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UK Creativity Researchers Conference 2018 – Conference Report: Creative Sides

Senior Lecturer and creativity researcher Dr. Ian Hocking reflects on the 2nd UK Creativity Researchers Conference, hosted here at CCCU.

The moment came when I saw that one of our delegates was travelling all the way from Alicante. It was real. The email I’d sent in May of last year—telling the conference organisers that I’d be happy to help organise the next one—had transformed into real people coming to a real conference. Real food needed to be put onto tables. Wait, we’d need tables! And a laser pointer, and student helpers, and bits of ribbon to identify the student helpers. And finally delegates—one of whom would be coming from Alicante. Blimey.

In the end, our organising committee—Carolyn Mair, Karl Jeffries and Paul Sowden, ably assisted by our CCCU research assistant, Tammy Dempster—set up an excellent conference that built upon the brilliant first one last year created by Lindsey Carruthers, Shelly Kemp, and Gillian Hill. We also had great support from the London and Home Countries BPS Branch, who sponsored the poster prize and provided delegates with notepads and pens, and further support from the QR Environment Fund of our School of Psychology, Politics and Sociology.

Shelly Marie Kemp Tweet

Lindsey Carruthers Tweet

Philip Fine Tweet

Following a welcome from our Head of School, Jan Burns, the conference kicked off with a light-hearted but thought-provoking keynote from Todd Lubart on ‘Homo Creativus’, stressing our innate creative aspects. This built upon research gathered across a long career investigating various aspects of creativity. We followed this by one of the most dynamic and enjoyable parts of the day: speed networking! Overseen by Carolyn Mair, delegates introduced themselves to each other, then spoke for a few minutes before being partnered with new colleagues. There was a real buzz in the room while this happened; we chose to have it happen early on in the day to forge these connections as soon as possible, maximising the opportunities for later chats and information exchange. We also got some of our best photographs!

After a nice lunch that some delegates took on the terrace overlooking Canterbury, we got straight into some presentations. The original idea was to limit our two sessions to one hour, but we had so many good talks submitted that we bumped these up to an hour and a quarter. We were glad we did—the talks turned out to be one of the most diverse and interesting sets I’ve seen at a conference for a long time. Jonathan Plucker emphasised the marketing side of creativity, or ‘articulation’; for instance, part of what made Emily Dickinson canon was the effort of her supporters to place her there. Jeb Puryear reported on how our definition of creativity has changed across the years, without being altogether coherent. Enikő Bereczki reported on the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about creativity and their classroom practices, suggesting a puzzling disconnection. Emma Threadgold has been looking into the impact of stimuli like nature posters, which show positive effects on both group and individual divergent thinking. Lastly for this session, Mark Batey presented a new measure of capturing creative problem solving using a divergent thinking test.

The poster session was next. Delegates were spoilt by almost thirty offerings, from toddlers and touchscreens to jewellery design. The winner of our poster prize was Anna Krauer for her research at the University of Surrey on leaky attention and creative achievement. Anna won a £50 Amazon voucher kindly donated by the London and Home Counties branch of the BPS.

 

The second and final session of talks kicked off with Amory Danek investigating whether the ‘aha!’ moment of insight truly represents a signal that a correct solution has been found—her evidence suggests that it does. Cathy Rogers then spoke about the role of executive function in children’s creativity; she presented evidence that executive function is flexible and nuanced throughout the creative process. Thomas Colin told us about a machine learning model of insight, based on simple world simulations of physical insight. Frank Loesche then introduced some ways of thinking about the linearity of the creative process; with parallelism, we gain explanatory power. Lastly, colleagues from University of Kent, led by Nicola Shaughnessy, presented intriguing videos from a multidisciplinary study of autism and creativity focusing on the intersection of drama and psychology.

 

We finished a great day with an interactive panel led by Karl Jeffries. Todd Lubart, Jonathan Plucker, Linden Ball and Janet McDonnell responded eruditely to tweeted, emailed and spoken questions about new directions for creativity research, as well as how the rest of the world (and the rest of psychology) sees us.

This being a conference, there was nothing for it but to continue the conversations in the pub, where the nuances of defining creativity—and possibly unrelated concepts—were set to rights.

The day wouldn’t have worked without the help of our team, as well as support from Jan Burns, the School’s Environment Fund, our hospitality team, CCCU colleagues Richard Weatherall, Britta Osthaus, David Vernon, and the resourceful Tammy Dempster, our student helpers Elli, Sara, Bryony and Tai, and also Mark Brogden. I only hope the team for the next conference at UCLan will be as awesome as ours—though I have no doubt they will be.

You can find lots more information—including our programme, talk slides, and book of abstracts on the UKCRC website.

Are people conscious of Scopaesthesia? Do the number of starers and the introduction of Acoustathesia effect hit rates? – A pilot investigation

(Image from Shutterstock)

Hello, my name is Rebecca O’Connell and I am a third year combined honours psychology student and this is my final research project and submission to the Parapsychology Convention 2018.

