Cogito Meliorem! In Search of Magical Ways to Facilitate Creativity

Abstract

This paper presents a systematical review of facilitation techniques for creativity in general and insight solutions in particular. The facilitation techniques are fairly diverse, therefore we grouped them into nine categories: rest, attention management, impact of emotions, adding new context, physical activity, interactivity, future-thought priming, metacognitive training, and unusual techniques for increasing creativity. Each category is provided by a brief description and a set of studies that demonstrate possibilities and limitations of the techniques as well as an analysis and comparison of the techniques with each other. At the conclusion, we present a model of levels of creative solution facilitation based on four classical psychological levels. According to this model, influence on the solution can be carried out (1) through conscious strategies for managing the solution through metacognition; due to changes occurring in (2) cognitive and (3) emotional-motivational processes; (4) indirectly, due to changes in the external environment. We made a general conclusion about the variety of techniques that influence the creativity process, and most of them combine several possible facilitation mechanisms, making each technique more effective and applicable to various types of creative tasks.