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Creativity through social interaction
Investigate how creative products emerge through interactions in collaborative teams, and how inter-individual and social abilities influence social creativity in adults and children.
Creativity may be regarded as a consequence of people's active search for novelty in relation to what is currently known. While being creative is often regarded as an intra-individual process, many creative products are produced by collaborating team members. How inter-individual or social processes influence creative productivity throughout development is not well understood.
This scholarship will provide the exciting opportunity to investigate social creativity in groups of children and adolescents and explore how (developing) social and cognitive abilities influence the quality of the groups creative products. Findings from this project will help in the development of educational environments and training initiatives that foster creativity and innovation.
Planned secondments:
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany (9 months: Experiments: novelty in social cognition); LogicMills, Singapore (3 months: Investigate relevance of experimental findings to educational services) Requirements
Essential skills: Research experience in development, social experimental psychology, cognitive science or education, experience with practice-based artistic projects in the Creative Arts (or art/ music therapy), running empirical studies with children and adolescents, quantitative data analysis, experience in collecting, processing and analyzing observational data. Please note this position will require a full CRB check for work with children (i.e. formal vetting by the Criminal Records Bureau).
Desirable skills:
Creativity research; collaborative practices in the creative arts; children's and/or adolescents' social development; peer collaboration; group-decision-making; SPSS or other statistical package; observational and experimental methods
Qualifications:
Honours first degree (minimum upper second) or equivalent in Psychology, Cognitive Science, Education, or Creative Arts or related fields. Candidates who also have a Master's degree in these fields are especially desirable.
Supervisors
Michaela Gummerum, John Matthias, Jane Grant, (Plymouth University), Konstantinos Katsikopoulos (Max Planck Institute for Human Development), Mark Nowacki (LogicMills)
Further Reading
Gummerum, M., Leman, P.J., Hollins, T.S. (2013 in press). Children’s Collaborative Recall of Shared and Unshared Information. British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
Proposed Ideas
1. Innovative spaces for innovative ideas
Abstract
2. Innovation as group activitiy trough non-conventioal methods
Abstract
3. Creativity and innovation trough DIY, DIWO and DITO
