Is Flexibility More than Fluency and Originality?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Creativity Research

Background:

• Divergent thinking involves flexibility, fluency, and originality.
• Flexibility may uniquely relate to working memory due to task demands.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate the relationship between flexibility, fluency, originality, working memory, and mental speed.
• Determine if flexibility is a distinct construct or a measurement artifact.

Main Methods:

• Latent variable modeling with a sample of 409 adults.
• Assessed divergent thinking components (flexibility, fluency, originality).
• Measured working memory, mental speed, and self-reported creative activities.

Main Results:

• Fluency and originality strongly predicted flexibility, accounting for 61% of its variance.
• Creative flexibility showed no significant relationship with working memory or mental speed after controlling for fluency/originality.
• Residual flexibility was unrelated to self-reported creative activities.

Conclusions:

• Flexibility, as measured, appears to be a method factor, not distinct from fluency/originality.
• The findings question the unique contribution of flexibility measures in traditional divergent thinking tasks.
• Further research is needed to differentiate trait and method variance in flexibility assessments.