Understanding the Gifted Adult and College Student

Turning young gifted people into adult producers is part of a range of factors based within both their environment and personality traits. The author Paula Olszewski-Kubilius presents a model that explains key traits that make this population unique. Helping college students understand giftedness and manifest their abilities promotes a more creative adult that can foster industry, and at times, national growth. 

"The unifying similarity among geniuses and innovators is not cognitive or affective but motivational. What is common among them is the unwillingness or inability to strive for goals everyone else accepts--their refusal to live by a presented life theme (Csikszentmihalyi ,1985, p. 114). Gifted individuals create their own paths in life and are not willing to accept the paths others believe they should have. 

Two types of gifted adults often emerge. Those who come from intact families are scholastically advanced while those who do not become more creative. Scholastic adults are great at earning higher grades while creative adults find new ways of doing things. Each has a positive benefit on society. Their abilities are manifested based upon their motivations. It is this motivation that makes all the differences between over achievement and underachievement. 

Gifted adults have some traits based in their biological, psychological and social development. Each seeks to create something within their lives in a long developing destiny. It is an internal feeling that pushes them to continue to create, develop and master. To understand those traits that are common to gifted children and adults it can help administrators understand how to fully bloom this group for the advancement of society. 

Time Alone:  Gifted adults often seek out time alone based upon both their psychological processes as well as their childhood environments. They use this time to solve complex problems, gain skills, read, learn and experiment. 

Thriving off Stress: Geniuses do not develop well when things are boring and conventional. They seek out stress and have developed advanced methods of dealing with that stress. They keep seeking improvement where others have long accepted the “status qua”.  

Rejection of Conventionality: Conventionality requires people to follow societal rules and these rules based more in tradition than in practicality. Those who reject conventionality have different points of view that make them more creative and unique. 

Intellectual Stimulation as Emotional Expression: Highly gifted adults use past experiences to create higher levels of intellectual stimulation.  These activities are expressions of who they are and the problems they have faced in their lives. 

Olszewski-Kubilius, P. (2000). The transition from childhood giftedness to adult creative productiveness: psychological characteristics and social supports. Roeper Review, 23 (2).

Subconscious Priming of Performance

Priming is a concept that entails embedding a concept into the human subconscious in an effort to alter behavior. Dr. Minas, Dr. Bhagwatwar, and Dr. Dennis from the University of Indiana have studied priming on a group to improve business communication and creativity on a group level (2013). They used computer simulated games to provide neural priming and then test creativity and ideation thereafter and found that there was a high correlation between the two. 

Organizations often seek to create higher levels of creativity and innovation to produce new products and services for market. Some are searching methods for using online communication methods in order to develop a stronger level of communication performance. This can help in everything from workplace productivity to effective marketing methods. If online communication can influence behavior the overall financial and social benefits are large. 

Our subconscious cognition influences our online behavior.  The use of priming taps into our working memory through beliefs, values, and attitudes that impact subsequent behaviors.  It can be primed through words, pictures, symbols, and a number of other ways. The researchers used a simulation game to create primed behavior. 

The use of supraliminal priming allows the participants to know the stimulus but not know its overall intention. Postmes et al. (2001), found that priming online in pro-social stimulus produced positive pro-social behaviors. An anonymous group’s behavior changed to develop higher levels of performance in social ways.

The key to priming is to activate mental representations (i.e. images). The use of subliminal priming focuses on imperceptible bursts of information that is then masked.  Supraliminal priming is an obvious stimulus that activates mental representations but the intent is hidden from the participants conscious. The two can be used together or separate to influence follow-up thinking. Participants shouldn’t be aware that they are being primed in order for it to be effective. 

Priming can impact access to categories of concepts through a series of words. The author uses the word “popcorn” to show how categories of eating, corn, family, etc… can be primed. The primed words can be used in an individual or within a social setting. When groups are primed for performance or creativity they can perform better due to previous mental representations that were activated. 

The researchers used 175 sophomores working in groups of five participants creating thirty-five groups. The participants worked on generating ideas for increasing tourism as well as reducing pollution. They were instructed to generate as many ideas as possible and build off of the ideas of other groups. They used group chat rooms to foster their discussions. Participants were performance primed or neutral primed by sequentially picking words that created newspaper headlines. 

The researchers found that those who were primed for performance achieved significantly higher new ideas and performance than those whose primes were neutral. The priming impacted an individual’s semantic networks and they in turn influenced other peoples. The impact is additive as each person generates ideas and builds off of others ideas. 

