We assessed children’s social creativity through interviews during which
participants imagined original solutions to interpersonal problems. In addition, we
compared performances in the social domain with those obtained in object-oriented
problem-solving tasks such as the Unusual Uses of a Box creativity test designed by
Torrance (1974) and the Similarities subtest of the WISC (1996). A total of 88
French children participated in this study. First, we observed links between social
creativity tasks as well as consistent developmental trends showing that social
creativity can be considered as a unitary construct. Second, with regard to the
integration or differentiation of creative abilities in children’s
development, results showed a distinct creative ability in the social domain for
younger children and the emergence of a more general creative ability in older
children. Third, the relationship between fluency and originality indices was stable
across age groups and task domains, supporting Simonton’s
constant-probability-of-success model (1990) for children. Implications for the
study of creative abilities in the social domain and for understanding how children
interact with others in various social settings are discussed.
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