UCLA

Although creativity research frequently borrows anecdotes from mathematicians, most research is conducted in a lab setting with abstract tasks known to be heavily confounded with verbal fluency (e.g. RATs, anagrams). This is unfortunate, as utilizing an area such as math would not only diversify creativity research, but allow exploration of how factors such as identity and affect can relate to creative processes. In the current dissertation, I employed a creative math puzzle to extend previous work on creativity and insight to the realm of mathematics, and explored how trait individual differences and state differences relate to solve rates both within the lab, and outside the lab (up to three days later). Study 1 recruited 231 undergraduate students, who were brought into the lab and randomly assigned to a condition—a low-demand incubation condition (LD), high-demand incubation condition (HD), or a control group. All groups had six minutes to work on the puzzle, but students in the LD and HD conditions took a break after three minutes to complete a signal detection task (LD condition) or complex- reading task (HD condition) for 2.5 minutes. If students were unable to solve the puzzle in lab, they were provided a follow-up survey link to fill out if they solved the math puzzle later, or if three days had passed and they had not solved. Results showed that there was no effect of incubation condition on problem solving within the lab, but it was significantly related to solving outside of the lab. Interestingly, control condition students had a greater probability of solving outside the lab compared to LD students. I also found that several factors significantly related with problem solving in the lab (i.e. math anxiety, trait emotions) were not related to solving the problem outside of the lab.

Study 2 attempted to replicate the findings of study 1 by adopting the same procedure (but limiting conditions to control and LD) and extending to trait individual difference measures such as openness, intellect, and different aspects of curiosity. Study 2 also evaluated an opportunistic assimilation account of the findings of study 1, which suggest that control participants may be out-solving their LD counterparts in the wild because they were reaching an impasse more than LD students, allowing them to pick up on cues from their environment that aid with solving the problem outside the lab. However, results from 252 students showed that incubation condition had no effect on solving in lab or the wild, failing to replicate the results from study 1. Further, impasse was not found to relate to solving in the wild, and while some students reported hints had helped them solve in the wild, this was only a small subset of the sample. Among trait individual difference measures, intellect and curious-I were found to positively relate to solving in the lab, but along with the other trait and individual difference measures, failed to predict whether students solved in the wild. Collectively, this dissertation highlights the complex nature of creative problem-solving in mathematics, and how different aspects of data collection (lab and wild) can contribute to a richer understanding of students’ creative cognition.