Creativity is often regarded as a valuable tool for solving individual, organizational, and societal problems, so it is crucial to understand its nature and factors. Despite extensive interest in researching the field of creativity, its relationship with cognitive flexibility still remains an unresolved question. Cognitive flexibility is manifested in a wide range of behaviors considered as flexible, such as task switching or multitasking, changing behavior according to new rules, seeking new solutions to problems, and generating new knowledge or tools. However, its definition proves to be problematic and lacks consensus among different authors. We therefore investigated the relationship between various measures of cognitive flexibility and their association with aspects of creative potential, namely fluency, flexibility, and originality. The final sample included 178 participants (105 of whom were female) aged between 16 and 70 years. We used adapted Stroop task, Trail Making Test, and The Number-letter task to measure cognitive flexibility, and the Alternative Uses Task to measure creative potential. The measures of cognitive flexibility exhibited low positive correlations with each other and were not associated with fluency, flexibility, and originality on the Alternative Uses Task. Consequently, they did not prove to be significant predictors of aspects of creative potential. Our study raises questions about the construct validity of cognitive flexibility and also opens up the issue of the complexity of the interplay between different processes involved in solving cognitive flexibility and divergent thinking tasks.
|
