Further research could take this topic one step further to explore effective strategies to improve divergent thinking when in a negative mood, for example how to move beyond "optimizing strategies" into "satisficing strategies" rather than focus on "the quality of their ideas", in order to generate more ideas and creative solutions.[3]. Divergent thinking is the opposite of convergent thinking, which involves solving problems through obvious choices only. [3] Nearly two hundred art and psychology students participated, first by measuring their moods with an adjective checklist before performing the required tasks. study Definition of Convergent and Divergent Thinking . Persons in a negative mood may choose optimizing strategies and be more concerned with the quality of their ideas, which is detrimental to performance on this kind of task. 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A cognitive process (a mode of critical thinking) in which a person generates many unique, creative responses to a single question or problem. just create an account. It is sometimes referred to as “lateral thinking” which is a term credited to Edward De Bono, a Maltese psychologist, physician, author, and inventor. What is the Difference Between Blended Learning & Distance Learning? Not sure what college you want to attend yet? When you get stuck in convergent thinking, you miss possibilities open to you, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Divergent_thinking&oldid=993386850, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles lacking in-text citations from March 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 10 December 2020, at 10:04. Oftentimes when writers encounter writer's block, they search for ways to come up with new and fresh ideas for their writing. Did you know… We have over 220 college Gregory Boldt, Artistic creativity beyond divergent thinking: Analysing sequences in creative subprocesses, Thinking Skills and Creativity, 10.1016/j.tsc.2019.100606, (100606), (2019). The results showed a clear distinction in performance between those with a self-reported positive versus negative mood: Divergent thinking is an essential aspect of creativity and has been shown to be affected both by music and physical exercise. They were first introduced to the world in 1956 by an American psychologist named J.P. Guilford. This is in contrast to convergent thinking, which relies on focusing on a finite number of solutions rather than proposing multiple solutions. In a study at the University of Bergen, Norway, the effects of positive and negative mood on divergent-thinking were examined. Divergent thinking is an important aspect of creative thinking. It can be viewed as a form of creative thinking. 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