Because of its fundamental relevance to scientific innovation, artistic expression, and human ing... more Because of its fundamental relevance to scientific innovation, artistic expression, and human ingenuity, creativity has long been the subject of systematic psychological investigation. Concomitantly, the far-reaching effects of stereotypes on various cognitive and social processes have been widely researched. Bridging these two literatures, we show in a series of two studies that stereotypes related to creativity can both enhance and diminish individuals' performance on a divergent thinking task. Specifically, Study 1 demonstrated that participants asked to take on a stereotypically uninhibited perspective performed significantly better on a divergent thinking task than those participants who took on a stereotypically inhibited perspective, and a control group. Relatedly, Study 2 showed that the same effect is found within-subjects, with divergent thinking significantly improving when participants invoke an uninhibited stereotype. Moreover, we demonstrate the efficacy of Latent Semantic Analysis as an objective measure of the originality of ideas, and discuss implications of our findings for the nature of creativity. Namely, that creativity may not be best described as a stable individual trait, but as a malleable product of context and perspective. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley and even your local kindergarten; a multi-million-dollar industry has emerged that attempts to identify and cultivate the next generation of creative people. However, despite the long-standing search for the essence of creativity, it has remained shrouded in stereotypes of creative geniuses such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Ai Wei Wei, and Steve Jobs. Nowhere has this quest for creativity been more evident than in the development of tests of creativity. Many researchers and the general public have assumed that being creative is largely a trait that we are born with (e.g., [1, 2]). Here, we take a very different approach and demonstrate that the ways in which we instantiate stereotypes of creativity can either increase or decrease our creative performance, a phenomenon we label the Creative Stereotype Effect.
Over the past couple of decades, there have been great developments in the fields of psychology a... more Over the past couple of decades, there have been great developments in the fields of psychology and cognitive neuroscience that have allowed the advancement of our understanding of how people make judgements about causality in several domains. We provide a review of some of the contemporary psychological models of causal thinking that are directly relevant to legal reasoning. In addition, we cover some exciting new research using advanced neuroimaging techniques that have helped to uncover the underlying neural signatures of complex causal reasoning. Through the use of functional imaging, we provide a first-hand look at how the brain responds to evidence that is either consistent or inconsistent with one's beliefs and expectations. Based on the data covered in this review, we propose some ideas for how the effectiveness of causal reasoning, especially as it pertains to legal decision-making, may be facilitated.
Since well before the time of contemporary psychological and neuroscientiflc research, philosophe... more Since well before the time of contemporary psychological and neuroscientiflc research, philosophers and scientists have been fascinated with the concept of causality. Recent advances of neuroscientific techniques, specifically, neuroimaging using functional MRI, have allowed scientists to probe the brain in order to uncover the mechanisms underlying people’s conceptions of causality. In this chapter, we provide an overview of a portion of this recent work, specifically as it pertains to the nature of how people interpret and reason about causality.
... While this conclusion fits with some historical analyses of differ-ences between European and... more ... While this conclusion fits with some historical analyses of differ-ences between European and North American scientists (eg Crombie, 1994), it is nonetheless surprising to see such stark differences in the 'live'reasoning Page 178. 164 Kevin N. Dunbar of scientists in a lab that ...
Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology-revue Canadienne De Psychologie Experimentale, 2004
A number of researchers and scholars have stressed the importance of disconfirmation in the quest... more A number of researchers and scholars have stressed the importance of disconfirmation in the quest for the development of scientific knowledge (e.g., Popper, 1959). Paradoxically, studies examining human reasoning in the laboratory have typically found that people display a confirmation bias in that they are more likely to seek out and attend to data consistent rather than data inconsistent with their initial theory (Wason, 1968). We examine the strategies that scientists and students use to evaluate data that are either consistent or inconsistent with their expectations. First, we present findings from scientists reasoning "live" in their laboratory meetings. We show that scientists often show an initial reluctance to consider inconsistent data as "real." However, this initial reluctance is often overcome with repeated observations of the inconsistent data such that they modify their theories to account for the new data. We further examine these issues in a controlled scientific causal thinking simulation specifically developed to examine the reasoning strategies we observed in the natural scientific environment. Like the scientists, we found that participants in our simulation initially displayed a propensity to discount data inconsistent with a theory provided. However, with repeated observations of the inconsistent data, the students, like the scientists, began to see the once anomalous data as "real" and the initial bias to discount that data was significantly diminished.
We examined activation of concepts during analogical reasoning. Subjects made either analogical j... more We examined activation of concepts during analogical reasoning. Subjects made either analogical judgments or categorical judgments about four-word sets. After each four-word set, they named the ink color of a single word in a modified Stroop task. Words that referred to category relations were primed (as indicated by longer response times on Stroop color naming) subsequent to analogical judgments and categorical judgments. This finding suggests that activation of category concepts plays a fundamental role in analogical thinking. When colored words referred to analogical relations, priming occurred subsequent to analogical judgments, but not to categorical judgments, even though identical four-word stimuli were used for both types of judgments. This finding lends empirical support to the hypothesis that, when people comprehend the analogy between two items, they activate an abstract analogical relation that is distinct from the specific content items that compose the analogy.
