An explicit cue improves creative analogical reasoning

Article history: Received 7 November 2011 Received in revised form 12 July 2012 Accepted 30 August 2012 Available online 19 September 2012 Creativity is likely to be related to intelligence, though the nature of this relationship remains largely unresolved and few studies have examined creativity in the context of measures traditionally related to intelligence. Like intelligence, creativity has often been studied as a static trait or as subject to change over long durations through training or education. By contrast, creativity as a dynamic state, particularly as a state that is subject to conscious augmentation within short time durations, has been less well-studied. Here, we tested the hypothesis that performance on a task of creative intelligence (creative analogical reasoning) can be improved through the deliberate effort to be creative. Specifically, we tested whether an explicit cue to “think creatively” would elicit better identification of creative analogies among 40 participants performing a four-term verbal analogical reasoning task. Consistent with our hypothesis, on creativity cue trials, the participants were 1) more likely to accurately identify highly creative analogies as valid, and 2) no more likely to inaccurately identify false analogies as valid. This pattern of results indicates that, consistent with a widely accepted standard for measuring creativity, the cue was successful in eliciting responses that were not only novel (divergent) but were also appropriate (bounded by task constraints). The findings show, in a within-subjects design, that deliberately attempting to augment creative state can enhance performance on a reasoning taskwith objective criteria. These findings are discussedwith respect to the state vs. trait distinction in creativity and likely neural mechanisms of creative reasoning. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.