Associationist theory of creativity

Associationism was in its beginnings a philosophical approach that affirmed that human thought operated by associating a state with other successor states.

British associationists, including John Locke and David Hume, argued that this principle of association applied to all mental processes and that ideas were associated in the mind following certain laws, among which stood out the law of continuity and the law of likeness.

How is this concept associated with creative processes? For this we must examine the associationist theory of creativity.

Sarnoff Mednick's ideas

The law of continuity posits that ideas that have been experienced together tend to appear together. in our mind (for example, when a situation evokes some feeling or the memory of a person).

The law of similarity, for its part, maintains that psychic contents that have similarity tend to manifest together in our thinking (for example, when a photo of someone evokes features of their personality).

In 1962, Sarnoff Mednick published his associative theory of the creative process

, in which he defended that creative thinking was the process by which disparate elements come together in new combinations to develop a useful proposal for the individual or society. The combination of the most remote elements is considered more creative than the combination of the most similar elements.

Serendipity, similarity and meditation

Mednick argued that the individual can produce creative solutions through one of three processes: serendipity, similarity, or meditation. Serendipity would be a process of accidental association, the similarity would be by evocation between two elements and meditation would produce evocation when three or more elements are presented.

This author also identified different variables, especially differentialists, that could contribute to increase the likelihood of a creative solution or association being made novel. In this way, a basis was created for the psychological study of creativity from an associationist theory of creativity.

The Remote Associations Test

Apparently one of the advantages of association theory applied to creativity is that it could be put to the test. In 1967, Mednick operationalized the associative definition of creativity through the Remote Associations Test (RAT), which is a widely applied instrument in creative thinking research, even today.

In their study, Mednick's team reported the high RAT reliability values, as well as a positive correlation between high RAT scores and high mental flexibility, while low RAT scores were related to highly dogmatic individuals. Subsequent studies have found a high correlation with the Creativity Rating Scale (CRS), while There does not appear to be a correlation between the RAT and the Miller Analogy Test (MAT) or with the Grade Point Average (GPA).

Criticisms of the creativity test

Despite the intensive use of the RAT in the study of creativity, the instrument has not been without criticism. One of them is aimed at omitting the effect that the individual's motivation may have on the score, as well as other factors intrinsic to the person, such as their past experiences. A high score on the RAT has also been found to be significantly related to other cognitive variables such as verbal ability.

Similarly, associative theory as a whole also has detractors. Among them is Daniel Fasko, who argues that the associative theory of creativity is too simplistic to address the complexity of this psychological phenomenon.

Alexander Bain and the concept of incubation

One of the proposals on creativity that has been born from associationism is the idea of ​​incubation proposed by Alexander Bain.

This author proposes that incubation takes place when new combinations of elements emerge from ideas that already exist in the mind of the individual. From this perspective, creation from nothing would be impossible, since creation is understood as an act of combining, in a novel way, the substrate stored in the minds of individuals.

Incidental learning

Other authors point to the importance of the process of formation, retention and employment of associations not only for creativity, but also for incidental learning, understanding by incidental learning a situation in which seemingly irrelevant ideas or relationships tend to associate later generating a change in the knowledge of the individual and / or in their behavior.

In this sense, it is understood that a creative individual will exhibit better incidental learning.

To explain the possible connection between creativity and incidental learning, two hypotheses have been proposed: (a) a highly creative individual has greater perceptual sensitivity to seemingly irrelevant stimuli; and (b) the highly creative person can better retain the stimulus and make it more accessible with later, for the purpose of using the information in an incidental learning task (Laughlin, 1967).

Creative thinking seen from associationism

In summary, from the perspective of associationism, creative thinking is the result of a mental process in which disparate elements are brought together in new ways. resulting in a useful proposal to the individual or the environment, or solving some problem.

According to associationists, ideas lead successively to other ideas, and this continuum of connections would constitute the general functioning of the mind.

From this perspective, any associative theory of creativity will focus on analyzing the ways in which these ideas can be generated and on how these ideas link to each other in our minds.

At present, there is consensus that expanding the number of options or elements, so that a great variety of associations can be generated, facilitates creativity. In fact, many of the current theories of creativity place the key to the creative process precisely in the association of ideas that Mednick proposed.

• Related article: "The psychology of creativity and creative thinking"