Sergio Agnoli

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Verified

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• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at University of Trieste

Creativity relies on the ability to make new associations between concepts stored in our semantic memory in order to create new and effective ideas in a specific context. Recent studies showed that creative people are characterized by more flexible semantic memory structures, which facilitate novel associations between concepts. On the other hand,...

Processing nominally irrelevant information has been linked to successful creative ideation, especially in open-minded individuals. To investigate attentional processing, prior studies in this field relied on in-laboratory eye tracking. Despite several advantages, this method also comes with downsides like high costs and slow data collection. To ad...

Malevolent creativity uses creative thinking for harmful or destructive goals, displaying characteristics of originality and effectiveness, but with harmful (i.e., malevolent) intent. In the present work, we hypothesized that one of the main components of creative potential in malevolent scenarios is moral disengagement, which should modulate the a...

Processing apparently irrelevant information has been linked to successful creative ideation, especially in open-minded individuals. To investigate attentional processing, prior studies in this field relied on in-laboratory eye tracking. Despite several advantages, this method also comes with downsides like high costs and slow data collection. To a...

This paper introduces a new dynamic theoretical framework for understanding the role of individual differences (IDs) as necessary mechanisms in the creative process: the Individual Differences HOListic (IDHOL) model. First, through a series of questions, some micro- and macro dynamics in which IDs participate as organizers of the creative process a...

This study addresses the modulatory role of individual mindset in explaining the relationship between response inhibition (RI) and divergent thinking (DT) using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Forty undergraduate students (22 male and 18 female), aged between 18 and 23 years (average age = 19 years, SD = 1.48), were recruited. Parti...

Previous work showed that the willingness to help is impacted by the perception of the cost for the donor and the benefit for the recipient. Here we set up to extend this literature by investigating the role played by social value orientation (SVO), attention, and age (early adolescents vs. middle-late adolescents vs. young adults). Results showed...

In this paper, we considered three research areas in which the psychological investigation of the interaction between persons and environments led to a better understanding of the complex relationship between features of the environments and human cognition: (1) the restorative effects of environments, (2) the relationship between environments and...

Creativity research commonly involves recruiting human raters to judge the originality of responses to divergent thinking tasks, such as the alternate uses task (AUT). These manual scoring practices have benefited the field, but they also have limitations, including labor-intensiveness and subjectivity, which can adversely impact the reliability an...

Emotional intelligence (EI) is here analyzed as a construct referring to the individual differences in perceiving, regulating, managing, and exploiting emotions, assuming in particular a trait approach to the exploration of the phenomenon. Specifically, the role of trait EI in the definition of the possible in space and in time is addressed, analyz...

In the present work we explored in two separate studies the modulatory role of trait emotional intelligence (EI) over the effect exerted on children’s creative potential by two other key elements defining creativity, namely cognitive resources (here explored through basic executive functions, Study 1) and contextual-environmental factors (that is,...

Past research showed that apparently irrelevant information for a creative task at hand can lead to higher creative performance, especially in open-minded individuals. Through two diverse experimental procedures, the present work investigated which type of irrelevance information can inspire (i.e., increase) the creative performance during a diverg...

In this Chapter, the DA VINCI model for the creative process is introduced. The model is constituted by five mental states, that form DA VINCI as an acronym: DAV (Drive: Attention and Volition), I (Information), N (Novelty generation), C (Creativity estimation), I (Implementation). The DA VINCI model is dynamic and descends from the dynamic definit...

The dynamic creativity framework (DCF) represents a new theoretical perspective for studying the creativity construct. This framework is based on the dynamic definition of creativity, and it has both theoretical and empirical implications. From a theoretical point of view, we review the characteristics of the dynamic creative process and its extens...

Creative potential is a set of multidimensional resources concerning the latent ability to produce original and adaptive work. Confluent theoretical models, in particular, stated that, in order to express creative potential in an effective way, resources should converge and interact efficiently. Within such a confluent framework, the present study...

The neurotransmitter dopamine plays a crucial role in human creative behaviour. Specifically, striatal dopamine seems to be associated with specific dimensions of divergent thinking performance, especially with categorical diversity (flexibility) of ideas. In experimental contexts, spontaneous Eye Blink Rate (sEBR) has been used as a proxy for stri...

[Creativity is one of the cognitive abilities that significantly differentiate humans from other animal species. For its intrinsic complexity, creative thinking has always been considered an elusive phenomenon, difficult to investigate. In recent years, however, the study of creative thinking is rapidly advancing thanks to important methodological...

What inspires us during a creative act? We know from past research that apparently irrelevant information for a task at hand can lead to higher creative performance, especially in open-minded individuals. But what does irrelevance mean and how can open-minded individuals be inspired by this kind of information? Through two diverse experimental proc...

