UNDERSTANDING, MEASURING, AND ENHANCING INDIVIDUAL CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING EFFORTS

Accumulated theories and research findings about the nature of the cre ative problem-solving (CPS) process, the cognitive and personality tra its of persons who do CPS well, the measurement and evaluation of CPS, and the enhancement of CPS skills by training are reviewed with the a im of increasing understanding of and ability to measure and enhance i ndividual CPS efforts. Given this review and analysis a complete CPS p rocess is understood to entail considerable convergent and divergent t hought in continuing alternation. Other conclusions about the nature o f CPS and the persons who do it well are set forth and discussed and t hese conclusions are incorporated into a ''matching theory'' about CPS -which observes that creatively solvable problems vary in complexity, knowledge needs, and amount of divergent and convergent thought needed -and it predicts that problem solvers with different preferences and a bilities, knowledge, and work plans will best match the needs of parti cular problems. Limitations in current concepts, methods, and resultin g knowledge about individual CPS efforts are identified and discussed, and extensions of existing research as well as new directions for fut ure research are proposed.