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Divergent thinking is a thought process used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, "non-linear" manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion. Many possible solutions are explored in a short amount of time, and unexpected connections are drawn. Divergent thinking is often contrasted with convergent thinking. Convergent thinking is the opposite of divergent thinking as it organizes and structures ideas and information, which follows a particular set of logical steps to arrive at one solution, which in some cases is a "correct" solution.
The psychologist J.P. Guilford first coined the terms convergent thinking and divergent thinking in 1956.
A map of how Divergent Thinking works
Activities
Activities which promote divergent thinking include creating lists of questions, setting aside time for thinking and meditation, brainstorming, subject mapping, bubble mapping, keeping a journal, playing tabletop role-playing games,[1] creating artwork, and free writing. In free writing, a person will focus on one particular topic and write non-stop about it for a short period of time, in a stream of consciousness fashion.
Divergent vs convergent thinking
Convergent thinking is the process of finding one solution. Divergent thinking involves more creativity, and is typically regarded as spontaneous. In other words, convergent thinking involves more logical thinking with the aim of finding the most efficient solution. Divergent thinking is more useful for brainstorming to explore multiple potential solutions, with less focus on immediate practicality[2].
Benefits of convergent thinking:
No room for vagueness or uncertainty
Organization and structure
Quick resolutions
Benefits of divergent thinking:
New opportunities
Allows for creativity to flow
Multiple perspectives
Playfulness
Parallels have been drawn between playfulness in kindergarten-aged children and divergent thinking. In a study documented by Lieberman,[3] the relationship between these two traits was examined, with playfulness being "conceptualized and operationally defined in terms of five traits: physical, social and cognitive spontaneity; manifest joy; and sense of humour".[3] The author noted that during the study, while observing the children's behaviour at play, they "noted individual differences in spontaneity, overtones of joy, and sense of humour that imply a relationship between the foregoing qualities and some of the factors found in the intellectual structure of creative adults and adolescents".[3] This study highlighted the link between behaviours of divergent thinking, or creativity, in playfulness during childhood and those displayed in later years, in creative adolescents and adults.
Future research opportunities in this area could explore a longitudinal study of kindergarten-aged children and the development or evolution of divergent thinking abilities throughout adolescence, into adulthood, in order to substantiate the link drawn between playfulness and divergent thinking in later life. This long-term study would help parents and teachers identify this behaviour (or lack thereof) in children, specifically at an age when it can be reinforced if already displayed, or supported if not yet displayed.
Divergent thinking and mental health
Certain divergent thinking patterns have been associated with mental health disorders, while divergent thinking as a practice may have therapeutic benefits[citation needed].
Divergent thinking and psychopathology
Divergent thinking can be counterproductive when used excessively. Extreme divergent thinkers end up in loop of endless possibilities without making a decision. Schizophrenia is a variation of extreme divergent thinking, exhibiting actions and thoughts not yielding creativity. Some well-known artists and writers display extreme thinking traits including impulsive nonconformity and over-inclusive thinking.[4]
Therapeutic value of divergent thinking
The ability to use divergent thinking is said to increase the mental status of young adults according to Bennliure and Moral.[5] Mental health can have major impacts on peoples lives. It can be beneficial to some people to learn more about divergent thinking and how it can help with coping mechanisms. Bennliure and Moral state that people with low divergent thinking can get overwhelmed by thinking of the same "repetitive" answer or thought process, leading to feelings of anxiety or depression. On the other hand, being able to create multiple ideas, answers, or plans of action for a certain stressor can create less "thoughts of helplessness, catastrophism, and hopelessness[5]." For this reason, being able to use divergent thinking can be beneficial in lessening anxiety and depression symptoms by "having a more active and open approach" to problems or stressors.[5]
Deductive reasoning
Divergent thinking not only encourages playfulness but reasoning skills as well. Pier-Luc Chantal, Emilie Gagnon-St-Pierre, and Henry Markovits of Universite du Quebec a Montreal conducted a study on preschool aged children in which the relationship between divergent thinking and deductive reasoning were observed.[6] They found that incorporating components of divergent thinking into learning, such as generating unique ideas, "might be a powerful tool to improve reasoning."[6] This approach stresses the idea that "deductive reasoning is not only about getting the 'right' answer but requires going beyond the most obvious ideas in order to generate even very unlikely possibilities."[6]
Divergent thinking and aging
Guila Fusi, Sara Lavolpe, Nara Crepaldi, and Maria Lusia Rusconi conducted a systematic review on the effect of age on divergent thinking. They found that the relationship between age and DT abilities is not at all linear, but "complex and multidimensional."[7] Many variables can influence DT abilities, including "educational level, intelligence, WM (working memory) abilities, and speed of processing."[7] Before any further research should be done, the authors first believe that a theoretical discussion needs to be held. Of course, "new and more accurate information about which of the DT abilities might be preserved or impaired in the elderly population could have significant practical implications."[7]
Effects of positive and negative mood
In a study at the University of Bergen, Norway, the effects of positive and negative mood on divergent-thinking were examined.[8] Nearly two hundred art and psychology students participated, first by measuring their moods with an adjective checklist before performing the required tasks. The results showed a clear distinction in performance between those with a self-reported positive versus negative mood:
Results showed natural positive mood to facilitate significantly task performance and negative mood to inhibit it… The results suggest that persons in elevated moods may prefer satisficing strategies, which would lead to a higher number of proposed solutions. Persons in a negative mood may choose optimizing strategies and be more concerned with the quality of their ideas, which is detrimental to performance on this kind of task.
