Creativity, Originality, and Appropriateness: What do Explicit Instructions Tell Us About Their Relationships?

Journal of Creative Behavior

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ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

M A R K A . R U N C OJ O D Y J . I L L I E S

R U S S E L L E I S E N M A N

Creativity, Originality,and Appropriateness:What do Explicit InstructionsTell Us About Their Relationships?

Originality is a necessary part of creativity, but creative thingsare more than just original. They also solve a problem, or moregenerally are somehow fitting or appropriate. Yet previousresearch found an inverse relationship between ratings of origi-nality and ratings of appropriateness. The present investiga-tion employed a different methodology — it focused on thegeneration of ideas instead of judgments about them — to re-examine the relationships between originality, appropriateness,and creativity. Undergraduate students (N = 170) from two largeuniversities received either realistic or unrealistic divergentthinking tasks. These were given with one of four types of in-structions. These asked them to give (a) as many ideas aspossible (which is the standard type of instruction for thesekinds of tests), (b) only original ideas, (c) only appropriateideas, or (d) only creative ideas. Brief definitions of originality,appropriateness, or creativity were also provided. Comparisonsof the four groups indicated that there were significant differ-ences between the different kinds of tasks, with the realisticset eliciting more appropriate ideas than the unrealistic, butthe unrealistic tasks eliciting more original and varied (flexible)ideas. There was an interaction indicating that the magnitudeof the impact of the instructions varied across tasks. Correla-tional analyses indicated that the correlation between the origi-nality and appropriateness scores was the lowest among allpossible inter-index relationships (only 7% shared variance).Future research and practical implications are explored.

Originality is very strongly related to creativity. Creative be-havior, creative persons, and creative products each display

Volume 39 Number 2 Second Quarter 2005

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Explicit Instructions

originality. It may be complete novelty, or just some degree ofunusualness, but without originality, there is no creativity. Origi-nality is the only aspect of creativity on which everyone seemsto agree (Rothenberg & Hausman, 1976; Runco, 1988).

Originality is not, however, a sufficient indicator of creativ-ity. Creative things must be much more than original. In fact,highly original things are often unquestionably uncreative.Extremely bizarre responses to divergent thinking tests, forexample, tend to be blatantly inappropriate and uncreative.The individual who says “brick” when asked to “name all theround things you can think of” has found an original idea, butjust as clearly, it is an inappropriate one. Creative people andthings are more than original; they also solve a problem or (ifthe act does not involve problem solving) are in one way oranother fitting or appropriate (MacKinnon, 1965; Runco &Charles, 1993).

Exactly how are originality and appropriateness related?Runco and Charles (1993) addressed this issue by asking un-dergraduate students to judge “ideational pools” for their origi-nality, appropriateness, or creativity. These pools containedsets of ideas, each set representing the output from one indi-vidual. Runco and Charles had judges rate the same pools sev-eral times (counterbalancing the various criteria). The resultsindicated that originality was strongly associated with creativ-ity. However, judgments of originality and creativity were nega-tively related to judgments of appropriateness. This surprisingfinding may have reflected the operational definition of appro-priateness which was necessary for that research. Appropri-ate ideas were defined in a very literal way. Square things wereonly appropriate, for instance, if they were two-dimensional andsymmetrical. An alternative explanation of the experimentalresults is that appropriateness is not the best way to describethe “something else” that goes along with originality.

Runco and Charles (1993) focused their research on thejudgments about ideas. Furthermore, the ideas in question wereprovided by others. Runco and Smith (1991) demonstratedpreviously that this kind of interpersonal evaluation of ideasis distinct from the intrapersonal evaluation of ideas, and onlymoderately related to the processes required for generatingideas and solutions for one’s self. The present investigationwas designed to re-examine the relationships between origi-nality, appropriateness, and creativity. It employed a differentmethodology from that used by Runco and Charles (1993),one which focused on the generation of ideas rather than


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judgments about ideas. This is, then, a slightly different per-spective of said relationships. It very well could be that therelationships which characterize judgments, like those obtainedby Runco and Charles (1993), differ from the relationship whichcharacterize ideas which are produced specifically to be origi-nal, appropriate, or creative.

