Thinking, Intelligence and Creativity Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The statement that is not true is Regulating emotions to manipulate others.

Emotional intelligence, as popularised by Daniel Goleman and defined by Salovey and Mayer, includes perceiving and identifying emotions, including non-verbal ones in faces and voices; using emotions to facilitate thinking; understanding emotions, how they arise and the actions they lead to; and managing emotions in oneself and others.

Managing emotions in the model means regulating them adaptively, for well-being and good relationships. Regulating emotions in order to manipulate other people is not part of the theory. The other three options paraphrase its perceiving, understanding and using branches.

Answer: B

The strategy is the representativeness heuristic.

Tversky and Kahneman described the representativeness heuristic as judging how likely something is to belong to a category by how closely it resembles the typical member of that category. Deciding that a quiet, orderly person must be a librarian rather than a salesperson, while ignoring how many more salespeople there are, is the classic example.

The availability heuristic judges frequency by how easily examples come to mind, not by resemblance. A prototype is the typical member used in the comparison, not the strategy. Attribution is explaining the causes of behaviour.

Answer: D

The account belongs to Boden's impossibility theory of creativity.

Margaret Boden distinguishes psychological (P-) creativity from historical (H-) creativity. An idea is P-creative if the person in whose mind it arises could not have had it before, because it was impossible within the conceptual space that person had been working in; it is H-creative if no one in history had it before. Because creativity is defined by this impossibility rather than mere novelty, her view is often called an 'impossibilist' account.

Amabile's componential theory explains creativity through skills, processes, motivation and environment, not by this definition. Guilford studied divergent thinking. Wallas, not 'Wallace', proposed the four stages of the creative process, and neither is defined by what a person could have thought before.

Answer: D

All three are related to creativity, so the answer is All (I), (II) and (III).

Creativity does not sit in one region; neuroimaging studies link it to a network of areas. The frontal lobe, especially the prefrontal cortex, supports the generation and evaluation of ideas and divergent thinking. The angular gyrus, at the junction of the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes, is linked to cross-modal association and to the making of metaphors, which V. S. Ramachandran tied to creative thinking. The fusiform gyrus has been implicated in studies of visual creativity and imagery.

Since each of the three has been associated with creative cognition, every option that leaves one out is incomplete.

Answer: B

The method is elimination by aspects.

Amos Tversky's elimination-by-aspects model (1972) describes how people choose among many options. They pick one attribute (aspect), such as price, and eliminate every option that does not meet the minimum standard on it; then they move to the next aspect and repeat until a single option is left. It is a simplifying, non-compensatory strategy, because a strength on one aspect cannot make up for failing another.

Elimination by probability, by rationality or by criteria are not the names of established decision-making models; each borrows part of the correct term.

Answer: A

This is the conjunction fallacy.

The probability that two conditions are both true can never be greater than the probability of either one alone. In Tversky and Kahneman's 'Linda' problem (1983), most people judged 'Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement' more probable than 'Linda is a bank teller', because the more specific description seemed more representative of her.

The sunk-cost fallacy is continuing an investment because of what has already been spent. The gambler's fallacy is expecting a random outcome to become more likely after a run without it. The golden mean fallacy assumes the middle position between two extremes must be right.

Answer: D

The false statement is Low creativity-low intelligence are socially awkward and often distressed.

Wallach and Kogan (1965) compared children high and low on creativity and intelligence. High creativity-high intelligence children showed both control and freedom and were the most socially healthy and self-confident group. High creativity-low intelligence children were in conflict with themselves and the school, felt unworthy and had difficulty concentrating in class. Low creativity-high intelligence children were 'addicted' to school achievement, cautious and reserved, and unlikely to engage in disruptive activity.

Low creativity-low intelligence children were often bewildered in class, but they compensated through social activity and were more outgoing and socially confident than the low creativity-high intelligence group. Describing them as socially awkward is therefore the statement that misrepresents the study.

Answer: B

The correct matching is P-2, Q-4, R-1, S-3.

Take the rule 'if the switch is turned on, the fan is running'.

• P: modus ponens affirms the antecedent: the switch is on, so the fan is running (2). Valid.
• Q: modus tollens denies the consequent: the fan is not running, so the switch is not on (4). Valid.
• R: denial of the antecedent: the switch is not on, so the fan is not running (1). Invalid, as the fan could be running for another reason.
• S: affirmation of the consequent: the fan is running, so the switch is on (3). Invalid for the same reason.

The first code swaps the two fallacies; the others misplace the valid forms as well.

Answer: A

This is confirmation bias.

In Wason's selection task people must test a rule such as 'if a card has a vowel on one side, it has an even number on the other'. Most choose cards that could confirm the rule (the vowel and the even number) instead of the card that could falsify it (the odd number). Forming a general idea of the rule and then looking only for examples that fit it is the tendency to seek confirming rather than disconfirming evidence.

The representativeness bias is judging probability by resemblance to a typical case. 'Construction bias' and 'mental fixation bias' are not the names given to this pattern; mental fixation (functional fixedness) refers to being stuck on one approach in problem solving.

Answer: C

The statement that is not true is that DT has failed to predict creativity.

Longitudinal studies, most famously Torrance's follow-ups of children who took his divergent thinking tests, found that the scores did predict later creative achievement in adulthood, if only moderately. So the flat claim that divergent thinking has failed to predict creativity overstates the case.

The other statements are accepted. Critics have often reported weak correlations between divergent thinking scores and indices of real creative achievement (A), which is a known limitation. Early tests of imagination in Binet's work, such as inventing sentences and interpreting ink blots, are cited as forerunners of DT tests (B). Wallach and Kogan (1965) developed a well-known battery of DT tests for children (D).