Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturbo
Scientists Invented a Simple 4-Minute Test For Creativity, And You Can Try It Out
Humans31 October 2022
By David Nield
(Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images)
What makes a person more creative than another? Creativity is difficult to define and perhaps even trickier to measure, but, in 2021, scientists think they came up with a remarkably simple way of assessing at least one aspect of it.
It's a test that you can take in a couple of minutes, and it works best when you don't know much about how it works.
Head over to the project page to give it a go, and then come back to read all about it.
The method, called the Divergent Association Task (DAT), asks people to name 10 nouns that are as far apart in meaning as possible. "Cat" and "book" would be more divergent than "cat" and "dog", for example.
A computer algorithm then measures this semantic distance - how much the two words have to do with each other – between the nouns the person came up with. Based on an analysis of responses from 8,914 volunteers, DAT is at least as good as current methods for predicting creativity in a person.
"Several theories posit that creative people are able to generate more divergent ideas," the researchers wrote in their 2021 paper. "If this is correct, simply naming unrelated words and then measuring the semantic distance between them could serve as an objective measure of divergent thinking."
The Alternative Uses Task (where you think of as many uses as possible for an object) and the Bridge-the-Associative Gap Task (where you try and link two words with a third word) are the two existing measures of creativity that DAT went up against.
The creativity scores from DAT correlated as well with the other scores as they did with one another, implying it's about as useful at assessing creativity as more complicated tools. What's more, the data show that its effectiveness seems to apply across different demographics, making it suitable for large-scale surveys.
The key benefits of the new DAT test are that it's simple and quick to complete, and doesn't require any kind of human assessment, which might introduce bias. However, the researchers are keen to point out that it doesn't measure every aspect of creativity.
"Our task measures only a sliver of one type of creativity," said psychologist Jay Olson from Harvard University, in a 2021 statement.
"But these findings enable creativity assessments across larger and more diverse samples with less bias, which will ultimately help us better understand this fundamental human ability."
As Olson pointed out to CNN, the DAT test explores divergent thinking and verbal creativity – it won't show how creative you might be when cooking in the kitchen for example, which uses a different set of skills, but it can predict aptitude at certain problem-solving tasks.
Psychologists think that more creative people are able to link remote elements together in their minds more easily, which is what's being tested here. A more comprehensive measure would have to also take into account achievements in creative fields, such as music composition and inventions.
It's a complex picture – but the DAT approach might make carrying out future studies into creativity just a little bit simpler.
"Creativity is fundamental to human life," said Olson in a statement. "The more we understand its complexity, the better we can foster creativity in all its forms."
The research has been published in PNAS.
A version of this article was first published in July 2021.
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-invented-a-simple-4-minute-test-for-creativity-and-you-can-try-it-out
Thanks to:https://www.sciencealert.com
Humans31 October 2022
By David Nield
(Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images)
What makes a person more creative than another? Creativity is difficult to define and perhaps even trickier to measure, but, in 2021, scientists think they came up with a remarkably simple way of assessing at least one aspect of it.
It's a test that you can take in a couple of minutes, and it works best when you don't know much about how it works.
Head over to the project page to give it a go, and then come back to read all about it.
The method, called the Divergent Association Task (DAT), asks people to name 10 nouns that are as far apart in meaning as possible. "Cat" and "book" would be more divergent than "cat" and "dog", for example.
A computer algorithm then measures this semantic distance - how much the two words have to do with each other – between the nouns the person came up with. Based on an analysis of responses from 8,914 volunteers, DAT is at least as good as current methods for predicting creativity in a person.
"Several theories posit that creative people are able to generate more divergent ideas," the researchers wrote in their 2021 paper. "If this is correct, simply naming unrelated words and then measuring the semantic distance between them could serve as an objective measure of divergent thinking."
The Alternative Uses Task (where you think of as many uses as possible for an object) and the Bridge-the-Associative Gap Task (where you try and link two words with a third word) are the two existing measures of creativity that DAT went up against.
The creativity scores from DAT correlated as well with the other scores as they did with one another, implying it's about as useful at assessing creativity as more complicated tools. What's more, the data show that its effectiveness seems to apply across different demographics, making it suitable for large-scale surveys.
The key benefits of the new DAT test are that it's simple and quick to complete, and doesn't require any kind of human assessment, which might introduce bias. However, the researchers are keen to point out that it doesn't measure every aspect of creativity.
"Our task measures only a sliver of one type of creativity," said psychologist Jay Olson from Harvard University, in a 2021 statement.
"But these findings enable creativity assessments across larger and more diverse samples with less bias, which will ultimately help us better understand this fundamental human ability."
As Olson pointed out to CNN, the DAT test explores divergent thinking and verbal creativity – it won't show how creative you might be when cooking in the kitchen for example, which uses a different set of skills, but it can predict aptitude at certain problem-solving tasks.
Psychologists think that more creative people are able to link remote elements together in their minds more easily, which is what's being tested here. A more comprehensive measure would have to also take into account achievements in creative fields, such as music composition and inventions.
It's a complex picture – but the DAT approach might make carrying out future studies into creativity just a little bit simpler.
"Creativity is fundamental to human life," said Olson in a statement. "The more we understand its complexity, the better we can foster creativity in all its forms."
The research has been published in PNAS.
A version of this article was first published in July 2021.
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-invented-a-simple-4-minute-test-for-creativity-and-you-can-try-it-out
Thanks to:https://www.sciencealert.com