The method used here has been used many times to inves-tigate and manipulate divergent thinking. To our knowledge, ithas never been used specifically with appropriateness. Themethod employs explicit instructions. These manipulate andcontrol the task perception and strategies used by individualswhen they are faced with open-ended divergent thinking tests(Harrington, 1975; Runco & Okuda, 1988). Runco and Okuda(1988), for example, used explicit instructions to test therelationship between fluency, originality, and flexibility. Theyexpected originality and flexibility to be particularly stronglyrelated. They expected a flexible problem solving strategy tofacilitate the discovery of original ideas. If an individual is flex-ible and looks to various categories or at a task from variousperspectives, he or she might be able to easily discover ideaswhich no one else will think of. Surprisingly, results indicatedthat flexibility and originality were unrelated. This was sug-gested by the flexibility scores in the originality condition, andthe originality scores in the flexibility instructional condition.Most important were the originality scores, which were lowwhen the participants were asked to be flexible in their ide-ation. Participants had been given strategies for giving flexibleideas, but these did not lead to highly original ideas.

The primary objective of the present investigation was touse explicit instructions to re-examine the relationships betweenoriginality, appropriateness, and creativity. Instructions werewritten to emphasize appropriate thinking, original thinking,or both (creative thinking). These were compared to standardinstructions (which merely ask for a large number of ideas,regardless of quality) and to each other. Given the theoreticaljustification for including appropriateness in definitions of cre-ativity (summarized above and detailed by Rothenberg &Hausman, 1976, and Runco, 1988), but also the surprising find-ings of Runco and Charles (1993), the key questions in thepresent research were as follows: Can individuals be instructedto give both original and appropriate ideas? Or do original ideastend to be inappropriate and appropriate ideas unoriginal? Wewere also interested in the impact of instructions across vari-ous kinds of tasks. The tasks are described in detail in theMethod section.

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There were 39 college students from a large state university inLousiana (M = 12, F = 26) and 59 from a large state universityin California (M = 9, F = 50). There were quite a few femalesin the latter because the classes sampled were within a childdevelopment program, and in excess of 80% of the students inthat major plan on earning a teaching credential. The propor-tion of males to females is typical for classes in that major.Students in both universities received course credit for theirparticipation in this research.

Each of the dependent measures was adopted from earlierstudies of divergent thinking and problem generation. Therewere two sets of measures, one realistic and one unrealistic.The latter were adapted from Wallach and Kogan (1965). Threeof these were Instances questions (e.g., “name round things”),three Uses (“name uses for a brick”), and three were figural(“name all of the things this figure could represent”). The fig-ures presented in these last three tasks were abstract line draw-ings. The realistic tasks also asked open-ended questions, butthese focused on situations which students could actually ex-perience. There were three types of realistic questions. The firsttwo questions asked participants to solve a problem—one aboutschool, one about work. The next two asked them to generatea list of problems—one list for school and one for work. Thefinal two tasks asked participants first to select a problem(about school), and then to solve it, and then to do the samefor work. This set of problem solving, problem generation, andself-chosen problem solving tasks has been used in severalinvestigations (Chand & Runco, 1992; Runco & Okuda, 1988)and, like the Wallach and Kogan (1965) tasks, has demon-strated more than adequate reliability.

