Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-2009

Publication Title

The Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

Volume

3

Issue

2

First Page

73

Last Page

80

Abstract

The study addresses the issue of domain specificity within creativity by understanding the characteristics of creative tasks and how participants react to the task. One hundred and eighty seven participants were given one of three realistic everyday problems to solve. The problems differed in terms of complexity, involvement, and problem-based efficacy. Problem solutions were evaluated on several measures of creativity. Results indicate that creativity was influenced by the type of problem solved and the measure of creativity used to evaluate the solution. Further, these results were obtained after controlling for the effect of ability. Results imply that not all real-world problems are equivalent and that researchers need to investigate how reactions to different problems and the creativity index used may influence conclusions regarding creative problem-solving.

Comments

© 2009 by the American Psychological Association.

This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record. The final version can be found at http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/aca/3/2/73/.

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