The Influence Of Divergent And Convergent Problem Construction Processes On Creative Problem Solving

The current study is aimed to explore the influence of divergent and convergent problem construction processes on creative problem solving. Previous research examining problem construction and creativity have built a variety of methods to stimulate the subjects involved in problems Construction processes. The most commonly methods were: restating the problem in many different ways before solving it and identifying goals and constraints of a problem before attempting to creatively solve a problem. However, these method both used “as many as possible……” to stimulate divergent thinking to facilitate creative problem solving, another important dimension of creative—convergent thinking—has rarely been studied. This study was based on the Problem Construction Model builtby Mumford, Reiter-Palmon, and Redmond in1994, discussed the important role of divergent thinking and convergent thinking in the problem construction processes.Problem Construction Model considered that problem construction processes including five sub-processes: cue perception, mental representation activation, representation screening, element selection &element reorganization. divergent thinking playing Play an important role in mental representation activation process, and convergent thinking Play an important role in representation and element selection process. Both divergent thinking and convergent thinking are very important to problem Construction.Four different conditions were designed to guide the participants’ problem Construction: Control condition, convergent condition, divergent condition, and a combination of divergent and convergent condition. It also discusses the influence of different participants’ creativity levels on creative problem solving. This study turned out:(1) Intentionally guide the Participants constructing problem before solving it can significantly improve creative problem solving;(2) Participants with height level of creativity correspondingly also be able to solve problems more creatively.(3) During the problem construction process, divergent thinking in favor of the novelty of creative problem solving, convergent thinking in favor of the usefulness of creative problem solving. Only divergent or convergent thinking can’t effectively improve creative problem solving. Diverging comprehensively consider many aspects of the problem at first, and then convergent thinking evaluate and select the most important aspects of this problem is the most conducive way to construction of creative problem solving.(4) Use divergent thinking consider many aspects of the problem at first, and then use convergent thinking can effectively improve the Participants’ creative problem solving who have low levels of creativity; only using convergent thinking will significantly curb creative problem solving of Participants with high levels of creativity.