—(Vosburg, 1998)
A series of related studies suggested a link between positive mood and the promotion of cognitive flexibility.[9][10] In a 1990 study by Murray, Sujan, Hirt and Sujan,[11] this hypothesis was examined more closely and "found positive mood participants were able to see relations between concepts”, as well as demonstrating advanced abilities "in distinguishing the differences between concepts".[8] This group of researchers drew a parallel between "their findings and creative problem solving by arguing that participants in a positive mood are better able both to differentiate between and to integrate unusual and diverse information".[8] This shows that their subjects are at a distinct cognitive advantage when performing divergent thinking-related tasks in an elevated mood. Further research could take this topic one step further to explore effective strategies to improve divergent thinking when in a negative mood, for example how to move beyond "optimizing strategies" into "satisficing strategies" rather than focus on "the quality of their ideas", in order to generate more ideas and creative solutions.[8]
Effects of sleep deprivation
While little research has been conducted on the impact of sleep deprivation on divergent thinking, one study by J.A. Horne[12] illustrated that even when motivation to perform well is maintained, sleep can still impact divergent thinking performance. In this study, twelve subjects were deprived of sleep for thirty-two hours, while a control group of twelve others maintained normal sleep routine. Subjects' performance on both a word fluency task and a challenging nonverbal planning test was "significantly impaired by sleep loss", even when the factor of personal motivation to perform well was controlled.[12] This study showed that even "one night of sleep loss can affect divergent thinking”, which "contrasts with the outcome for convergent thinking tasks, which are more resilient to short-term sleep loss".[12] Research on sleep deprivation and divergent thinking could be further explored on a biological or chemical level, to identify the reason why cognitive functioning, as it relates to divergent thinking, is impacted by lack of sleep and if there is a difference in its impact if subjects are deprived of REM versus non-REM sleep.
Demographic correlation
People who typically have divergent thinking are known as neurodivergent. It has been described that in Black communities there is a higher likelihood for neurodivergent individuals to mask their condition[13]. Hence, many neurodivergent adults and children are dismissed, and there is an issue with underdiagnosis. This results in higher bias against divergent individuals of the black community. About 33% of black students with disabilities spend 80% of the time in a classroom, compared to disabled white students, about 60% spend about 80% in the classroom. This can be attributed to black disabled students being deemed as a disturbance or intellectually inept. This is also exemplified by the statistic that white children are twice as likely to receive an ADHD diagnosis[citation needed]. On the other hand, black kids go undiagnosed and are just viewed as rude, lazy, and negative. Eventually these kids grow up and are not prepared to navigate the real world or workforce because they are misunderstood and don't have the knowledge of their disability.
Divergent thinking in music
Music itself is a source of creativity, that enhances cognition, learning, and memory[14]. A study was done where participants listened to music and their emotions were then measured as well as their creativity. Most people expressed the emotions of calm, happy, sad, or anxious. However, results showed that those who listened to calmer and happier music had significantly higher scores of creativity than those who did not listen to any music. Though, the actual mood changes of participants were not closely analyzed, or whether they enjoyed the music or not their was a positive correlation between positive mood and creativity. Which allowed for the inference that happy music was the reason mood and creativity was boosted.
Diversity and ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is study of music in various cultures by socializing, investigating, and comparing.