In the Dynamic Creativity Framework creativity is defined as a context-embedded phenomenon requiring potential originality and effectiveness. This definition indicates that the environmental conditions embedding the creative process have fundamental impact on the process itself and its outcomes. In particular, Virtual environments (VEs) are emergin...

The national lockdown imposed in several countries to counteract the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to an unprecedented situation with serious effects on mental health of the general population and of subjects affected by heterogeneous diseases. Considering the positive association between narcoleptic symptoms and creativity, we a...

Central disorders of hypersomnolence (CDH) are characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness not related to comorbid sleep or medical disturbances. We systematically examined scientific literature on cognitive functions in patients suffering from CDH. Forty-eight studies proved eligible and were analyzed separately for Narcolepsy Type 1 (NT1), Narc...

EEG alpha synchronization, especially in posterior parietal cortical regions of the right hemisphere, is indicative of high internal processing demands that are typically involved in divergent thinking (DT). During the course of DT, as ideation proceeds, ideas tend to become more creative, being more likely to be drawn from new conceptual categorie...

The neurotransmitter dopamine plays a crucial role in human creative behaviour. Specifically, striatal dopamine seems to be associated with specific dimensions of divergent thinking performance, especially with the categorical diversity (flexibility) of the ideas. In the experimental context, spontaneous Eye Blink Rate (sEBR) has been used as a pro...

Purpose A higher creative potential has been reported in narcoleptic patients and linked to lucid dreaming. The aim of the present study was to explore the role of narcolepsy symptoms (presence and severity) in predicting creativity. Patients and Methods Sixty-six consecutive type 1 narcolepsy patients (mean age 38.62 ± 17.05, 31 females) took par...

Background and aims: The role of sleep on creative thinking has been supported by several studies, nevertheless only few studies investigated this relationship with respect to specific sleep stages (i.e. REM and NREM sleep). Narcolepsy type 1 (NT1) is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by hypersomnolence and untimely manifes- tations of...

Growing neurophysiological evidence points to a role of alpha oscillations in divergent thinking (DT). In particular, studies have shown a consistent EEG alpha synchronization during performance on the Alternative Uses Task (AUT), a well-established DT task. However, there is a need for investigating the brain dynamics underlying the production of...

The picture depicts with an original graphic the scalp topographies associated to the repeated generation of alternative ideas during a typical creative (divergent thinking) task. The electrophysiological activity progressively passes from a desyncronization to a progressive synscronization, especially in the cortical areas typically associated to...

Mindfulness as a multifaceted construct refers to the ability to regulate with awareness the focus of the attention in the present moment with an open attitude to accept the experience. Originally stemming from Buddhist meditation traditions, this construct has received a great deal of attention in medicine, psychology and neuroscience. Globally, m...

The Openness trait is a core dimension in the Big-Five model of personality. The relationship between Openness and creativity is discussed regarding creative potential versus achievement, self-assessed versus others-assessed measures, and implications for creative self-beliefs. Underlying mechanisms that justify the relationship between Openness an...

The creativity of an advertisement campaign is one of the most relevant predictors of its success. Past research has highlighted the relevance of domain-specific experience in enhancing creativity, but the results are controversial. We explored the role of work experience, in terms of number of years spent in the advertisement domain, in various fo...

Emotional awareness (EA) has been defined as the cognitive skill devoted to the identification and description of one’s own and others’ emotional experiences, an ability that has usually been conceptualized along with the development of cognitive intelligence. Despite this, EA has also been deemed a central constituent of Emotional Intelligence (EI...

The interaction of emotions with creative cognition is one of the most intriguing topics in the creativity research. In this study, we investigated the extent to which various emotional states influence the evaluation of ideas, which is a crucial component of the creative thinking process. To this end, we used emotional (both positive and negative)...

The aim of this work was to investigate a possible relation between creativity, evaluated using a divergent thinking task, and the process of producing new and original fairy tales in children aged between 6 and 12 years. Results show that high basic skills, in terms of fluency and originality, predict the fairy tales’ degree of creativity. Thus, v...

Why are some individuals able to generate outstanding creative products despite repeated frustrating failures? This question has persisted across the centuries and deals with the nature of creativity itself. We hypothesize that the attitude characterizing how people experience and regulate their emotions (i.e., trait emotional intelligence; trait E...

For a long time, mainstream psychological research on cognitive processes has been focused on the investigation of externally-oriented cognition, namely deliberate processes generated in response to cues provided by the experimenter and associated with specific experimental paradigms. During the last two decades, there has been a surge of interest...

In reviewing the huge effort made by the psychological research in defining the main components of the creative process and of the creative potential, rarely we encounter models and theoretical frameworks considering emotional reactions as main determinants of the creative process, except of the widely and broadly defined concepts of motivation and...

