A growing body of research evidence suggests that creativity is very domain-specific and that domain-general skills or traits contribute little to creative performance. The term "creativity" is a convenient term for collecting many interesting artifacts, processes, and people into a single category, and the term "creative thinking skills" may be a…

Several thousand subjects completed self-report questionnaires about their own creativity in 56 discrete domains. This sample was then randomly divided into three subsamples that were subject to factor analyses that compared an oblique model (with a set of correlated factors) and a hierarchical model (with a single second-order, or hierarchical,…

The Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) argues that the most valid judgments of the creativity are those of the combined opinions of experts in the field. Yet who exactly qualifies as an expert to evaluate a creative product such as a short story? This study examines both novice and expert judgments of student short fiction. Results indicate a…

Research on gender differences in creativity, including creativity test scores, creative achievements, and self-reported creativity is reviewed, as are theories that have been offered to explain such differences and available evidence that supports or refutes such theories. This is a difficult arena in which to conduct research, but there is a…

The issue of racial/ethnic and gender differences in intelligence and academic abilities is fiercely and frequently debated, yet the examination of these differences in creativity is less studied. Our goal in this study was to use the Consensual Assessment Technique, in which experts judge a product's creativity, to examine differences in…

Four studies were conducted to assess gender differences in the effects of extrinsic motivation on creativity. Results indicate expectations of evaluation and work for reward lowered the creativity of middle school girls, but not that of boys. Expecting ungraded feedback reduced the negative impact of expecting evaluation and the gender…

This study investigated what effect divergent-thinking training focusing on a single task would have on the creative performance of 79 seventh graders on a closely related task. Students received training in poetry-relevant, divergent-thinking skills. The training was found to have a significant impact on the students' creativity in writing…