How can we measure creativity?

*Easy/Moderate   *Not messy   *30 minutes

What is creativity?

Human beings are very creative. We make art, create music, write stories, solve problems, and invent all kinds of gadgets in order to make our lives easier and more enjoyable. It seems clear that creativity is a big reason why humans are so successful. Because creativity is so important, scientists are interested in studying it in the lab. They ask questions like:

“What makes a person creative?”

“Can we teach people to be more creative?”

“When are people the most creative?” 

“Where is creativity in the brain?”

Before conducting an experiment, scientists have to define creativity so they know the best way to measure it. After many years of research, creativity scientists have discovered that creativity is complicated. It can take shape in many different ways, and involves many different skills. For example, a person can be an excellent artist, but not a great inventor. Creativity can also change over time with practice: even the best musician had to learn how to play their instrument. Because of this, researchers who study creativity often use verbal tasks, or tasks based around language, to study how everyday people with different backgrounds come up with creative ideas.

Scientists have settled on defining a creative idea as something that is novel and useful. An idea is novel if it is new, original, or has never been done before. This is what most people think of when they think about creativity: a new work of art, a new song, or the invention of a new gadget.

What many people don’t think about, however, is an idea’s usefulness. Imagine that an inventor has what she thinks is a creative new idea: a robot that drops spaghetti on the rooftops! We’ll solve world hunger with delicious pasta! This idea is certainly very novel – most likely, no one has ever thought of solving world hunger with an Italian-food-slinging robot. At the same time, however, it would not be very useful in practice. How would people get up to the roof to get the spaghetti? Would there just be moldy spaghetti everywhere after a while? Would it even come with sauce? An idea that is not useful, in that it does not work, solve a problem, or provide value, can’t really be creative.

Now that we have a scientific definition of creativity, which is an idea that is both novel and useful, we can try a verbal experiment to measure creative ideas!

Trying the Alternate Uses Task

Materials: 

• a pen or pencil
• a printer
• a timer
• Alternate Uses Activity Sheet

Directions:

• Print out the Alternate Uses Activity Sheet pdf (listed in the materials above)
• Have 2-4 participants take the test by listing as many creative uses as they can think of for a tire in 2 minutes. Next, have your participants list as many creative uses for a brick as they can think of in 2 minutes.
• Score your participants’ responses!
  • 1. Use the “novel” column to rate each idea on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being “not novel at all” and 5 being “extremely novel”.
    2. Next, use the “useful” column to rate each idea’s usefulness on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being “not useful” and 5 being “extremely useful”.
    3. Add up each idea’s novelty and usefulness score and write it in the “creative” column.
    4. Add all the columns and write their totals at the bottom.
    5. Repeat for each participant.

After you score all the responses, think about the following questions:

Who had the highest creativity score? Is this person usually creative?

Did my participants come up with more novel or more useful responses?

Did my participants have more creative ideas at the beginning or the end?

Did my participants come up with ideas I’ve never thought of before?

How would you measure creativity?

Congratulations! You’ve conducted your first creativity experiment. The Alternate Uses Task is one way that creativity researchers measure creative ideas. This task is great at measuring verbal creativity, or the ability to use words to express creative ideas. At the same time, there are many other ways that a person can be creative. Do you think that the ability to come up with creative ideas is related to being good at art, music, or dance? How would you measure creativity in art, music, or dance? Are there other ways you can think of to measure creativity?

“How can we measure creativity?” by Hannah Merseal