The interactive relationship between the individual and the social constituents of the creative process emerges strongly during the evaluation of the outcomes of the process. In fact, the contrast with social and cultural norms depicting the originality and effectiveness of an idea brings into the creative process a high level of affective arousal,...

Sensation seeking has been often associated with at risk snow behaviors. Recent research has highlighted the need to develop a specific measure to assess sensation seeking in specific activities like skiing and snowboarding. The aim of the current study was to examine the factorial validity of the Italian version of the Contextual Sensation Seeking...

This chapter discusses the elements defining the creative thinking process within the scientific and engineering domains, in the light of the dynamic definition of creativity. Elements such as dynamism, time and space dependence, and the variables influencing the potential of the creative process in both realms are described. The contrast and co-ex...

Recent research on creative person has been enriched with a new perspective that brings together the study of brain functioning with the analysis of creative mind and creative behaviour. This chapter attempts to contribute to this effort, by reviewing the literature on brain activity and creativity, within the theoretical framework offered by the m...

The recognition of emotional facial expressions is a central aspect for an effective interpersonal communication. This study aims to investigate whether changes occur in emotion recognition ability and in the affective reactions (self-assessed by participants through valence and arousal ratings) associated with the viewing of basic facial expressio...

The present study used a latent variable modelling approach to investigate the influence of motivation on creative achievement in different environments. This was used in conjunction and interaction with other creativity-related predictors, such as openness to new experience and response originality in a divergent thinking task. Specifically, the i...

The present article describes an innovative neurofeedback training (NFT) procedure aimed at increasing creative cognition through the enhancement of specific brain activities previously associated with divergent thinking. We designed and tested two NFT protocols based on training alpha and beta EEG oscillations selectively measured over the right p...

We investigated how runners' trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) influences their performance. Participants, recruited the day before a half marathon competition, were asked to report their experience and performance in previous races and to complete a trait EI questionnaire. Through a structural equation modeling approach, we demonstrated that...

Even if mind wandering (MW) and mindfulness have traditionally been intended as separate and antithetical constructs, the roles of these 2 mental states on creative behavior were jointly explored in this article. In particular, MW was analyzed in light of a recent approach suggesting a differentiation between deliberate and spontaneous MW, whereas...

In this chapter, the teaching methodologies and pedagogical styles adopted within the “Creativity and Innovation”course, o ered at the University of Bologna in Italy are described. The main goal of the course is to give students both a theoretical foundation and a hands-on experience about meta-cognitive strategies for the control of the creative t...

To study whether and how emotion regulation (EmR) strategies are associated with adolescents’ well-being, 633 Italian adolescents completed a survey that measured, using the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ), the strategies of cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES), and their relationship with several well-being measures. F...

This article presents the structure and the composition of a newly developed multifaceted test battery for the measurement of creativity within scientific and artistic domains. By integrating existing procedures for the evaluation of creativity, the new battery promises to become a comprehensive assessment of creativity, encompassing both domain-ge...

In this article, we describe the DIMAI model for creative thinking, which incorporates the introduction of irrelevant information in order to generate new ideas. The model is applied to the fashion design creativity context, considering both internal and eternal sources of motivation, requirements, and information, including customer needs, socio-...

The aim of this paper is to show that TRIZ is not an isolated theory, but a set of tools that can be interpreted in the light of general theoretical models for creativity. In fact, the numerous tools and strategies that TRIZ formulates can be seen as specific instances of the DIMAI model for the creative thinking process, which takes into account e...

This book offers a multidisciplinary and multi-domain approach to the most recent research results in the field of creative thinking and creativity, authored by renowned international experts. By presenting contributions from different scientific and artistic domains, the book offers a comprehensive description of the state of the art on creativity...

In this introductory Chapter, we state the fundamental elements that underpin the science of creative thinking, recognizing at the same time that we are following a path towards the establishment of that science, and that many challenges are yet to be met. Considering theoretical models for the creative thinking process, we discuss the minimum numb...

In this paper we dwell upon the effect that Information Society at large, and the use of ICT technologies in particular, have on the ability of humans in generating new ideas through a creative thinking process. In order to ground our discussion onto scientific terms, we first describe a general model of the creative thinking process, the DIMAI mod...

Two studies investigated the effect of trait Emotional Intelligence (trait EI) on people’s moti- vation to help. In Study 1, we developed a new computer-based paradigm that tested partic- ipants’ motivation to help by measuring their performance on a task in which they could gain a hypothetical amount of money to help children in need. Crucially, w...

Openness has been identified as one of the personality traits with stronger association to creativity into the Five-Factor-model of personality. But what are the psychological mechanisms that relate Openness and creative performance? The present paper aims at responding to this question, exploring in particular whether the attentional processing of...