Scopaesthesia, derived from the Greek words for thinking and knowing. In this paper, the phenomenon of Acoustathesia, the idea that individuals are able to sense when they are being spoken about has been introduced, with the hope that this may increase the hit rates produced by participants. Many people within their day to day lives comment on the fact that they feel as though people’s eyes are on them, but this may actually be a sense which individuals possess. In the 1890’s Titchener, a famous psychologist received comments from his students that they could feel people’s eyes on them, he took this to an experimental method and reported positive results, but without a method attached. The first psychologist to report a method along with his findings was Coover in 2013, of simply having a starer sit behind a subject. The influence behind the idea of including the phenomenon of Acoustathesia has been developed from research produced by Friday and Luke (2017), in this research the idea of being able to sense when someone is staring at you has been linked with the idea that it is possible to feel when you are being spoken about. The ability to feel when someone is staring at you and to feel when you are being spoken about has been said to be evolutionarily advantageous, which would suggest that in the past survival may have been dependant on these abilities (Friday & Luke, 2017).

This study is a new idea in the way that the concepts of Acoustathesia and Scopaesthesia have not been researched in conjunction with the notion of multiple starers but the idea of Scopaesthesia is being looked into again the in the hoped that the positive significant results that had been found in the past would be produced. Within the study there were 2 conditions, a group stare, 3 starers and 1 subject, and another condition of 1 starer and 1 subject. The paranormal belief levels of each subject was measured along with their mood and confidence of their input into the study after the trials were complete.

The hypothesis behind this study was that when an individual is being spoken about and stared at with multiple starers that they would be able to sense this more strongly, than if they were only being stared at. It has also been hypothesised that individuals with higher levels of Paranormal Belief will produce higher and more accurate hit rates. The mood and confidence levels of the participants were measured at the end of the study and have been correlated with the hit rates scored by the participants.

The results of this study have been shown to be contrary to the hypothesis, although some interesting aspects have been highlighted. The paranormal belief and multiple starers did not have a significant correlation with the hit rates produced although the higher the mood and the higher the confidence levels of the participants the higher their hit rates. This opens up further areas of future research into the moods and confidence levels of the participants and also allows for future researchers to look into higher numbers of starers within the group stare condition.

This research has been accepted to be presented at the 61st Annual Convention of Parapsychological Association 2018, in Petaluma, California.

 

Roundtable discussing domestic abuse

 

The first Psychology and Criminal Justice Round Table, funded by the Canterbury Centre for Policing Research (CCPR) was run on the 21st February, 2018 and focused on Domestic Abuse: Traditional Assumptions and Modern Realities.

We had an amazing turnout of just under 100 people ranging from academics, students, police officers and the general public. We were also fortunate enough to have speakers from a range of areas including: the Metropolitan Police, CCCU’s Expect Respect Research Lead and Rising Sun, which is an amazing local charity that supports domestic abuse victims and their families.  We also had a service user of Rising Sun give an empowering talk about her own personal experience of domestic abuse and pathway to recovery.

Two hours is not enough time to go into great detail on such a complex and challenging topic, however we hoped we were able to continue to dispel frequently held myths on domestic abuse, alongside highlighting the importance of our role as individuals in a community to recognise, and support those who may be victims.  Crucially, it is important to remember that domestic abuse is not limited to any one gender, sexuality, socio-economic background or culture. Domestic abuse can occur between both family members as well as intimate partners.   The UK Home Office (2018) defines domestic abuse as:

 “any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. The abuse can encompass, but is not limited to: psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional harm” (Home Office, 2018 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-violence-and-abuse)

To date, there is no specific crime of ‘domestic abuse’, instead perpetrators tend to be convicted of other offences such as sexual, assault and harassment offences. Interestingly, the day after our event Judges were given new domestic abuse sentencing guidelines, replacing those published in 2006, which are due to come into effect on the 24th May, 2018 (Sentencing Council, 2018 https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/news/item/sentencing-council-publishes-new-guideline-on-domestic-abuse/).

These new Guidelines are expected to inform Judges sentencing of an offenders by taking into account the seriousness of an individual’s offending behaviour, aggravating and mitigating factors and ensure  ‘sufficient thought’ is given to address the offender’s behaviour and prevent reoffending.

We look forward to seeing you at our next event in February 2019, on stalking and harassment.

If you, or someone you know may be experiencing Domestic Abuse don’t keep this to yourself, seek help.  Please find below services you can access:

 

 

 

 

For: Women in Canterbury and East Kent

Phone: 01227 452 853

Times: Mon-Fri, 9-4:30

Website: http://wwwrisingsunkent.com

 

For: Women and children in the UK

Phone: 0808 2000 247

Times: 24 hour, 7 days per week

E-mail: helpline@womensaid.org.uk

Website: https://www.womensaid.org.uk/

For: CCCU Students and Staff

 Website: http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/expect-respect

For: Men in the UK

Phone: 0808 801 0327

Times: Monday-Friday, 9-5pm

E-mail: info@respectphoneline.org.uk

Website: http://www.mensadviceline.org.uk/

 

 

Guidance on Domestic Violence and Abuse:  https://www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-violence-and-abuse

 

Authors: Belinda Siesmaa, Kristina Massey and Sofia Graca

First Annual Technicians’ Symposium

On the 8th May 2017, and with panoramic views of Canterbury cricket grounds, CCCU hosted a meeting of technicians from all departments of our University, as well as the University of Kent and the University of Greenwich. Organised by Laboratories and Professional Services Manager Pamela Lithgow, and colleagues in CCCU’s life sciences department, the event provided workshops, talks and networking opportunities to aid and support technicians, while focusing on acknowledging