The dissertation criticizes two analogical applications of Darwinism to the spheres of mind and culture: the Darwinian approach to creativity and memetics. These theories rely on three basic analogies: the ontological analogy states that the basic ontological units of culture are so-called memes, which are replicators like genes; the origination analogy states that novelty in human creativity emerges in a "blind" Darwinian manner; and the explanatory units of selection analogy states that memes are "egoistic" and that they can spread independently (...) of our mind. The detailed philosophical analysis offered in the dissertation shows that these three analogies rely on either wrong or trivial statements: they provide either wrong or no new descriptions or explanations of the phenomena at hand. In Chapter One, I introduce the diverse ways, in which contemporary Darwinism is used today outside of evolutionary biology. Chapter Two explains what it means to claim that something evolves in a Darwinian manner. Chapter Three to Five address each of the three analogies separately. Darwinism applied to culture and mind, at least in the way discussed in this study, is not a dangerous idea. It leads either to wrong claims or to a re-telling in Darwinian terms of what we have already known. (shrink)

Numerous studies had found that creativity is not only associated with low effort and flexible processes, but also associated with high effort and persistent processes especially when defensive behavior being induced negative emotions. The important role of self-esteem is to buffer the negative emotions and low self-esteem are prone to instigate various forms of defensive behaviors. Thus, we thought that the relationships between trait creativity and executive control brain networks might be modulated by self-esteem. The resting-state electroencephalogram (RS-EEG) microstates can (...) divided into four classical types (MS1, MS2, MS3 and MS4) which can reflect the brain networks as well as the dynamic characteristic of them. Thus, Williams creative tendency scale (WCTS) and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) were used to investigate the modulating role of self-esteem on the relationships between trait creativity and the RS-EEG microstates. As our results showed, self-esteem consistently modulated the relationships between creativity and the duration and contribution of MS2 related to visual or imagery processing, the occurrence of MS3 related to cingulo-opercular networks, as well as transitions between MS2 and MS4 which was related to frontoparietal control networks. Based on these results, we thought that Moreover, individuals with low self-esteem might be more prone to influenced by negative emotions and develop low trait creativity; bottom-up information from vision or visual imagery might be beneficial to develop trait creativity for individuals with high self-esteem to improve trait creativity, while inhibition of irrelevant information could facilitate trait creativity for individuals with low self-esteem. (shrink)

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the veracity of a theoretically derived model of health that describes a non-linear trajectory of health from birth to death with available population data sets. Methods: The distribution of mortality by age is directly related to health at that age, thus health approximates 1/mortality. The inverse of available all-cause mortality data from various time periods and populations was used as proxy data to compare with the theoretically derived non-linear health model predictions, (...) using both qualitative approaches and quantitative one-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov analysis with Monte Carlo simulation. Results: The mortality data's inverse resembles a log–normal distribution as predicted by the proposed health model. The curves have identical slopes from birth and follow a logarithmic decline from peak health in young adulthood. A majority of the sampled populations had a good to excellent quantitative fit to a log–normal distribution, supporting the underlying model assumptions. Post hoc manipulation showed the model predictions to be stable. Conclusions: This is a first theory of health to be validated by proxy data, namely the inverse of all-cause mortality. This non-linear model, derived from the notion of the interaction of physical, environmental, mental, emotional, social and sense-making domains of health, gives physicians a more rigorous basis to direct health care services and resources away from disease-focused elder care towards broad-based biopsychosocial interventions earlier in life. (shrink)

Paradoxes are an unavoidable part of work life. The unusualness of attempting to simultaneously satisfy contradictory imperatives can result in creative outcomes that simultaneously satisfy both imperatives by inducing search for, and selection of, novel and useful solutions. Likewise, extant research suggests that paradoxes can also result in anxiety, defensiveness, and persistence of old ways of doing things. However, there is little work attempting to describe how paradoxes affect cognition and when it results in higher or lower creativity. To tackle (...) this issue, a theory of paradoxical creativity is developed. Paradoxical creativity is the attempt by an individual to creatively resolve a contradiction by simultaneously achieving competing demands. The theory is implemented into a computational model and a simulation is used to describe how paradoxes affect creative cognitive process and how these processes in turn result in higher or lower degrees of creativity. The results show that creative output is enhanced when paradoxes have a balanced effect on the cognitive processes responsible for an individual’s capacity to search for new information and willingness to tolerate new ideas. Hence, individuals with high baseline levels of creative cognition are more likely to suffer negative creative performance consequences resulting from contradictory demands. For those individuals, contradictory demands may produce more alternatives, which increases uncertainty and time to insight (if insight is ever reached). This suggests that incentives or rewards to resolve contradictions may have the unintentional effect of reducing creative output in some circumstance. (shrink)