The significance is profound as it could impact both marketing and group performance. By using proper primes within a sequence it is possible to ensure that the priming effects do not wear off and that certain behaviors are more likely to be exhibited based upon their semantic category mapping (i.e. mind mapping). We are consistently and randomly primed in our environment. How, we act and react to others primes our next thoughts and behaviors. People are not able to often connect the primes to accurately understand their environment. If a group of people are negatively priming others they can expect lower performance while if they are positively priming others they can expect higher performance. This is done without intention but is a natural part of living socially and helps us create culture. This is why our social environment is extremely important to our overall success. Organizations can seek to create positive priming environments that foster higher levels of creativity, performance, and development. 

Dennis, A., Minas, R. & Bhagwatwar, A. (2013) Sparking creativity: improving electronic brainstorming with individual cognitive priming. Journal of Management Information Systems, 29 (4). 

 Postmes, T. et. al. (2001). Social influence in computer mediated communication: The effects of anonymity on group behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27 (10)

Developing Strategy through the Creative Process

Creativity is an important component of strategic thinking. Those who are able to imagine and think through varying scenarios are capable of predicting the end game.  Research by Larson and Angus helps shed light on the process of creative learning and its association with developing critical strategies (2011). This learning can start in high school and move into the early college years. Creative learning may continue through one’s lifetime.

The development of agency is an important tool for achieving goals and ensuring the ability to move through a changing environment.  Projects in young adulthood and early college can help to develop the mental faculty of seeing projects to their completion as well as thinking creatively about solving problems. Education should have a level of creative faculty to develop these skills to match concrete content learning.

Agency skills also develop the ability to have executive control over one’s own thoughts, learn new cognitive tools, develop creative problem solving, learn the action skills to achieve goals and move into higher order thinking. These skills and abilities further create a platform for strategic thinking.  Without the ability to think creatively, it is doubtful that new methods and paths will be found.

Programs often use the “arc of work” approach which includes the concepts of planning, monitoring, adjusting existing plans and receiving feedback. When projects span of a period of weeks and months it requires students to be reflective of their creative process. When the situation changes the students can find ways of adapting to those changes. It is this thinking about and reflection on methods that helps students find new ways to complete their projects in meaningful ways.

When people are engaged in projects and own the results they invest themselves into the process more deeply. It is an investment that helps create higher order thinking and strategic planning. The creation of a long-term project helps to connect the many different work methods and strategies students use to navigate their environment. It helps solidify successful methods from unsuccessful ones.  They are likely to use these later in their working life.

The researchers used 11 different programs to assess the results of subject creative process. They worked back into the creative process and conducted in-depth research to assess how such projects foster creative strategic thinking.  A few years later, they interviewed the participants again to create a longitudinal approach. They looked at artistic programs, social activism, media arts, political action, and leadership programs. An in-depth review of plans, thought processes, and perceptions were particularly important.

The participants reported that they learned how to mobilize their efforts and regulate their time. They gained the long-term perspective that allowed them to create strategies to complete their projects. Their plans were broken down into action steps. Steps are seen as sequential actions that lead to project completion. 

Most remarkably, participants learned that strategic thinking requires the ability to adjust with changing circumstances, understand how others respond, and think through the alternatives, and have backup plans. They were able to think through how human systems operate and what cognitive models others use to respond to their various actions. Most importantly, they were able to transfer the skills learned to other areas in life including prediction of events and determining alternative actions.

The report connects the concepts of creative thinking and analytic analysis to determine the potential scenarios.  The authors come to a definition of strategic thinking as ‘Use of advanced executive skills to anticipate possible scenarios in the steps to achieving goals and to formulate flexible courses of action that take these possibilities into account.’’ Strategy is a process of first envisioning the possibilities and then systematically thinking through the likely outcomes of results. It is both a freethinking and analytical process where possibilities are explored and the most likely ones chosen. When the environment changes, so does the strategies.

Larson, R. & Angus, R. (2011). Adolescents’ development of skills for agency in youth programs: learning to think strategically. Child Development, 82 (1). 

Identifying and Fostering Creative Individuals in the Workplace

The creative personality can be a benefit for companies that seek to find new avenues to develop market niches and exploring those niches for higher revenue. Creativity is a cognitive process that allows people to see the novelty within information and focus on that novelty to find new and unique solutions. Fostering creativity in the workplace has many benefits for organizational goal attainment. Creative employees should be nurtured as they can provide positive benefits for years as their solutions are converted to financial benefits.  

The creative personality is unique when compared to the general population. They are strong at creative problem-solving, remote association tests, ideation fluency, and creative works (Martinsen, 2011). Creative people are often tested by a variety of different assessments that help identify their unique abilities. The tests help recognize the way in which their thinking processes operate and the creative outputs that are drawn from these processes. 