Here is an example of a realistic task (item number one):

“On the next few pages, we will describe a few problemswhich may occur at school and work. Your task is to firstread about the problem and then try to write down asmany solutions as you can for each problem. . . . Here isan example: ‘Your favorite television show, L.A. Law,was on last night. You had so much fun watching itthat you forgot to do your homework. You are aboutto go to school this morning when you realize thatyour homework is due in your first class. Uh-oh . . .what are you going to do?’ For this problem, you couldanswer, “Tell the professor that you forgot to do yourhomework; try to do your homework in the car or bus

METHODParticipants

Measures


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on the way to school; ask your roommate, boyfriend,girlfriend, or classmate to help you finish your home-work; do your homework tonight and turn it in thenext time the class meets; or finish your homeworkfirst than show up late for class.” There are many moreanswers to this problem, and all of them are legitimate.. . . Now turn the page, take your time, have fun.”

The problem on the next page was this one: “Your friendPat sits next to you in class. Pat really likes to talk to youand often bothers you while you are doing your work.Sometimes he distracts you and you miss an important partof the lecture, and many times you don’t finish your workbecause he is bothering you. What should you do? Howwould you solve this problem?”

The second problem solving task was one the next page:“It is a great day for sailing, and your buddy, Kelly, comesto your work and asks you if you want to go sailing. Unfor-tunately, you have a big project due tomorrow, and itrequires a full day to complete. You would rather be sail-ing. What are you going to do?”

Various distractor tasks were administered between the vari-ous divergent thinking tasks. Students completed an adjectivecheck list, for example, between the first set of problems andthe second, and were asked to complete a form asking abouthobbies, family background (e.g., birth order), and a recentpolitical campaign (one page) between the second set andthe third.

Students were randomly assigned to groups. Code numberswere used; names were not. Students were carefully briefedand given human subjects information. They were assuredof confidentiality and told that the tasks they were about toreceive were unlike educational tests. In particular, there wereno points, no grades, and spelling was not a concern.

One group received instructions asking them to give asmany ideas as they could. This kind of inexplicit directionis most common in the literature on divergent thinking. It isinexplicit in the sense that it does not target any one criterionnor give specific definitions. It merely communicates the ideathat the test is open-ended and can be solved in different ways.The second type of instructions, in contrast, explicitly targetedoriginality (“Write down as many original ideas as you can.Give ideas that no one else will give. The more original ideas,the better.”). These parallel the instructions that were used inprevious research on explicit instructions (Harrington, 1975;

Procedure andScoring

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Runco, 1986). The third type of instructions emphasized ap-propriateness (“Write down as many appropriate ideas as youcan. The more appropriate ideas, the better. Write down ideasthat fit and actually solve the problem. Do not give bizarre,inappropriate solutions.”) The fourth type of instructions em-phasized creativity (“Give only creative ideas . . . which areoriginal and appropriate”).

All responses were scored for ideational fluency, originality,flexibility, and appropriateness. The first three of these havebeen used many times in previous research on divergent think-ing (Runco, 1986; Wallach & Kogan, 1965). Briefly, fluency isscored by counting the number of ideas given by the partici-pant. Originality is scored by counting the number of uniqueideas given by the participant (ideas that no one else in thesample wrote down). Flexibility is scoring by counting the num-ber of categories or themes used by the participant.

The scoring criteria for appropriateness were developedspecifically for this research. They paralleled those used in theearlier research of Runco and Charles (1993) and, before that,by Guilford Wilson, and Christiansen (1952) with their “socialinstitutions test.” Briefly, appropriate ideas (a) were feasible,(b) solved the problem at hand, and (c) would not be viewedas inappropriate by other people (e.g., they were not illegal).Ideas which did not address the main objective implied by theproblem were deemed inappropriate, as were those which weredangerous, harmful to others or to living things, or whichcost the individual his or her job or standing. Solutions whichdescribed impossible acts (e.g, being in two places at once)were deemed inappropriate. Importantly, earlier research hasdemonstrated that judges can supply reliable judgments ofappropriateness (Kelder, McNamara, Carlson, & Lynn, 1991).