The COVID-19 epidemic is associated with negative mood, which has the potential to be a powerful driver of creativity. However, the influence of negative mood on cognitive creativity and emotional creativity remains elusive. Previous research has indicated that self-focused attention is likely to be related to both negative mood and creativity. The current study introduced two self-focused attention variables to explore how negative mood might contribute to cognitive creativity and emotional creativity. Based on a sample of 351 participants, our study (...) found that negative mood during the outbreak of COVID-19 was associated with cognitive creativity and emotional creativity. Meanwhile, there were significant serial mediation effects of rumination and reflection in the relationship between negative mood and creativity and the psychological impact after exposure to the COVID-19 epidemic was positively correlated with emotional creativity but not with cognitive creativity. These results suggested that individuals, in real life and work, could achieve better creative performance through moderate self-focus. Moreover, individuals with different mood states can be induced to enhance their creativity in times of crisis through intervention training to promote reflection. (shrink)

Research on innovation often highlights analogies from sources outside the current problem domain as a major source of novel concepts; however, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are not well understood. We analyzed the temporal interplay between far analogy use and creative concept generation in a professional design team's brainstorming conversations, investigating the hypothesis that far analogies lead directly to very novel concepts via large steps in conceptual spaces . Surprisingly, we found that concepts were more similar to their preceding concepts (...) after far analogy use compared to baseline situations . Yet far analogies increased the team's concept generation rate compared to baseline conditions. Overall, these results challenge the view that far analogies primarily lead to novel concepts via jumps in conceptual spaces and suggest alternative pathways from far analogies to novel concepts. (shrink)

This study was part of a larger cross-national research project at the Norway’s University of Bergen, which involved participants from over 30 countries. This undertaking delves into developmental assets, creativity, and thriving, and the part they play in determining mental health. Thus, this study examined the developmental assets, creativity, thriving, and their importance to mental health in a sample of Malaysian emerging adults. This study was based on a sample of 394 undergraduate students, comprising 264 females and 130 males, ranging (...) between the ages of 18 and 26 years. Two subscales of the Reisman diagnostic creativity assessment were used to measure creativity. Meanwhile, thriving indicators of Search Institute were used to measure thriving while the short form of the mental health continuum for adolescents was used to measure mental health. An online Google form was used to collect data from university students enrolled in both public and private universities. The correlation analysis results revealed that all the variables were positively correlated to each other and that the relationship between development assets, creativity, thriving, and mental health ranged from weak to moderate. Multiple regression analysis produced four models that indicated that positive identity, support, creativity, and thriving have a significant influence on mental health among emerging adults. Further, analyses using the PROCESS procedure demonstrated significant indirect effects of positive identity and support on mental health through its effects on creativity and thriving. As such, it is our recommendation that mental health practitioners tailor their treatment approach to include positive identity, support, creativity, and thriving in their sessions with Malaysian emerging adults. (shrink)

Most research on people's conceptions regarding creativity has concerned informal beliefs instead of more complex belief systems represented in scholarly theories of creativity. The relevance of general theories of creativity to the creative domain of music may also be unclear because of the mixed responses these theories have received from music researchers. The aim of the present study was to gain a better comparative understanding of theories of creativity as accounts of musical creativity by allowing students to assess them from (...) a musical perspective. In the study, higher-education music students rated 10 well-known theories of creativity as accounts of four musical target activities—composition, improvisation, performance, and ideation—and argued for the “best theoretical perspectives” in written essays. The results showed that students' theory appraisals were significantly affected by the target activities, but also by the participants' prior musical experiences. Students' argumentative strategies also differed between theories, especially regarding justifications by personal experiences and values. Moreover, theories were most typically problematized when discussing improvisation. The students most often chose to defend the Four-Stage Model, Divergent Thinking, and Systems Theory, while theories emphasizing strategic choices or Darwinian selection mechanisms were rarely found appealing. Overall, students tended toward moderate theory eclecticism, and their theory appraisals were seen to be pragmatic and example-based, instead of aiming for such virtues as broad scope or consistency. The theories were often used as definitions for identifying some phenomena of interest rather than for making stronger explanatory claims about such phenomena. Students' theory appraisals point to some challenges for creativity research, especially regarding the problems of accounting for improvisation, and concerning the significance of theories that find no support in these musically well-informed adults' reasoning. (shrink)

: This article describes a psychological test of Hull's (1988) theory of science as an evolutionary process by seeing if it can account for how scientists sometimes remember and cite the scientific literature. The conceptual adequacy of Hull's theory was evaluated by comparing it to Bartlett's (1932) seminal theory of human remembering. Bartlett found that remembering is an active, reconstructive process driven by a schema that biases recall in the direction of proto- typicality and personal involvement. This account supports Hull's (...) theory of science because it shows that the characteristics of reconstructive remembering are consistent with the generic properties of an evolutionary process. The empirical adequacy of Hull's theory was evaluated by comparing the predictions made from this evolutionary viewpoint against evidence from the history of science. Six cases studies of well-known psychological experiments that had been subject to repeated miscitation errors were collected and reviewed. All six case studies revealed a systematic pattern of distortions that is consistent with the schema-induced biases of reconstructive remembering. These findings support Hull's claim that science is an evolutionary process with scientists as interactors, scientific beliefs as replicators, and schemata as means for that replication. (shrink)