Divergent thinking

Parallels have been drawn between playfulness in kindergarten-aged children and divergent thinking. In a study documented by Lieberman (1965), the relationship between these two traits was examined, with playfulness being “conceptualized and operationally defined in terms of five traits:

  1. physical,
  2. social and
  3. cognitive spontaneity;
  4. manifest joy; and
  5. sense of humour” (Lieberman, 1965)

.. Results showed natural positive mood to facilitate significantly task performance and negative mood to inhibit it… The results suggest that persons in elevated moods may prefer satisficing strategies, which would lead to a higher number of proposed solutions. Persons in a negative mood may choose optimizing strategies and be more concerned with the quality of their ideas, which is detrimental to performance on this kind of task.

— (Vosburg, 1998)
.. This study showed that even “one night of sleep loss can affect divergent thinking”, which “contrasts with the outcome for convergent thinking tasks, which are more resilient to short-term sleep loss” (Horne, 1988).