Scores were obtained by asking two judges (blind to thetype of instruction received) to rate all ideas (one task at atime). The ideas were presented in alphabetical order with noindication of the instructions given or subject information. Thejudges thus just read over and rated long lists of ideas. Theappropriateness score was simply the number of appropriateideas given by any particular participant. The reliability of thistechnique was demonstrated by the judges agreeing on inexcess of 90% of the ideas (across all tasks).

Composite scores were calculated, one for each index (fluency,originality, flexibility, and appropriateness) of the realisticdivergent thinking (RDT) and one for each index of the unreal-istic divergent thinking (UDT) tasks by averaging across the

RESULTS ANDDISCUSSION

Comparisons ofInstructions and

Type of Task


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items. This provided four scores for the RDT and four for theUDT, which were then used as dependent variables in a seriesof ANOVAs. Each ANOVA compared the two types of tests(RDT vs. UDT), the instructional groups (creative, original,appropriate, and inexplicit), and then the interaction. Resultsusing the originality scores indicated that there was a maineffect for the type of test (F (1, 163) = 22.26, p < .001, eta2= .120). Examination of the means indicated that the UDTelicited higher originality scores than the RDT task (means =1.18 and 0.61, respectively, SDs = 1.18 and 1.00). The Instruc-tional groups did not differ significantly in originality, and theType of Test X Group interaction was not significant. Meansand standard deviations are given in Table 1.

There are several explanations for the significant differencebetween the UDT and the RDT tasks. First, it is possible thatthe RDT tasks elicit fewer original ideas because their realismallows individuals to solve the problem by merely drawing from

TABLE 1. Group Means and Standard Deviations for the Divergent Thinking Tests.

Orig Approp Fluency Flexibility

Unrealistic TestsInexplicitInstructions 1.19 (0.88) 1.85 (0.68) 5.02 (1.79) 3.50 (0.66)

OriginalityInstructions 0.87 (0.58) 1.33 (0.53) 3.91 (1.07) 3.00 (0.67)

AppropriatenessInstructions 1.24 (0.80) 2.21 (0.77) 5.63 (1.60) 3.97 (0.95)

CreativeInstructions 1.43 (1.41) 2.18 (0.96) 5.66 (2.42) 3.62 (1.05)

Realistic TestsInexplicitInstructions 0.57 (0.42) 3.27 (1.73) 3.67 (2.02) 2.81 (1.31)

OriginalityInstructions 0.80 (0.58) 4.09 (2.12) 4.82 (2.53) 3.33 (1.22)

AppropriatenessInstructions 0.39 (0.36) 3.11 (1.26) 3.48 (1.50) 2.64 (1.09)

CreativeInstructions 0.67 (0.81) 3.58 (1.75) 4.21 (2.16) 3.29 (1.06)

Note: Standard deviations are in parentheses. Orig = Originality, Approp =Appropriateness.

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their experience. They do not need to follow associative pathsand can simply draw from long term memory. They do notneed to use their imagination (or, more precisely, their creativeideational skills) but instead rely on rote ideas. In this light theRDT tasks would have a kind of experiential bias, not unlikethat which plagues some IQ tests. A related explanation is thatthe RDT tasks were more constraining than the UDT, again,because of their realism. A realistic problem or task might leadnaturally to ideas that are realistic (e.g., feasible and widelyacceptable) and lead associations away from more imagina-tive solutions and ideas. This kind of constraint could easilyinhibit the divergence of thought which contributes to originalthinking. Runco and Albert (1985) offered a similar explana-tion for differences between verbal and figural tests; they feltthat the verbal tests elicited fewer original ideas because theywere more constraining than the abstract figural tasks.

Analyses using the appropriateness scores also showed asignificant difference between the RDT and UDT (F (1, 163) =53.65, p < .001, eta2 = .248), but here the RDT elicited thehigher scores (UDT M = 1.89, SD = 0.83, RDT M = 3.51, SD =1.76), and there was a significant interaction between the Typeof Task and the Type of Instructions (F (3, 163) = 3.25, p =.023, eta2 = .056). Inspection of the means indicated that theRDT tasks elicited the highest appropriateness scores, both interms of the overall mean, and in terms of each Instructionalgroup mean. The interaction indicated that although in everycase (with every test) RDT tests elicited the highest appropri-ateness scores, the magnitude of the instructional impact var-ied among the four groups. Descriptive statistics are availablein Table 1.

