Open AccessNaming unrelated words predicts creativity
Author(s) -
Jay A. Olson,
Johnny Nahas,
Denis Chmoulevitch,
Simon J. Cropper,
Margaret E. Webb
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2022340118
Subject(s) - creativity , semantic similarity , task (project management) , associative property , psychology , divergent thinking , cognitive psychology , measure (data warehouse) , range (aeronautics) , association (psychology) , semantic memory , semantic property , social psychology , artificial intelligence , natural language processing , computer science , mathematics , cognition , materials science , management , database , neuroscience , pure mathematics , economics , composite material , psychotherapist
Several theories posit that creative people are able to generate more divergent ideas. If this is correct, simply naming unrelated words and then measuring the semantic distance between them could serve as an objective measure of divergent thinking. To test this hypothesis, we asked 8,914 participants to name 10 words that are as different from each other as possible. A computational algorithm then estimated the average semantic distance between the words; related words (e.g., cat and dog) have shorter distances than unrelated ones (e.g., cat and thimble). We predicted that people producing greater semantic distances would also score higher on traditional creativity measures. In Study 1, we found moderate to strong correlations between semantic distance and two widely used creativity measures (the Alternative Uses Task and the Bridge-the-Associative-Gap Task). In Study 2, with participants from 98 countries, semantic distances varied only slightly by basic demographic variables. There was also a positive correlation between semantic distance and performance on a range of problems known to predict creativity. Overall, semantic distance correlated at least as strongly with established creativity measures as those measures did with each other. Naming unrelated words in what we call the Divergent Association Task can thus serve as a brief, reliable, and objective measure of divergent thinking.