeconomic theory not only offers an objective and behavioural index of value. It also offers predictions about the “social costs” of working in groups. To test these ideas individuals received two tests of divergent thinking, either while alone (no social cost), working in a small group (low cost), or working in a larger group (high cost). Social preferences were controlled, as was extraversion. Results indicate that fluency did not diminish when the social costs were present. Moreover, originality increased when participants worked in groups. Findings also demonstrated that value judgments can be reliably assessed and that the interaction of value and originality ac-counted for a significant amount of the variability in creativity ratings.

Italy! Creativity!  Call for Papers....I am on the scientific committee but questions are best directed to the email given below.  More details...

Main sessions (subjects) of the conference
are as follows:
 the creative and cultural concepts
 the cultural and creative industries
 managing creativity and creative life-art
 creative ecology
 creative ethics
 creativity geography
 politics of creativity
 entertainment from a creative point of view
 sociability of creativity
 technologies in creative society
 creativity indices of society
 phenomenology of creativity
 psychology of creativity
 advances in creativity methods

DEADLINES AND KEY DATES
The abstracts must be sent to: kifk@vgtu.lt no later than October 15th, 2016
Abstract submission:
October 15th, 2016
Abstract acceptance:
December 15th, 2016

Several studies suggest that mind wandering (MW) benefits creativity when the MW occurs in the incubation period of creative problem solving. The aim of present study was to examine the effects of MW that occurs in the course of creative idea generation. Participants received an Alternative Uses Task (AUT) and were asked to generate ideas for 20min. Their MW frequencies as time passed were measured by means of probe-caught MW. Comparisons of the AUT performances of high and low MW groups revealed that greater MW was associated with lower fluency and originality scores on the AUT. Furthermore, the high MW group showed greater MW as time passed, while the low MW group's MW was steady during the course of idea generation. Accordingly, the originality of idea generation decreased with time passing for the high MW group but was steady for the low MW group. The findings suggest that the MW during the course of creative idea generation is negatively related to creativity, perhaps because the control processes involved in idea generation are impaired by the mind wandering.

ABSTRACT This commentary is intended to complement the chapter written by Agars, Kaufman, and Locke (this volume). Agars et al. (this volume) are correct in stating that innovation is a vital part of business and that much can be learned about innovation from studies of creativity. This commentary underscores several of the more important points made by Agars et al., questions others, and fills in several gaps found in their chapter. Perhaps most important are the qualifications offered in the present commentary, which are intended to constrain some of the claims made in Agars et al.'s chapter. Related to this is the need to consider the larger picture of scholarship dealing with innovation and creativity. For example, there may be an originality bias among creativity researchers and an unfortunate tendency to ignore relevant but older research. This commentary does have a critical tone, but only because many of Agars et al.'s arguments are entirely tenable and need not be repeated. The gaps, however, should be filled, and some of the claims qualified. Nevertheless, some ambiguity is useful with a complex topic, such as creativity, and it is important to recognize that creativity is not entirely a social process.

ABSTRACT Previous empirical studies of divergent thinking (DT) have measured originality by identifying ideas that are unusual or remote but not necessarily divergent. The present investigation used the same kind of open-ended tasks as previous investigations but operationalized scores to capture truly and literally divergent ideas. To this end, 13 dimensions were identified and used to categorize ideas from six DT tasks. These 13 categories represented a kind of ideational hyperspace and insured that actual divergence of thought was captured. Interitem and interrater correlations indicated that 11 of the 13 hyperspace categories were reliable. Furthermore, the tendency to give a large number of ideas within each category was positively associated with originality and fluency. When fluency was statistically controlled, several of the categories (i.e., impractical, synthetic, breadth, non-natural, infeasible, playful, and remote) were positively related with originality, whereas the complementary categories (e.g., practical, nonsynthetic, depth) were negatively related to the originality of both verbal and figural DT. A composite Literal Divergent Thinking (LiDT) Index, calculated by taking all categories into account, was positively associated with attitudes about originality, even after fluency was statistically controlled. The present effort was the first investigation of LiDT and both limitations and direction for future research are explored. Given the reliability of the new LiDT scores, future research should be conducted to determine whether or not LiDT will predict creative thinking more accurately than the traditional indices of DT.

