Schizotypy and Creativity in a Group Problem-Solving Task - Essay Example

RUNNING HEAD: SCHIZOTYPY AND CREATIVITY Schizotypy and Creativity in a Group Problem-Solving Task [Name of the Writer] [Name of the Institution] Schizotypy and Creativity in a Group Problem-Solving Task Stoneham and Coughtrey hypothesized a positive bonding between scores on the O-LIFE and achievement on a creative problem-solving goal. High schizotypy grouping were also believed to solve the problem more differently, for example concerning more frequent more vast and more imaginative thinking to the goal. The final sample of the article consisted of 36 contestants, 10 males and 26 females, with age 20.47 years (SD = 2.14), owed to three low, three medium and two high O-LIFE groups. One of the Schneiderian first-rank symptoms of psychosis is thought disorder, a distortion in the way that information is assembled, processed, and interpreted. One feature that characterizes all individuals diagnosed as psychotic is a disorder in the processing of information. Thus, a cardinal feature of both creativity and schizotypy is an aberration or deviation in the way that information is processed. Highly creative people turn into a distinct and productive asset what mentally disturbed people blindly grope for: the ability to absorb and efficiently process information from the environment. The majority of the people seem to find sufficient light in the tunnel to navigate without excessive fumbling, although people are rarely blessed with that sudden illumination that, for a split second, makes everything clear. Severely schizotypy group seem to fall at one of two extremes, a constant blinding illumination or a black-out condition. The obvious parsimony of this analogy is intended only to provide a simple heuristic model for looking at two otherwise unrelated phenomena: creativity and schizotypy. As noted, there is a long history of association between exceptional acts (however they were defined) and deviant behavior, ranging from eccentricity to psychosis. It is essential to keep in mind, however, that even informal psychiatric classification is inadvisable and, in most instances, impossible. Writers have had to rely on archival documents, third-person accounts, and anecdotes. Thus, results diagnoses, sometimes made several thousand years after the person was alive, are unreliable, imprecise, and certainly not compatible with modern psychology. A quick glance through the roster of those alleged to have been mentally disturbed may well leave one with distinct impression that everyone who was anyone was afflicted. Current research does not support such a conclusion, and early studies may have been more "afflicted" than the presumptive geniuses they were examining. Perhaps the single most significant methodological issue undermining progress in research on creativity is the criterion problem. What creativity is, and what it is not, hangs as the mythical albatross around the neck of scientific research on creativity. The word creativity has been associated with everything from the groups’ results on paper-and-pencil measures to the greatest creations and most momentous discoveries in the history of humankind. Because the umbrella of creativity subsumes so diverse a domain of output, o could only rank order degrees of creativity by specifying how creativity was measured. It certainly would appear that the field of creativity could benefit from the uniform application of a single, operationalized construct or a complex, multifaceted construct that has been subjected to taxonomic differentiation. The domain of research that has provided the most promise for yielding a metatheoretical bridge between schizotypy and creativity to problem-solving is cognitive experimental psychopathology. Probably the most well-known area of research that falls within this domain involves convergent and divergent thinking styles. Creativity may derive from either thinking style and may do so with little or no regard to profession (e.g., artists and scientists may be divergent or convergent). Cognitive styles and psychotics have been discussed the article distinguished two modes of thinking that reflect predispositions to psychosis. In one case, filtering mechanisms are impaired, thereby permitting the intrusion of irrelevant associations. Thought processes are vague, dominated by intuition. In the other case, the capacity for making logical attributions is enhanced. Thus, once a conclusion is reached, it is adhered to with greater than normal devotion. In this instance, logic has been said to triumph over common sense, a condition that may predispose to paranoia. The authors referred to the former mode of thinking as allusive (considered to be less pejorative than loose) and proposed that it may be observed in a wide variety of people, many of whom never become schizophrenic. There is marked resemblance between the cognitive styles characterizing creative thought that article sought to define and the psychotic loosening (or tightening) of ideational boundaries that Stoneham and Coughtrey described. In the latter case the disorder may be called overinclusion or underinclusion, and in the former case the gift is called creativity. The presumptive difference among the divergent thinking, loose associations, and irrelevant themes of psychotics and the amazing conceptual leaps, cognitive flexibility, and serendipitous discoveries of creative artists and scientists is one of control. Psychotic thinking is unbridled and capricious, whereas creative thinking is rationally directed and purposeful. In sum, it appears that there is reason to suspect continuity between normal and pathological thinking, a point convincingly argued by authors. Thought disorder is not present or absent but measured dimensionally with numerous shades of gray. Thus, some features of psychotic thinking are also found in the general population, only in less severe or debilitating fashion. The existence of such cognitive styles may facilitate creativity as well as reflect a genetic predisposition to psychosis. Over the past several decades, there has been a strong attraction to the concept of divergent thinking as an operational construct for defining creativity. It is a clean, simple concept and can be measured easily with a variety of different tests. Additionally, anecdotal reports seem to suggest that something like divergence captures the essence of creativity. This enthusiasm survives despite authors’ own note of caution, as well as the research, indicating flint divergent thinking does not correlate highly with creativity. There are at least three possible explanations: (a) Divergent thinking is only one of several independent cognitive styles that facilitate creativity, (b) divergent thinking interacts with another style (e.g., convergent