Divergent thinking is often used by ethnomusicologist to express an array of musical tradition. Various cultures carry unique sounds and patterns. New works are made when blending different sounds and patterns to highlight musical styles. Ethnomusicologists often go out and study and observe in different environments to convey different music phenoms. With incorporating divergent thinking into musical classrooms we can allow students to broaden their perspectives and create more cultural expressions.
Diversity thinking and habits of the mind
We can become more innovative thinkers when following habits of the mind. With staying persistent we can always focus on the tasks at hand. Divergent thinking also allows for keeping an open mind and learn new things. New learnings can be applied to past or future problems. Divergent thinking also enhances imagination, striving for more originality, and pushes others to do the same. The more originality the more ideas can be expressed in group settings.
Divergent thinking modeling
Both convergent and divergent processing have been subject to modeling. The first process has been modeled by emulating responses to the Remote Associates Test (RAT) by Olteţeanu and Falomir (2015)[15] and Klein and Badia (2015).[16] The RAT was modeled by both research teams as a proof-of-concept to investigate how remote associative concepts relate to statistically based Natural Language Processing techniques and how these connections relate to the convergent and divergent cognitive processes involved in creativity. According to Klein and Badia, distant associates are tracked down and chosen using a strictly lexical-based modeling technique, where both the frequency of co-occurrence and the frequency of each term in the corpus are valued in the convergent and divergent parts of the process.
On a more divergent focus, Klein and Badia (2022),[17] and Olteţeanu and Falomir (2016)[18] proposed a divergent thinking emulation by modeling the Alternative Uses Task (AUT). The former researchers proposed a simple co-occurrence based method with and without grammatical labeling to solve this test. The later applied what they named Object Replacement and Object Composition with specific reference to AUT. Other ideas for DT generation, include Veale and Li (2016)[19] template approach, and López-Ortega (2013)[20] who proposed an application of divergent exploration in a multi agent system.
In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, and deliberation. But other mental processes, like considering an idea, memory, or imagination, are also often included. These processes can happen internally independent of the sensory organs, unlike perception. But when understood in the widest sense, any mental event may be understood as a form of thinking, including perception and unconscious mental processes. In a slightly different sense, the term thought refers not to the mental processes themselves but to mental states or systems of ideas brought about by these processes.
Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable ideas or works using one's imagination. Products of creativity may be intangible, a physical object. Creativity may also describe the ability to find new solutions to problems, or new methods of performing a task or reaching a goal. Therefore, creativity enables people to solve problems in new or innovative ways.
In psychology, a mood is an affective state. In contrast to emotions or feelings, moods are less specific, less intense and less likely to be provoked or instantiated by a particular stimulus or event. Moods are typically described as having either a positive or negative valence. In other words, people usually talk about being in a good mood or a bad mood. There are many different factors that influence mood, and these can lead to positive or negative effects on mood.
Lateral thinking is a manner of solving problems using an indirect and creative approach via reasoning that is not immediately obvious. Synonymous to thinking outside the box, it involves ideas that may not be obtainable using only traditional step-by-step logic. The cutting of the Gordian Knot is a classical example.
Creative problem-solving (CPS) is the mental process of searching for an original and previously unknown solution to a problem. To qualify, the solution must be novel and reached independently. The creative problem-solving process was originally developed by Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes. Creative problem solving (CPS) is a way of using creativity to develop new ideas and solutions to problems. The process is based on separating divergent and convergent thinking styles, so that one can focus their mind on creating at the first stage, and then evaluating at the second stage.
Brainstorming is a creativity technique in which a group of people interact to suggest ideas spontaneously in response to a prompt. Stress is typically placed on the volume and variety of ideas, including ideas that may seem outlandish or "off-the-wall". Ideas are noted down during the activity, but not assessed or critiqued until later. The absence of criticism and assessment is intended to avoid inhibiting participants in their idea production. The term was popularized by advertising executive Alex Faickney Osborn in the classic work Applied Imagination (1953).
Daydreaming is a stream of consciousness that detaches from current external tasks when one's attention becomes focused on a more personal and internal direction.
A writer's block is a non-medical condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author is either unable to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown.
Joy Paul Guilford was an American psychologist best known for his psychometric study of human intelligence, including the distinction between convergent and divergent production.
The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence or Three Forms of Intelligence, formulated by psychologist Robert Sternberg, aims to go against the psychometric approach to intelligence and take a more cognitive approach, which leaves it to the category of the cognitive-contextual theories. The three meta components are also called triarchic components.
