Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Semantic organization of knowledge has a long history in theories of creativity. Flexibility of thinking and distant connec-tions are indispensable elements of a creative network. Simultaneously, convergence of thoughts and evaluation of ideas areessential at many stages of the creative process. The current study evaluates these complementary aspects through the lensof an exploratory concept known as mental boundaries. Correlation analyses are used to compare flexible and rigid ten-dencies of organizing the world, the concepts of intellect, schizotypy, perfectionism, divergent thinking and self-perceivedcreativity. Results (n = 316) reveal an interesting contrasting pattern where divergent thinking is significantly related toflexible internal and external organizations, whereas self-perceived creativity is significantly related to rigid external andnon-significantly related to rigid internal organizations. The present findings have implications for the measurement ofcreativity and the identification of factors that facilitate the creative process.