Think Outside and Inside the Box:The Role of Dual-Pathway Divergent Thinking in Creative Idea Generation

The Dual Pathway to Creativity Model theorizes that creative performance arises from cognitive flexibility, persistence, or a combination of the two. Existing research has only examined these pathways independently, limiting our understanding of the model and of how people generate ideas. We extend the DPCM model by predicting that creative output arises from the generation of response sets containing both highly related (persistence pathway) and unrelated (flexibility) ideas, an idea generation strategy we call Dual Pathway Divergent Thinking (DPDT). In a study of 147 subjects, we propose a serial mediation model: people higher in Openness to Ideas use DPDT as an idea generation strategy which leads to higher nascent creativity which, in turn, leads to higher final creativity. The results provide initial evidence that the two pathways may operate simultaneously as a single idea generation strategy. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.