Dissociating Divergent Thinking and Creative Achievement by Examining Attentional Flexibility and Hypomania

Creativity is predominantly measured in scientific research with divergent thinking tasks that assess the potential for creative ideation. The current study aimed to further foster a distinction between divergent thinking and a second measure of creativity, creative achievement (the production of tangible or visible pieces), by examining whether these 2 measures are differentially related to attentional flexibility and hypomania. Evidence was found linking divergent thinking to better attentional flexibility and creative achievement to poorer attentional flexibility in a novel variant of the Stroop task. Additionally, creative achievement, especially nonscience-related (e.g., artistic) achievement, was positively associated with risk for hypomania whereas divergent thinking was not related to hypomania. The findings support a distinction between measures of creativity (divergent thinking ability vs. creative achievement), which may have clinical implications (e.g., for bipolar disorder) and theoretical implications for the study of attentional flexibility and rigidity.