Conferencias

Creativity can be operationalized not only as an ability or disposition, but also as a human value, as in the human value model of Schwartz (1992). He and other

researchers define values as abstract ideals that are important guiding principles in one’s life (Maio, 2010). In Schwartz’s (1992) original model and in a more recent revision (Schwartz et al., 2012), creativity is one of six values that form the value type self- direction, which expresses independent thoughts and actions.

In Study 8, I used this value-based approach because of recent research describing how the effects of values on behaviour depend on the concrete actions and issues that people see as typical examples of the values (Hanel et al., in press; Maio, 2010; Maio, Hahn, et al., 2009). This led me to begin to document differences in the examples people use for diverse values across cultures, and creativity is one of the values I examined. Specifically, as shown in the present study, I have utilized a qualitative exploratory design with open-ended questions about the examples people associate with creativity as an important ideal. This approach complements previous approaches using other methods (e.g., Glăveanu, 2014), allowing me to add convergent validity to the qualitative art bias research and directly examine a potential bias against science. The study described below reports a more detailed analysis of the data

described in Study 4. Specifically, Study 8 focuses on how often participants have mentioned specific words, independent of their frequencies. The

Method

Participants. The sample included 34 Brazilian (Mage = 26.18, SD = 6.50, 22 females) and 33 British (Mage = 22.94, SD = 10.41, 25 females) participants. Brazilian participants were not compensated; British participants were given the option to participate in a prize draw of three cash prizes.

Material and procedure. To measure socioeconomic status, the “Kuppuswamy Socioeconomic Scale” (Sharma et al., 2012) was used, which consists of three items, which are summed up to one score: Education, Occupation and Family Income per month. In order to adjust the income classes, the official income distribution from both countries were used. Socio-economic status (SES) did not differ between Brazil (M = 17.74, SD = 4.97) and the UK (M = 17.42, SD = 6.22, t[60.48] = 0.82, p = .82). As the SES scale ranges from 3 to 29, participants in both countries had on average a mid-range SES.

Participants were asked to list typical situations in which they considered creativity as important (among other values not considered in this chapter). They were also asked to include a “short description of the people in the situation and what they do”. Next, two examples were given for two ideals that are not in the Schwartz’s (1992) model of values: For example, the value ‘enjoyment’ could be relevant during leisure time. Relevant people in the situation can be friends and the family. They could spend time together at the beach or playing games at home. Participants were asked to list at least two to three different situations and up to seven in total. Subsequently, they completed socio-demographic items. The average length of the response was

approximately the same in Brazil and the UK: 69 words vs 56 words, = 1.35, p = .24. All participants completed the survey online.

Results

To test whether British and Brazilian participants associated creativity less with science and more with art, I counted how often participants in both countries mentioned the words science or scientist (ciência/cientista in Portuguese), and art or artist

(arte/artista). I also counted how often branches of natural sciences, problem (problema), new (novo), and Jeitinho were mentioned. Counting the frequency was possible because neither negations (e.g., “not doing art”) nor periphrases (e.g., “creating something that did not exist before” for “new”) for the terms were used. “Science” and “scientist” were mentioned by 1 Brazilian participant once and by 4 British participants 6 times. Neither the former difference (1 vs. 4), nor the latter (1 vs. 6) reached

significance ( = 1.80, p = .18, and = 3.57, p = .06, respectively). Next, I looked at the following more specific terms: “physics” and “physicist”, “chemistry” and

“chemist”, “biology” and “biologist”, “engineering” and “engineer”, and “mathematics” and “mathematician”. Overall, these terms were mentioned by 2 Brazilian participants 3 times and by 2 British participants twice.

“Art” and “artist” were mentioned by 4 Brazilian participants in total 6 times and by 23 British participants 46 times. Both ways of counting (i.e., number of participants or number of instances) revealed a significant difference between the two groups: = 13.37, p < .001 and = 30.77, p < .001, respectively. “Problem” was mentioned by 2 Brazilian participants 4 times and by 7 British participants 12 times. The former difference (2 vs. 7) did not reach significance ( = 2.78, p = .10), while the latter (4 vs 12) did ( = 4.00, p = .046). “New” was mentioned by 8 Brazilian participants 12 times and by 12 British participants 27 times. The former difference (8 vs. 12) did not

reach significance ( = 0.80, p = .37), while the latter did ( = 5.77, p = .02). Jeitinho was not mentioned at all.

Discussion

In this qualitative study, I found evidence of a bias against science and support for the existence of the art bias. In both countries less than 10% of the participants thought about science or its branches when thinking about typical situations in which creativity is relevant or about people in those situations. The art bias was only found in the British sample, where the term “art” was mentioned by 70% of the participants when asked what situations and persons they consider typical for creativity. In contrast, only 12% of Brazilian participants thought about art when asked what situations and persons they consider typical for creativity. The findings from the British sample stand in contrast with Glăveanu (2014). He found that art-related questions were rarely phrased, using a mixed British and US-American sample of participants who were asked to generate questions to determine whether an object is creative. This indicates that a relatively small change of methodology has an influence on whether or not evidence of the art bias is found and that the art bias is not as reliable as it was previously assumed (Runco, 2007).

Findings relating to the concepts of ‘problem’ and ‘new’ were mixed. In both cases, only the absolute frequency with which a term was used was significant, but the number of participants was not. Surprisingly, Brazilian participants did not mention Jeitinho at all, even in the form of paraphrase, despite creativity being one of its three factors (Ferreira et al., 2012). Nonetheless, as in Chapter 3, this result should be considered in light of the limitations in relying solely on spontaneous open-ended measures to form concept maps.