Nattamon Chintanadilok

Professor K. Vehec

PSY2012

23 February 2016

Article 2

The article I have chosen to discuss poses the question as to whether

creativity comes from cognitive persistence or cognitive flexibility. Dutch

researchers found that there are pros and cons to both forms of approach.

When subjects were forced to be persistent, they were eventually able to

conjure up more original ideas relating to a given category than the ones

who were flexible and jumped from one to another. However, they would be

at a disadvantage if their idea was the wrong one, unlike those who were

more flexible and could keep coming up with new ideas. I liked the article

because I never would have really thought of this question had I not

stumbled upon it. It got me to thinking about what creativity really is, and

the approaches taken to enhance it. Before reading the article, creativity was

just a talent some people had or didnt have a gift in, and never really put

much thought into it previously. However, once I read of how researchers

examined subjects to see whether persistence or flexibility were more

important in creativity, I formed a different opinion on it. While I still do

believe that there are people that naturally have a higher knack for creativity

than others, I also see how cognitive persistence and flexibility may also

impact creativity. Rather than picking one over the other, I believe that both
are necessary in order to achieve maximum creativity. You must first be

persistent in the matter at hand and only move on to being flexible and allow

new ideas once youve exhausted all options and know for a fact that your

initial idea wont work. If you jump to the next idea too soon, you may be

missing out on more original ideas and approaches that had you persisted

you could have imagined.

Works Cited

Sunder, Garth. "Does Creativity Come From Persistence or Flexibility?"

Psychology Today. N.p., 20 Jan. 2016. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.