How Creative Ideas Take Shape

TL;DR

This paper proposes that creative idea formation involves refining a potentiality state through analogy, supported by experimental evidence favoring honing theory over structure mapping theory.

Contribution

It introduces and empirically tests honing theory, suggesting that analogy making involves eliminating non-correspondences rather than direct mapping.

Findings

Responses supported honing theory predictions over structure mapping theory.

Participants' interrupted responses reflected potentiality-based reasoning.

Judges categorized responses aligning with honing theory.

Abstract

According to the honing theory of creativity, creative thought works not on individually considered, discrete, predefined representations but on a contextually-elicited amalgam of items which exist in a state of potentiality and may not be readily separable. This leads to the prediction that analogy making proceeds not by mapping correspondences from candidate sources to target, as predicted by the structure mapping theory of analogy, but by weeding out non-correspondences, thereby whittling away at potentiality. Participants were given an analogy problem, interrupted before they had time to solve it, and asked to write down what they had by way of a solution. Na\"ive judges categorized responses as significantly more supportive of the predictions of honing theory than those of structure mapping.