From one perspective this ANOVA result complements theone reported just above (which used the originality scores).There the UDT elicited high originality scores, and here RDTelicited high appropriateness scores. This supports what Runcoand Charles (1993) reported and suggests that originality andappropriateness are difficult to blend when thinking divergently.Both of these investigations have relied on ideas, and differentresults might be produced if other original products were ex-amined in future research. Given the importance of the origi-nality-appropriateness relationship for all definitions ofcreativity, additional research is certainly warranted. Practicallyspeaking, the present findings suggest that educators or prob-lem solving facilitators should probably not expect their chargesto think both originally and appropriately at the same time. At


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least as important is that if the tasks used in this present inves-tigation are presented as exercises (rather than scored tests)in programs or efforts to help individuals develop more diver-gent thinking (Runco, 1991), the UDT should probably be usedrather than the RDT. The UDT seem to be more open-endedand would allow easier practice actually thinking divergently(and originally).

The flexibility scores showed the same differences, with themain effect for Type of Task (F (1, 163) = 9.45, p = .002, eta2= .055) and the interaction (F (3, 163) = 4.35, p = .006, eta2 =.074) both statistically significant. The means indicated thatthe UDT elicited the most flexible scores, at least in the grandmeans (3.50 (SD = 0.91) vs. 3.02 (SD = 1.19)) and the scoresin every instructional condition except the one which empha-sized originality. This result does not relate directly to the defi-nition of creativity, as did the previous two, but it does confirmearlier findings that originality instructions do not necessarilyincrease flexibility scores and vice versa (Runco & Okuda,1988).

The ANOVA testing the fluency scores also revealed a sig-nificant main effect for the type of task (F (1, 162) = 10.61, p =.001, eta2 = .061) and a significant Task X Group interaction(F (3, 162) = 4.61, p = .004 , eta2 = .079 ). As was the casefor the flexibility scores, all instructions elicited higher fluencyscores when given with the UDT except those which targetedoriginality.

Although this investigation was designed to employ explicitinstructions to examine relationships between originality andappropriateness, it is also useful to examine the productmoment correlations among the various indices. These wererelatively high, as is common in the research on divergent think-ing (Hocevar, 1981; Runco, 1991), yet very importantly, thelowest correlations were between the originality scores and theappropriateness scores (r = .28, p < .01, two tailed). This isnotable because it too is consistent with the findings of Runcoand Charles (1993) and the issue of how to best define oroperationalize creativity. Originality and appropriateness weresignificantly correlated but shared only approximately 7% oftheir variance. All other inter-index correlations were in excessof .580 (see Table 2). This of course is consistent with theANOVA results of the present investigation, summarized justabove.

What is the best was to think about the interrelationshipsamong novelty, appropriateness, divergence and creativity? If

Product MomentCorrelations

ConcludingComments

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Correlations Among Divergent Thinking Indices (N = 166).

1 2 3 4

1. Originality – .276 .718 .609

2. Appropriateness – .651 .599

3. Fluency – .874

4. Flexibility –

Note: All correlations p < .01.

we limit ourselves to the data at hand, we cannot actually con-clude much about creativity. Divergent thinking tests are mod-erately associated with certain kinds of creative potential, butthey certainly do not always guarantee creativity. Runco (1999)put it this way: Tests of divergent thinking are useful estimatesof the potential for creative thought. Similarly, divergence wasnot actually measured in the present investigation. Divergenceis the theoretical explanation for how an individual finds origi-nal ideas and solutions (Guilford, 1968), but it is not one of theoperational scores used with divergent thinking tests. We canconclude from the current data that although theories posit-ing that creative things are both original and appropriate, it isdifficult to demonstrate that originality and appropriatenessare themselves related. Logically, creativity requires both origi-nality and appropriateness, but that does not mean that origi-nality and appropriateness are unambiguously related to oneanother. The alternative explanation is that the relationshipdepends on how each is defined (Runco & Charles, 1993).Perhaps certain kinds of appropriateness are correlated withcertain kinds of originality. This might be demonstrated infuture research.

