Divergent Thinking and Creativity

photo - hatasa pentovic

Improvisation is at the heart of how we create and how we learn.  Recent studies suggest that improvising musicians are more likely than others to use divergent thinking -  a reliable measure of creativity - in problem solving situations.

...musicians who are trained in improvisation are more creative than either musicians without improvisation training or non-musicians, as characterized by performance on divergent thinking tasks (originality and fluency indices).

- From Expertise in Musical Improvisation and Creativity: The Mediation of Idea Evaluation, by Oded M. Kleinmintz, Pavel Goldstein, Naama Mayseless, Donna Abecasis, Simone G. Shamay- Tsoory (University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.)