Jordanous and Keller were interested in learning more about creativity. So, they applied “techniques from the field of statistical natural language processing” to “identify a collection of fourteen key components of creativity.” As a result “a number of distinct themes emerge, which collectively contribute to a comprehensive and multi-perspective model of creativity.” The researchers have already applied their work with these components to assess creativity.
The 14 key components of creativity identified by Jordanous and Keller are: active involvement and persistence; dealing with uncertainty; domain competence; general intellectual ability; generation of results; independence and freedom (to act); intention and emotional involvement; originality; progression and development; social interaction and communication; spontaneity/subconscious processing; thinking and evaluation; value; and variety, divergence and experimentation.
Anna Jordanous and Bill Keller. 2016. “Modelling Creativity: Identifying Key Components Through a Corpus-Based Approach.” PLoS ONE, vol. 11, no. 10, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0162959
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.