Links between creativity and mental health have been extensively discussed and studied by psychologists and other researchers for centuries. Parallels can be drawn to connect creativity to major mental disorders including bipolar disorder, autism, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, OCD and ADHD. For example, studies have demonstrated correlations between creative occupations and people living with mental illness. There are cases that support the idea that mental illness can aid in creativity, but it is also generally agreed that mental illness does not have to be present for creativity to exist.
Creativity techniques are methods that encourage creative actions, whether in the arts or sciences. They focus on a variety of aspects of creativity, including techniques for idea generation and divergent thinking, methods of re-framing problems, changes in the affective environment and so on. They can be used as part of problem solving, artistic expression, or therapy.
Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings:
Design thinking refers to the set of cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design problems.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to thought (thinking):
Hot cognition is a hypothesis on motivated reasoning in which a person's thinking is influenced by their emotional state. Put simply, hot cognition is cognition coloured by emotion. Hot cognition contrasts with cold cognition, which implies cognitive processing of information that is independent of emotional involvement. Hot cognition is proposed to be associated with cognitive and physiological arousal, in which a person is more responsive to environmental factors. As it is automatic, rapid and led by emotion, hot cognition may consequently cause biased decision making. Hot cognition may arise, with varying degrees of strength, in politics, religion, and other sociopolitical contexts because of moral issues, which are inevitably tied to emotion. Hot cognition was initially proposed in 1963 by Robert P. Abelson. The idea became popular in the 1960s and the 1970s.
In psychology, incubation refers to the unconscious processing of problems, when they are set aside for a period of time, that may lead to insights. It was originally proposed by Graham Wallas in 1926 as one of his four stages of the creative process: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Incubation is related to intuition and insight in that it is the unconscious part of a process whereby an intuition may become validated as an insight. Incubation substantially increases the odds of solving a problem, and benefits from long incubation periods with low cognitive workloads.
The majority of studies on sleep creativity have shown that sleep can facilitate insightful behavior and flexible reasoning, and there are several hypotheses about the creative function of dreams. On the other hand, a few recent studies have supported a theory of creative insomnia, in which creativity is significantly correlated with sleep disturbance.
Convergent thinking is a term coined by Joy Paul Guilford as the opposite of divergent thinking. It generally means the ability to give the "correct" answer to questions that do not require novel ideas, for instance on standardized multiple-choice tests for intelligence.
The Remote Associates Test (RAT) is a creativity test used to determine a human's creative potential. The test typically lasts forty minutes and consists of thirty to forty questions each of which consists of three common stimulus words that appear to be unrelated. The subject must think of a fourth word that is somehow related to each of the first three words. Scores are calculated based on the number of correct questions.
References
↑ Dyson, Scott Benjamin; Chang, Yu-Lin; Chen, Hsueh-Chih; Hsiung, Hsiang-Yu; Tseng, Chien-Chih; Chang, Jen-Ho (March 2016). "The effect of tabletop role-playing games on the creative potential and emotional creativity of Taiwanese college students". Thinking Skills and Creativity. 19: 88–96. doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2015.10.004.
1 2 3 Lieberman, J. Nina (1965-12-01). "Playfulness and Divergent Thinking: An Investigation of their Relationship at the Kindergarten Level". The Journal of Genetic Psychology. 107 (2): 219–224. doi:10.1080/00221325.1965.10533661. ISSN0022-1325. PMID5852592.
1 2 3 4 Vosburg, Suzanne K. (1998-04-01). "The Effects of Positive and Negative Mood on Divergent-Thinking Performance". Creativity Research Journal. 11 (2): 165–172. doi:10.1207/s15326934crj1102_6. ISSN1040-0419.
↑ Isen, Alice M.; Daubman, Kimberly A. (1984-12-01). "The influence of affect on categorization". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 47 (6): 1206–1217. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.47.6.1206. ISSN1939-1315.
↑ Isen, Alice M.; Johnson, Mitzi M.; Mertz, Elizabeth; Robinson, Gregory F. (1985). "The influence of positive affect on the unusualness of word associations". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 48 (6): 1413–1426. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.48.6.1413. PMID4020605.
↑ Murray, Noel; Sujan, Harish; Hirt, Edward R.; Sujan, Mita (1990). "The influence of mood on categorization: A cognitive flexibility interpretation". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 59 (3): 411–425. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.59.3.411.
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