Abstract:
Despite an established body of research characterizing how creative individuals explore their external world, relatively little is known about how such individuals navigate their inner mental life, especially in unstructured contexts such as periods of awake rest. Across two studies, the present manuscript tested the hypothesis that creative individuals are more engaged with their idle thoughts and more associative in the dynamic transitions between them. Study 1 captured the real-time conscious experiences of 81 adults as they voiced aloud the content of their mind moment-by-moment across a 10-minute unconstrained baseline period. Higher originality scores on a divergent thinking task were associated with less perceived boredom, more words spoken overall, more freely moving thoughts, and more loosely-associative (as opposed to sharp) transitions during the baseline rest period. In Study 2, across 2,612 participants, those who reported higher self-rated creativity also reported less perceived boredom during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time during which many people experienced unusually extended periods of unstructured free time. Overall, these results suggest a tendency for creative individuals to be more engaged and explorative with their thoughts when task demands are relaxed, raising implications for resting state functional MRI and societal trends to devalue idle time.
摘要:
尽管有一个成熟的研究机构描述了有创造力的人如何探索他们的外部世界,人们对这些人如何驾驭他们内心的精神生活知之甚少,尤其是在非结构化的环境中,例如清醒休息的时期。在两项研究中,本手稿检验了这样一个假设,即有创造力的人更多地参与他们的闲散思想,并且在他们之间的动态过渡中更具联想性。研究1捕获了81名成年人的实时意识体验,因为他们在10分钟的不受约束的基线期内每时每刻大声表达了他们的思想内容。在发散性思维任务中,较高的独创性得分与较少的无聊感有关,更多的话,总的来说,更自由地移动思想,并且在基线休息期间更松散关联(而不是尖锐)的过渡。在研究2中,针对2,612名参与者,那些自我评价创造力较高的人也报告说,在新冠肺炎大流行期间,人们感觉到的无聊程度较低,许多人经历了异常延长的非结构化空闲时间的时间。总的来说,这些结果表明,当任务要求放松时,创造性个体倾向于更多地参与和探索他们的思想,提高对静息状态功能磁共振成像和社会趋势贬值空闲时间的影响。