This does not mean that all creative people need to be tested to be identified. Generally, people can be discovered by their ability to use divergent thinking to solve problems from multiple perspectives and their ability to take complex data and break it down to elemental meanings and rules that can be used for understanding. In any given situation they can see multiple answers and solutions to problems when primed with relevant information and offered opportunities to solve these complex problems.

Creative individuals are hardwired a little different than the rest of us. Their neurobiological foundations offer opportunities for fast paced neural transmitter systems that foster speed and additional activations between concepts (Chavez-Eakle, et. all 2012).  It is this connection between wide ranging ideas where new paths and methods can be identified and explored. Many of us simply cannot make the same wide reaching connections because it requires logical deductions that include many layers of detailed information. 

The speed of their brains can be faster than the logical understandings of others. This occurs when creative individuals can intuitively find an answer to a complex problem but must go back and pull out the details bit by bit so others can understand it. People who make much smaller connections will need to follow the long chain of information which could take them a considerable amount of time to understand. This is why others get lost in their train of thought and abandon it. 

Since it takes considerable time and effort to understand the concepts others often lose interest and cut the conversation short. Some might simply make quick assumptions that the creative person has little idea what they are talking about even though their thought processes are valid and logical. It is a difficult balance between giving the answer that others cannot logically follow or boring them to death with the details. Due to the constraints of the social environments they are often misunderstood.

Such creative development doesn’t happen in a vacuum and often relies on various life events to foster it. The nature (i.e. biological) is enhanced by the nurture (i.e. life events) to culminate into higher forms of adaptations. People who are creative have learned throughout their lifetimes to overcome obstacles and have the self-efficacy to see tasks through to their completion. Without the right environmental challenges the Ferrari that sits inside their heads never puts the pedal to the metal. A considerable amount of self-belief must occur to move beyond normal constructive methods into realms of the unknown where great discoveries are found.

There are a number of factors that separate creative students from other students long before they make their way into the working world. According to a study of 1,300 creative Chinese adolescents by Qian, et. al (2010) creative individuals have unique internal, external and self factors.  Internal factors included self-confidence, norm-doubting, internal motivation, and persistence. External factors included curiosity, risk-taking, openness and independence. Self-factor includes self-acceptance. Such individuals simply see the uniqueness in a number of situations and have the motivation and risk-taking behavior to make things happen.

Successful innovators are not just good on paper, they are also important to entrepreneurship and overall successful business development. Such individuals express need for achievement, locus of control, creativity, innovative and also strategy to grab market opportunities (Halim, 2011). These entrepreneurs must be motivated to achieve, rely on their own abilities, find creative solutions and be able to devise unique strategies. Without the ability to use their creativeness they will not be able to find those market openings that help develop new products and services for the benefit of their organization and others.

Today’s business world relies heavily on finding solutions to customer problems. Fostering creativity in both education and employment gives competitive advantages to those organizations that do so. The modern capital doesn’t rely on tangible products but on unique uses for those tangible products that find solutions to market problems. The creative and entrepreneurial spirit fosters higher levels of organizational and strategic development due to its unique nature to turn novelty into practical form. 

A study by IBM’s Institute for Business Value surveyed 1,500 executives about creative individuals. They indicated that communication skills, pro-activity, problem-solving, curiosity, and risk taking are essential elements of a creative and motivated person (Glei, 2013). Such people experience themselves finding problems before others, making effort, putting solutions together, and willing to take a risk when necessary. They can be selected through observation, interviews, or past experiences. Asking the right questions and seeing such individuals for what they are makes all the difference to organizations in the long-run. 

Creativity is often beneficial in the high technology environments but can be put to good use in many places. As your organization conducts interviews for their next creative candidate use situation questions, problem-solving questions, what if questions, and complex problems in order to find the creative side of the candidate. Once hired keep an eye out for that creative potential that is trying to find the right environment to come out.  The environment is one of the largest factors in connecting creativity to an appropriate path that won't be stifled by the self-interest of others before full fruition.

Chavez-Eakle, et. al. (2012). The multiple relations between creativity and personality. Creativity Research Journal, 24 (1). 

Glei, J. (2013). The top five qualities of producing creatives (and how to identify them). 99u. Retrieved June 27^th, 2013 from http://99u.com/articles/6736/the-top-5-qualities-of-productive-creatives-and-how-to-identify-them

Halim, et. al. (2011). The measurement of entrepreneurial personality and business performance in Terengganue Creative Industry. International Journal of Business & Management, 6 (6). 

Martinsen, O. (2011). The creative personality: a synthesis and develop of the creative person profile. Creativity Research Journal, 23 (3). 

Qian, M. et. al. (2010). A model of Chinese adolescents’ creative personality. Creativity Research Journal, 22 (1).