Future research could also be conducted examining theappropriateness and originality of actual products of some sort(e.g., collages, poems). Perhaps our findings only apply toideas and would not apply to products. The alternative is todevelop a scoring system for ideas that focuses on creativity.After all, we developed one for appropriateness. Yet this takesus back to our starting point and the question of defining cre-ativity. How could ideas be scored for creativity if the make-upof creativity is uncertain? The present findings indicate that itis not sufficient to ask individuals to be simultaneously origi-nal and appropriate.

TABLE 2.


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Future research might employ different kinds of explicitinstructions. These do seem to be effective for controlling thetask perception and output of participants, yet their strengthis also their weakness. They may be effective because they areexplicit and precise, but they are so precise that we cannot besure about the impact of different instructions. This is particu-larly relevant to the appropriateness instructions, for theypointed to very specific criteria (e.g., legality). Runco andCharles (1993) suggested that appropriateness is often muchless literal in the creative process. Individuals may use a kindof metaphoric logic to decide about what is appropriate, espe-cially when faced with an open-ended task that allows originalthinking. As mentioned above, alternative definitions of appro-priateness (and terms related to it) should be tested in futureresearch.

The level of explicitness can also be varied (Runco, Illies, &Reiter-Palmon, 2005). Runco et al. compared instructions vary-ing in the degree of explicitness, and varying in terms of thetype of content (i.e., some were procedural directions, someconceptual). Significant differences were found, but they didnot include appropriateness. Perhaps different results wouldbe found if appropriateness was defined even more precisely,or perhaps less. Alternatively, the relative impact of proceduralinstructions (e.g., “you can find appropriate ideas by alwayskeeping the objective in mind”) and conceptual instructions(e.g., “appropriate ideas are legal and would be appreciatedby other people”) could be examined. Research along theselines is warranted because the present findings have broughtthe most common definition of creativity — as original andappropriate — into question.

CHAND, I., & RUNCO, M. A. (1992). Problem finding skills as componentsin the creative process. Personality and Individual Differences, 14,155-162.

GUILFORD, J. P., WILSON, R. C., & CHRISTIANSEN, P. R. (1952). A factoranalytic study of creative thinking: II. Administration of tests andanalysis of results. Reports from the Psychological laboratory,number 8. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California.

HARRINGTON, D. M. (1975). Effects of explicit instructions to “be creative”on the psychological meaning of divergent thinking test scores. Journalof Personality, 43, 434-454.

HOCEVAR, D. (l979). Ideational fluency as a confounding factor in themeasurement of originality. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71,191-196.

KELDER, L. R., MCNAMARA, J. R., CARLSON, B., & LYNN, S. J. (1991).Perceptions of physical punishment: The relation of childhood andadolescent experiences. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 6, 432-445.

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RUNCO, M. A. (1986). Maximal performance on divergent thinking tests bygifted, talented, and nongifted children. Psychology in the Schools,23, 308-315.

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RUNCO, M. A. (1991). Divergent thinking. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

RUNCO, M. A., & ALBERT, R. S. (1985). The reliability and validity ofideational originality in the divergent thinking of academically gifted andnongifted children. Educational & Psychological Measurement, 45,483-501.

RUNCO, M. A., & CHARLES, R. (1993). Judgments of originality andappropriateness as predictors of creativity. Personality and IndividualDifferences, 15, 537-546.

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Creativity, Originality, and Appropriateness: What do Explicit Instructions Tell Us About Their Relationships?