-> 🎧 Do you prefer to listen to this article? It's over here
It is the latest scientific study on the subject that is causing a lot of noise. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it uses what its authors - researchers from Harvard, McGill and Melbourne - call: the”Divergent Association Task“ (DAT), a 4-minute test that - a few questions and answers later - gives you an “objective measure” of your creative potential.
Not bad, right? Because the subject of creativity has become such Game Changer For the performance and success of businesses, especially in a post-Covid context, measuring it is a bit like the Holy Grail! How to bounce back, how to energize teams, how to make them more agile, more autonomous and daring: all this is linked to the creativity of teams and their capacity for innovation, to their ability to express all their potential within their company, without obstacles. Being able to measure this would be a revolutionary way of managing creativity and innovation in a company and more generally any organization...
Creative potential vs. ability to mobilize it
Does everyone have the same creative potential? Generally when I am asked this question during one of my interventions, as a creative speaker, I often answer that the question is not there.
The question is not that of the more or less “provided” creative potential of each person. Because I am convinced that everyone has the same potential. And besides, it's not me who says it, but Picasso, when he said:”In every child there is an artist. The problem is staying an artist growing up“. The subject is not creative ability, we all have it because we have all been children (is itThe school that is suffocating him?). It's more about how to tap into it. And there, it is true that some people are stronger than others to do it. It's a form of agility. It can be worked on and built up.
“ The subject is not creative capacity, it's how to draw on it. [...] it's a form of agility. It can be worked on“
Let's get back to the study. This study - far from defining creativity - allows you to measure your potential to draw on your creative resources. I insist: it does not measure your creative potential, it measures your ability to mobilize it! And it's very, very different. Because starting from this principle, we understand that everyone can be creative and innovative. Then comes the phase where you have to work, to tap into your personal resources. This is good news: because if you can work on it, it means that you can improve it, with time and tenacity.
The DAT: a measure of your ability to mobilize your potential
The DAT was originally designed by Jay Olson , a doctor from the Department of Psychiatry at McGill. In his research, he was inspired by a child's game that involves generating unrelated words. He questioned whether a similar task could serve as a simple way to measure divergent thinking. In his opinion, this means: the ability to generate diverse and original solutions to an open problem. And that's a great definition of creativity: the ability to generate original solutions, to explore the unknown.
“That's a great definition of creativity: the ability to generate original solutions, to explore the unknown.“
The test - that you can Pass here - is quite simple: you are asked to name 10 words that are as different and as far apart as possible from each other. An algorithm then estimates the average semantic distance between words. The more related the words are (for example, “cat” and “dog,” both domestic animals, so naturally linked in our minds), the shorter the semantic difference. In contrast to words like “cat” and “book”, or “cat” and “percolator” whose distance is apparently greater.
The study - carried out on nearly 8,500 participants, in 98 countries, highlighted correlations between this semantic distance and other measures of creativity that are known elsewhere (the Alternative Uses Task And the Bridge-the-Associative Gap). Roughly speaking, this super simple 4-minute method works just as well as the previous ones, which were heavier and longer.
-> 🧪 Take the test here! Divergent Association Task
Are you good at DAT? So you are good at thinking “out of the box.”
In summary: the more you are able to provide semantically distant words, the more “creative” you are according to the researchers. Hear: the more you are able to draw on your creative resources, the more you are able to get out of your usual thought box, that famous “box” that prevents us from finding original ideas in the face of given problems.
There are lots of other exercises to assess this ability to Think “out of the box”, which I often offer at creativity conferences or innovation conferences, and which are used by researchers, including in social psychology laboratories at the Sorbonne. They are often very indicative of ways of thinking that imprison us, that block us in the generation of original and innovative ideas. This is what the DAT reveals: your ability to generate original ideas, to get out of your thought routines, of your”Judgement heuristics“as Daniel Kahneman, the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics, calls them, for his work on what guides our daily choices (and who has just published a fascinating new book: Noise)
“Our task only measures a small fragment of a very specific type of creativity”, explains Olson, the author of the study. “But these results show that we can assess creativity on larger, more diverse samples, with fewer biases. This will help us better understand this fundamental human capacity.“
The scientific debate is open 😉👩 🔬. Feel free to post your comments below!
Alexis Botaya, creativity and innovation speaker.
- Read the original study (English): Naming unrelated words predicts creativity (PNAS)
- Pass the test: Divergent Association Task (DAT)
- My creativity podcast on Majelan
- My Create to Innovate Challenge on WelcomeOriginals