Because of its fundamental relevance to scientific innovation, artistic expression, and human ing... more Because of its fundamental relevance to scientific innovation, artistic expression, and human ingenuity, creativity has long been the subject of systematic psychological investigation. Concomitantly, the far-reaching effects of stereotypes on various cognitive and social processes have been widely researched. Bridging these two literatures, we show in a series of two studies that stereotypes related to creativity can both enhance and diminish individuals' performance on a divergent thinking task. Specifically, Study 1 demonstrated that participants asked to take on a stereotypically uninhibited perspective performed significantly better on a divergent thinking task than those participants who took on a stereotypically inhibited perspective, and a control group. Relatedly, Study 2 showed that the same effect is found within-subjects, with divergent thinking significantly improving when participants invoke an uninhibited stereotype. Moreover, we demonstrate the efficacy of Latent Semantic Analysis as an objective measure of the originality of ideas, and discuss implications of our findings for the nature of creativity. Namely, that creativity may not be best described as a stable individual trait, but as a malleable product of context and perspective. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley and even your local kindergarten; a multi-million-dollar industry has emerged that attempts to identify and cultivate the next generation of creative people. However, despite the long-standing search for the essence of creativity, it has remained shrouded in stereotypes of creative geniuses such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Ai Wei Wei, and Steve Jobs. Nowhere has this quest for creativity been more evident than in the development of tests of creativity. Many researchers and the general public have assumed that being creative is largely a trait that we are born with (e.g., [1, 2]). Here, we take a very different approach and demonstrate that the ways in which we instantiate stereotypes of creativity can either increase or decrease our creative performance, a phenomenon we label the Creative Stereotype Effect.
Over the past couple of decades, there have been great developments in the fields of psychology a... more Over the past couple of decades, there have been great developments in the fields of psychology and cognitive neuroscience that have allowed the advancement of our understanding of how people make judgements about causality in several domains. We provide a review of some of the contemporary psychological models of causal thinking that are directly relevant to legal reasoning. In addition, we cover some exciting new research using advanced neuroimaging techniques that have helped to uncover the underlying neural signatures of complex causal reasoning. Through the use of functional imaging, we provide a first-hand look at how the brain responds to evidence that is either consistent or inconsistent with one's beliefs and expectations. Based on the data covered in this review, we propose some ideas for how the effectiveness of causal reasoning, especially as it pertains to legal decision-making, may be facilitated.
Since well before the time of contemporary psychological and neuroscientiflc research, philosophe... more Since well before the time of contemporary psychological and neuroscientiflc research, philosophers and scientists have been fascinated with the concept of causality. Recent advances of neuroscientific techniques, specifically, neuroimaging using functional MRI, have allowed scientists to probe the brain in order to uncover the mechanisms underlying people’s conceptions of causality. In this chapter, we provide an overview of a portion of this recent work, specifically as it pertains to the nature of how people interpret and reason about causality.
... While this conclusion fits with some historical analyses of differ-ences between European and... more ... While this conclusion fits with some historical analyses of differ-ences between European and North American scientists (eg Crombie, 1994), it is nonetheless surprising to see such stark differences in the 'live'reasoning Page 178. 164 Kevin N. Dunbar of scientists in a lab that ...
Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology-revue Canadienne De Psychologie Experimentale, 2004
A number of researchers and scholars have stressed the importance of disconfirmation in the quest... more A number of researchers and scholars have stressed the importance of disconfirmation in the quest for the development of scientific knowledge (e.g., Popper, 1959). Paradoxically, studies examining human reasoning in the laboratory have typically found that people display a confirmation bias in that they are more likely to seek out and attend to data consistent rather than data inconsistent with their initial theory (Wason, 1968). We examine the strategies that scientists and students use to evaluate data that are either consistent or inconsistent with their expectations. First, we present findings from scientists reasoning "live" in their laboratory meetings. We show that scientists often show an initial reluctance to consider inconsistent data as "real." However, this initial reluctance is often overcome with repeated observations of the inconsistent data such that they modify their theories to account for the new data. We further examine these issues in a controlled scientific causal thinking simulation specifically developed to examine the reasoning strategies we observed in the natural scientific environment. Like the scientists, we found that participants in our simulation initially displayed a propensity to discount data inconsistent with a theory provided. However, with repeated observations of the inconsistent data, the students, like the scientists, began to see the once anomalous data as "real" and the initial bias to discount that data was significantly diminished.
We examined activation of concepts during analogical reasoning. Subjects made either analogical j... more We examined activation of concepts during analogical reasoning. Subjects made either analogical judgments or categorical judgments about four-word sets. After each four-word set, they named the ink color of a single word in a modified Stroop task. Words that referred to category relations were primed (as indicated by longer response times on Stroop color naming) subsequent to analogical judgments and categorical judgments. This finding suggests that activation of category concepts plays a fundamental role in analogical thinking. When colored words referred to analogical relations, priming occurred subsequent to analogical judgments, but not to categorical judgments, even though identical four-word stimuli were used for both types of judgments. This finding lends empirical support to the hypothesis that, when people comprehend the analogy between two items, they activate an abstract analogical relation that is distinct from the specific content items that compose the analogy.
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Papers by Kevin Niall Dunbar