Creativity and Inductive Reasoning: The Relationship between Divergent Thinking and Performance on Wason's 2—4—6 Task

Abstract

This study was an investigation of the relationship between potential creativity—as measured by fluency scores on the Alternate Uses Test—and performance on Wason's 2—4—6 task. As hypothesized, participants who were successful in discovering the rule had significantly higher fluency scores. Successful participants also generated higher frequencies of confirmatory and disconfirmatory hypotheses, but a multiple regression analysis using the stepwise method revealed that the frequency of generating disconfirmatory hypotheses and fluency scores were the only two significant factors in task outcome. The results also supported earlier studies where disconfirmation was shown to play a more important role in the later stages of hypothesis testing. This was especially true of successful participants, who employed a higher frequency of disconfirmatory hypotheses after receiving feedback on the first announcement. These results imply that successful participants benefited from the provision of feedback on the first announcement by switching to a more successful strategy in the hypothesis-testing sequence.