Measuring Divergent Thinking in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Popular divergent thinking tasks, such as the Alternate Uses tasks, are widely familiar and frequently used but somewhat outdated, leave little freedom for imagination, provide limited opportunity for high creativity, and lack ecological validity. Therefore, we developed novel tasks using immersive virtual reality (VR) to assess figural (drawing of lamps) and verbal divergent thinking (virtual journeys to Machu Picchu and Time Square). VR tasks were related to traditional divergent thinking tasks and also personality measures. We used a small sample size Bayesian structural equation modeling in a sample of N = 38 participants, including informed priors. The results show factorial coherence of the VR divergent thinking tasks and some substantial relations with divergent thinking tests and smaller relations with openness to experience. These findings suggest that VR has substantial promise as a test medium for assessing divergent thinking. We discuss the findings in light of some limitations and ecological validity.