thinking), or (c) the criteria used to measure creativity failed to capture the intended behavior. A significant contribution to our understanding of the relation between creativity and problem solving processing comes from the research, clinically; one may expect to find affective symptoms, such as liability and depression and, in more severe cases, symptoms of major depression or possibly schizoid symptoms (e.g., solitary, emotionally cold and detached, flat affect, lack of close friends, generally anhedonic). In general, a negative symptom picture, characterized by flat affect, avolition, and anhedonia, would be expected. In the case of psychosis, one again would expect primarily negative symptoms (e.g., flat or negative affect, social withdrawal, anhedonia, lack of motivation, blocking). Negative symptoms tend to be associated with higher fight than left schematic activity and over activation of the right hemisphere or under activation of the left hemisphere were hypothesized in this case. High Schizotypy creativity is characterized by the accumulation of the widest possible array of information. This smorgasbord of data is then harvested, with a keen eye to uncovering previously unobserved relations. If the search is fruitful, and subsequent input bears out the validity of the observation (or contribution), the discovery (or product) is often relegated to the mystical realm of intuition because no systematic effort immediately preceded it. Stoneham and Coughtrey metaphorically equated the nervous system to radar. In their terms, High and low schizotypy functions in a broad-baud "coasting" mode, responding with reduced resolution to a wide variety of input. Medium Schizotypy did not own the creative approach to carry their thoughts through to completion. Given the current state of knowledge, it seems highly untenable to conclude that creativity has a greater affinity for manic-depressive illness than schizophrenia or vice versa. Psychosis is, without doubt, a highly heterogeneous domain of signs and symptoms. Schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness, the two principle forms of psychosis, are heterogeneous and ontologically complex. As such, it is artless, at best, to suggest that either schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness has a corner on the market of creativity. When controlling for psychosis, however, the affective "advantage" is less clear. That is, if examining only those creative people who are diagnosable as psychotic, it is not at all clear that most of them would be classified with an affective psychosis. To play devil's advocate, however, one could argue that this argument is begging the question. That is, the critical issue is not a positive history for psychosis but a symptom picture that is predominantly affective. A dilemma was posed at the beginning of this article: Why should a feature of human behavior that seemingly is so critical to the advancement of the species be restricted to so small a segment of the species? The tendency of the human species is to resist change, both genetically and Sociocultural. To let up on the biological brakes that regulate extraordinary creativity may threaten the delicate adaptation balance of the species. This would tend to explain the otherwise inexplicable eruption of creativity at isolated moments in history, each moment being separated by long periods of adjustment. This line of reasoning implies, of course, that there is some biological or genetic underpinning to extraordinary creativity. Discussion presented two lines of argument: In one case that there is a hypothetical genetic basis to extraordinary creativity, and in the other case that there is a genetic basis to, and possibly a selective advantage for, a predisposition to psychosis. If there is a common biological thread linking creativity with forms of major schizotypy, such a thread may be cognition. Thus, one may infer that certain biologically conceived cognitive styles that are peculiar to extraordinary creativity possess common biological ancestry with certain cognitive styles that are associated with a predisposition to major schizotypy. Although it is not intuitively (or empirically) obvious that there may be a selective advantage for certain forms of psychosis, the concept itself helps to explain smother riddle presented at the beginning of this article, namely, how could it be adaptive, from an evolutionary standpoint, to wed the curse of schizotypy to the gift of creativity? The outcome of major schizotypy remains a curse for the afflicted and cannot be assumed, in any respect, to be adaptive. Reflection of leadership within the groupings showed some intriguing results. Participants who identified leaders within their groups had significantly lower O-LIFE scores than contestants in groups without a named leader. Whereas all the low-schizotypy groups unanimously agreed upon the most dominant individual, both high schizotypy groups worked without a leader. According to the article, this is the first paper to search that key leadership is a trait of low-schizotypic personality groupings. On Schizotypy and Creativity, Stoneham and Coughtrey concluded that although deviating thinking showed by highly schizotypal person is often linked with creativity, in real life problem-solving targets there may also be useful points received by the more different cognitive style of low-schizotypy persons. That the limits always outperformed average schizotypy groups mentions the creative benefits of both high and low-schizotypy, equivalent to the results that problems are more adaptively worked out by beginners and skilled than those of intermediate skill. The study suggests that the normal range of input regulation is distorted by imbalances in schematic activity, resulting in two very different data processing strategies that enhance or facilitate creative solutions to problems. Because these imbalances are often associated with genetic predispositions to mental illness, there is a greater-than-chance probability that highly creative individuals may evidence signs or symptoms associated with mental illness. It should be manifestly evident, however, that the hemispheres of the brain do not operate independently of each other and that neither can do the job, certainly not the optimal job, without the other. When controlling for psychosis, however, the affective "advantage" is less clear. That is, examining only those creative people who are diagnosable as psychotic, it is not at all clear that most of them would be classified with an affective psychosis. To play devil's advocate, however, one could argue that this argument is begging the question. That is, the critical issue is not a positive history for psychosis but a symptom picture that is predominantly affective. Read More

