Sabtu, 11 Desember 2010

Creative Thinking


Introduction To Psychology
Rod Plotnik

The definition of creative thinking is somewhat different from that of a creative individual.
Creative thinking is a combination of flexibility in thinking and reorganization of understanding to produce innovative ideas and new or novel solutions (Stenberg, 2001).
A creative individual is someone who regularly solves problems, fashions problems, or defines new questions that make an impact on his or her society (H. Gardner, 1993).
People can show evidence of creative thinking in many different ways. For example, recognized creative thinking individuals include Albert Einstein, who formulated the theory of relativity; Sigmund Freud, who developed psychoanalysis; Ray Kroc, who founded McDonald’s worldwide hamburger chain.
Because there are so many different examples (and kinds) of creativity, psychologists have used three different approaches to measure creativity :
1. Psychometric Approach
This approach, which uses objective problem-solving tasks to measure creativity, focuses on the distinction between two kinds of thinking- convergent and divergent.
Convergent thinking means beginning with a problem and coming up with a single correct solution.
Ex : Answering multiple choice questions and solving math problems.
Divergent thinking means beginning with a problem and coming up with many different solutions.
Tests of divergent thinking have good reliability, which means that people achieve the same scores across time.
2. Case Study Approach
The case study approach analyzes creative persons in great depth and thus provides insight into their development, personality, motivation, and problems.
Ex : Howard Gardner found that creative people are creative in certain areas but poor in others : Freud was very creative in linguistic and personal areas but very poor in spatial and musical area.
3. Cognitive Approach
The cognitive approach tries to build a bridge between the objective measures of the psychometric approach and the subjective descriptions provided by case studies. The cognitive approach, which is also the newest, identifies and measures cognitive mechanisms that are used during creative thinking.
Ex : many individuals have reported that one cognitive mechanism vital to creative thinking is the use of mental imagery, which involves thinking in images, without words or mathematical symbols. Thus, the cognitive approach involves analyzing the workings of mental imagery and it’s relationship to creative thinking.




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