In the present work, we used the eye-tracking methodology to investigate how affective reactions influence investment decision making. In addition, we looked at individual differences in terms of people’s sensitivity to affective information and how efficiently they regulate it, that is, trait emotional intelligence. We demonstrated that people who...

The main message carried by this article is that counterpoint can be taken as a model approach for the introduction of contrasting elements, not only in musical composition but also in the generation of ideas in any domain of knowledge. We start by an interdisciplinary review about the power of opposite concepts as constituting elements in nature....

Within the scientific literature the debate on the theoretical foundation of emotional intelligence (EI) is still heated. One of the most prominent models of EI is that of trait EI or trait emotional self-efficacy, which conceptualizes EI as a constellation of emotional self-perceptions located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies. The pr...

This paper presents the structure and the composition of a newly developed multi-sided test battery for the measurement of creativity within scientific and artistic domains. By evolving and integrating some of the existing procedures for evaluating creativity, this test battery promises to become a full-rounded and comprehensive assessment of creat...

Recent literature places emotions at the center of leadership construed as a dynamic process. The present study, with an experimental pre–post design that included an experimental group formed by leaders and their employees, and a control group of employees whose leaders were not assessed, tested whether self-reported leaders’ emotional intelligenc...

The present study examined the development of recognition ability and affective reactions to emotional facial expressions in a large sample of school-aged children (n = 504, ages 8–11 years of age). Specifically, the study aimed to investigate if changes in the emotion recognition ability and the affective reactions associated with the viewing of f...

The aim of the study was to explore whether the acoustic startle response shows signs of early lateralisation. Using non-invasive startle measurements (Automated Infant Motor Movement Startle Seat and Facial Action Coding System), an analysis of response latencies and intensities on the right and left body sides was performed, investigating the pre...

Emotional awareness, the ability to identify and describe one’s own emotions, and those of other people, has been widely studied in adult samples, while only few studies have been conducted during childhood. Aim of the present study was to investigate the predictability of the main variables usually associated with the study of emotional awareness....

The aim of the present study is to offer an exploration of the predictive validity of cognitive ability and emotional intelligence (EI) on scholastic achievement in a sample of Italian school-aged children (8−11 years). In particular, cognitive ability was measured through Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices, while trait EI was measured through t...

Donations in support of a charitable cause can create a conflict between moral intuitions (e.g., fulfilling moral obligations and helping as many individuals in need as possible) and the cost entailed by following one's moral intuitions (e.g., spending money). The present paper investigates this conflict by putting people in a situation in which th...

The study (part of an ongoing research project on EI skills, founded by CARIPARO foundation) tested a new face database containing Caucasian face images. In particular, since ceiling effects are prominent in various facial emotion recognition tasks, we developed a database that contained faces expressing emotions at different intensities. Nine youn...

The present study investigated whether three methodologies currently used in animal as well as human adult startle research could be adapted for measuring the startle response in 5-month-old infants. The three methods performed: an automated and computerized recording of the infants' whole-body motor reactions (Automated Infant Motor Movement Start...

The present review analyses the most important scientific works on the pos- tural and motor functional asymmetries that characterize infants’ head orientation and handedness. The main factors that cause and influence these body asymmetries in the early development were discussed. Furthermore, a summary of the evolutionary path followed by these dif...

The aim of this review is to present the main diagnostic uses of startle from the fetal period to adolescence. In the first stages of development the startle is mainly used as a neurological marker of neurological dysfunctions. By the analysis of some clinical indices (such as appearance frequency, onset latency, simmetry, etc.) the startle can be...

The aim of this review is to present the main diagnostic uses of startle from the fetal period to adolescence. In the first stages of development the startle is mainly used as a neurological marker of neurological dysfunctions. By the analysis of some clinical indices (such as appearance frequency, onset latency, simmetry, etc.) the startle can be...

The startle reflex is an innate defensive reaction (Lang, 1995; Yeomans, Li, Scott, & Frankland, 2002), delegate to the instantaneous reaction following an unexpected and intense stimulus. The startle widely satisfies the requirements essential to be used as a research tool, since it is modified by the experience, it is easily and universally elici...

The aim of the study was to test the presence of smiling and distress, two fundamental facial expressions in early infancy, in a group of very low gestational age preterm newborns. The facial behaviour of 9 healthy preterm newborns with an average weight of 945.6 grams (DS = 132) at birth, appropriate for gestational age (AGA), videorecorded at 30...

The startle reflex is a multicomponential motor response present from birth, to short, sudden and loud stimuli. The analysis of this response has found a widespread application in developmental science, particularly in the medical and psychological fields. In the medical area, the startle response is considered and assessed as the result of a whole...