Thus, results diagnoses, sometimes made several thousand years after the person was alive, are unreliable, imprecise, and certainly not compatible with modern psychology. A quick glance through the roster of those alleged to have been mentally disturbed may well leave one with distinct impression that everyone who was anyone was afflicted. Current research does not support such a conclusion, and early studies may have been more "afflicted" than the presumptive geniuses they were examining.

Perhaps the single most significant methodological issue undermining progress in research on creativity is the criterion problem. What creativity is, and what it is not, hangs as the mythical albatross around the neck of scientific research on creativity. The word creativity has been associated with everything from the groups’ results on paper-and-pencil measures to the greatest creations and most momentous discoveries in the history of humankind. Because the umbrella of creativity subsumes so diverse a domain of output, o could only rank order degrees of creativity by specifying how creativity was measured.

It certainly would appear that the field of creativity could benefit from the uniform application of a single, operationalized construct or a complex, multifaceted construct that has been subjected to taxonomic differentiation. The domain of research that has provided the most promise for yielding a metatheoretical bridge between schizotypy and creativity to problem-solving is cognitive experimental psychopathology. Probably the most well-known area of research that falls within this domain involves convergent and divergent thinking styles.

Creativity may derive from either thinking style and may do so with little or no regard to profession (e.g., artists and scientists may be divergent or convergent). Cognitive styles and psychotics have been discussed the article distinguished two modes of thinking that reflect predispositions to psychosis. In one case, filtering mechanisms are impaired, thereby permitting the intrusion of irrelevant associations. Thought processes are vague, dominated by intuition. In the other case, the capacity for making logical attributions is enhanced.

Thus, once a conclusion is reached, it is adhered to with greater than normal devotion. In this instance, logic has been said to triumph over common sense, a condition that may predispose to paranoia. The authors referred to the former mode of thinking as allusive (considered to be less pejorative than loose) and proposed that it may be observed in a wide variety of people, many of whom never become schizophrenic. There is marked resemblance between the cognitive styles characterizing creative thought that article sought to define and the psychotic loosening (or tightening) of ideational boundaries that Stoneham and Coughtrey described.

In the latter case the disorder may be called overinclusion or underinclusion, and in the former case the gift is called creativity. The presumptive difference among the divergent thinking, loose associations, and irrelevant themes of psychotics and the amazing conceptual leaps, cognitive flexibility, and serendipitous discoveries of creative artists and scientists is one of control. Psychotic thinking is unbridled and capricious, whereas creative thinking is rationally directed and purposeful.

In sum, it appears that there is reason to suspect continuity between normal and pathological thinking, a point convincingly argued by authors. Thought disorder is not present or absent but measured dimensionally with numerous shades of gray. Thus, some features of psychotic thinking are also found in the general population, only in less severe or debilitating fashion. The existence of such cognitive styles may facilitate creativity as well as reflect a genetic predisposition to psychosis. Over the past several decades, there has been a strong attraction to the concept of divergent thinking as an operational construct for defining creativity.

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