ABSTRACT Tests of divergent thinking represent the most commonly used assessment of creative potential. Typically they are scored for total ideational output (fluency), ideational originality, and, sometimes, ideational flexibility. That scoring system provides little information about the underlying process and about the associations among ideas. It also does not really capture the key principle of divergent thinking, namely that ideas may be found when cognition explores new (divergent) directions. The investigation reported here used 3 independent semantic networks, each computerized and previously validated, to quantify the distance between responses (ideas) to several tests of divergent thinking. These sources were WordNet (WN), Word Associations Network (WAN), and IdeaFisher (IF). Statistical analyses indicated that remote and close associations can be reliably measured when different sources of associative strength are used. Inter-item reliability (alpha coefficients) of what these networks had identified as remote associations were higher than those from close associations. Inter-item reliability values were higher in the WAN and IF, which provided shorter lists than the WN. Therefore, longer associative lists did not necessarily produce better indices of remote and close associations. Also, scores from a measure of creative attitudes and values were significantly correlated with remote, but not with close, associations across all 3 networks. This finding is very important because it shows that people with a higher tendency of creative attitudes and values, as measured by divergent thinking tests, are more likely to make remote associations rather than close associations. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Abstract 1. This is the second of two separate entries under the broad topic Creativity. This entry includes: models of the creative process; stage models of the creative process; componential models of the creative process; and categorization and conceptualization.(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

This investigation utilized the recent technology for the assessment of creativity to examine the association between problem solving and suicide ideation. Three kinds of problem-finding and -solving tasks were administered to 81 (nonclinical) college students. One of these tasks assesses "problem generation" and was expected to be particularly informative, given that individuals considering suicide may perceive many problems but find few solutions. Results supported this expectation: Problem generation scores were significantly correlated with suicide ideation, even after stress was statistically controlled. A secondary analysis suggested that the originality and flexibility of solutions may be influenced by the particular problem an individual faces.

Abstract 1. examine the historical case of one of the world's great analogical thinkers, Johannes Kepler/the authors relate his activities to the principles underlying a precise characterization of the analogical reasoning process, namely, the structure mapping engine/consider in depth the processes of highlighting, projection, re-representation, and restructuring as processes of conceptual change/show how anecdotal accounts and precise theorizing about the exact nature of cognitive processes can complement one another/ ...

Moral creativity is increasingly important in today's complex world because rapid technological advances with unpredictable consequences are magnifying the effects of creative thought and action as well as the importance of ethical guidance for what we do. This chapter explores the relationships between giftedness, creativity, and morality. It also outlines some empirical evidence for these interconnections. Continua are employed to

... The primary strength of experimentation is that causality can be determined.(Indeed, unlike Gay and Anastasia, 2003, we are combining causal ... studies to estimate reputation: they counted the number of sentences allocated to any one person in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. ...

ABSTRACT Ideas are meaningful units of thought. In fact, they represent the most useful unit of thought. There is no way to pinpoint some of the dimensions of ideas since they vary so much (e.g., your idea of “a good time” is probably more complex than your idea of “your favorite color”), but this is in fact part of their utility. They can be defined such that the variation and flexibility are retained. Ideas are smaller than concepts, which are also varied but cover entire categories of thought (e.g., “funny movies”). Ideas can be quite precise. They are the smallest meaningful unit of thought.

... There are, for example, many educational pro-grams already in place that focus on ... As noted previously, the theory of personal creativity was in part developed in response to ... ideas, insights, restructuring, inventions, or artistic objects, which are accepted by experts as being of ...

One short view (video, link below) on why we need creativity.  There is also this:


Runco, M. A. (2015). The real creativity crisis.
Creativity and Human Development.  Published 27 January,
http://www.creativityjournal.net/index.php/component/k2/item/268-the-real-creativity-crisis#.VP9ot2d0y71 or
http://creativityjournal.net/index.php/contents/articles/item/268-the-real-creativity-crisis#.VS5QIvnF-Sp

There was a Creativity Crisis claim in 2011, using longitudinal data showing decreases in creativity test scores, the explanation being mostly educational. A second Creativity Crisis was described in 2015 and blamed the internet (and in particular pressures online to conform). New data suggest a 3rd Creativity Crisis. It is a direct result of the extreme conservatism  that is now so apparent. It has led to a creativity crisis because
1. Apparently millions of people favor conservatism, as evidenced by policies now being supported by the Federal government (e.g., Trump and the Republican Congress);
2. Data show conservatism to be strongly but negatively related to several indicators of creativity; and
3. Creativity plays a huge role in innovation, advance, progress, and growth, on both individual and societal levels. 
    This same empirical research also uncovered a positive relationship between Diversity and creativity. More diversity, more creativity. More conservatism, less creativity.

Trump's First 100 Days Demonstrate that Quantity does not Guarantee Quality. The White House list of what he accomplished in the first 100 days is moderately long, but severely lacking in quality. It shows that he is no Public Servant but is instead running a Presidency for Personal Profit. Social Scientists have long been aware of the fact that productivity can be misleading. In Trump's case, it is counter-productivity. Most of what he is doing is harmful, not progress.

This blog, originally published in 2014 on the site

www.creativitytestingservices.com, covers the topic of Enhancing and Educating (for) creativity. There is a chapter going into the same topic in Runco's 2014 textbook on creativity (Elsevier, 2014).