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Can You Teach Dogs To Be Creative? A Pawsitive Experiment

A few years ago we got a puppy and, like everyone else, we started house training him right away. We hung a bell on our patio door, and every time we took him out, we’d help him ring it with his paw. Within a week, he figured out that ringing the bell meant going outside, and he started ringing it himself. And about a month later, he had become a pro at this!

A few months later, a funny thing happened. He likes to sit on the couch in the living room and one day it just so happened that we were sitting on the couch and there wasn’t any space for him. So he came up with a clever idea. He rang the bell, and just as one of us got up to open the door, he ran back and jumped on the couch to claim the open spot. Problem solved!!

We all know dogs and other animals are pretty smart, and this little story shows just how creatively they can solve problems. Being able to use a concept in a new or different way is a key part of creative thinking, and it’s what tests like the Alternate Uses Task (AUT) on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking try to measure. You know, those questions like “How many ways can you use a paperclip?” that see how well people can think in different ways.

Take our dog, for example. He’s found different ways to use that bell. Early on, he figured out a more obvious extension to the original purpose — he could ring the bell not just for a potty break but anytime he wanted to go out for fresh air or chase after a bunny. Now he also rings it to express his displeasure when we don’t share our snacks. In his case, using the bell to solve a problem that doesn’t involve going outside reflects a higher level of “flexibility” in his alternate uses of the bell. 

As pet owners, we have all seen some creative ways our furry friends solve problems that point to their intelligence. But can they be trained to be creative on demand?

In one study, researchers recruited dog owners to train their dogs to be creative. First, they taught the dogs to associate a specific word “create” with doing something new. The trainers would reward any new behavior the dog did, and then encourage the dog to try even more new things by moving around and using different objects. The only rule was that the dog couldn’t repeat the same trick twice in a session. To figure out how creative the dogs were, the researchers looked at three things: if they repeated tricks, how much energy they used, and how original their tricks were. Basically, they wanted to see if the dogs could come up with lots of different ideas, switch between different types of tricks, and do stuff that was new and unexpected. 

The only required criteria in this experiment was that the dogs don’t repeat the same trick twice. Researchers found that all dogs did more different tricks than repeated ones, which proves that dogs can indeed be trained to be more creative! As a side result, the study also showed that dogs have a good memory –  they can remember what they’ve already done and come up with new ideas. 

The ability to think creatively is a trait we often associate with humans. Yet, as we’ve seen, our canine companions possess a surprising degree of ingenuity that challenges our preconceived notions of animal intelligence. Understanding how dogs learn and apply creative thinking can not only deepen our bond with our furry friends but also provide valuable insights into human cognition and behavior. 

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Evaluating Divergent Thinking

From the Greek Daemons to Galton’s historiometry, human creativity has been a subject of fascination for many centuries. Formal scientific inquiry into this space, however, is considered to have started after J.P. Guilford’s Presidential Address for the American Psychology Association in 1950 where he stressed the importance and need for research into Creativity. That led to a spate of research in different aspects of Creativity and finally some consensus on what Creativity means.

Creativity, by most definitions now, means coming up with ideas that are both novel and useful. Psychologist, Dean Keith Simonton, expressed Creativity as

Creativity = Originality x Appropriateness

In other words, if an idea is original, but it doesn’t solve any problem or isn’t appropriate in that context, then it is not creative. Similarly, if the idea is useful and appropriate but isn’t new, then again it isn’t creative.

This focus on both originality and appropriateness is what makes Creativity tricky. And what’s the most recommended way of coming up with a creative idea? Coming up with lots of ideas!

In fact, Guilford believed that divergent thinking, or the ability to generate many ideas to a solution, was an important subset of creative thinking. While he did not think that divergent thinking alone could be equated with creativity, it has become one of the more well-known aspects of creativity.  

Guilford’s model of divergent thinking has turned out to be a useful way to evaluate individual creativity, and it’s the model we are now using for teachers to evaluate student responses on MindAntix. In his model, divergent thinking includes 4 different components, explained using an Alternate Uses Task (possible uses of a leaf):

Fluency: Fluency is the ability to generate lots of ideas. If Ann comes up with 20 uses for a leaf while Ben comes up with 7, then Ann shows more fluency than Ben.

Flexibility: Flexibility is the ability to come up with different categories of ideas. Suppose Ben thought of using the leaf as a placemat and as a shelter for a bug, and Ann thought of using the leaf as a paintbrush and as a quill. Ann’s ideas fall in the same category of writing/drawing instrument whereas Ben’s ideas fall in different categories. In this case, Ben shows higher flexibility than Ann.

Originality: Originality is the ability of generating unique or unusual ideas. Using the same example as above, if no one else thought of Ben’s idea of using the leaf as a bug shelter, then that idea is original. Practically, responses given by 5% or 1% of the respondents are considered unique.

Elaboration: Elaboration refers to the ability to add details and fill in the gaps. For instance, if Ann responded with “hold the leaf from the stem and dip the tip into paint to use as a paintbrush” instead of “use as a paintbrush”, she would score higher on elaboration.  

Torrance, psychologist most famous for his work on creativity, lamented that “Children are so accustomed to the one correct or best answer that they may be reluctant to think of other possibilities or to build up a pool of ideas to be evaluated later.” Guilford’s model of divergent thinking provides a handy way to help move children move past the one-right-answer mindset.

 

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3 Improvisational Games to Boost Creativity

If you were to pick a team to design your next product, who would you choose – a team of professional product designers or a group of improvisational comedians? If you took the first option, you might want to think again. Barry Kudrowitz, an assistant professor and director of product design at University of Minnesota, conducted this exact experiment as part of his Ph.D. thesis at MIT.

In his study of 84 participants, he found that improvisational comedians produce 20% more product ideas and 25% more creative ideas than professional product designers. He also found that improvisational training can increase idea output for subsequent product brainstorming. While this sounds improbable, it makes sense when you consider that both creative thinking and improvisation rely on making non-obvious connections between unrelated concepts. As Barry explains, “The more I looked at humor studies, I found a lot more connections between what makes something funny and what makes something innovative.”

One of the fundamental tenets of improvisation is the concept of “Yes-And”, or the idea that you never contradict your partner and instead build on what he or she just said. For example, suppose someone says, “It’s so cold in here,” and you respond with “Seems fine to me…”, the scene starts to stall. If instead you said, “I told you it wasn’t a good idea to hide in the refrigerator,” you could start to build an interesting scene. At a fundamental level, “Yes-And” is all about forcing yourself to find interesting connections, or building associative thinking, a core creativity technique.

In our creativity and invention classes, we routinely use improvisational games as warm-up exercises to get creative juices flowing. Here are three of our favorite improv games that are not only fun, but they also build specific creative thinking patterns.

What Are You Doing?

This is an improv game that that engages both the critical and creative sides of the brain and builds associative thinking. Two people are invited onstage and given two letters of the alphabet (e.g. A and B). One player asks the other, “What are you doing?” and other player answers with an action phrase like “Arguing Baskets” and proceeds to act it out no matter how silly it appears. Then the players trade places and repeat the game.

Minion Game

This game is based on the Alternate Uses Task and is played in small groups. The group is given a simple object (like a pencil) and everyone in the group pretends to be minions who have just come across this human object. They take turns interpreting how that object might be used by humans. The trick is to not suggest a way that it is already used, like in this case for writing but for something completely different like using it as chopsticks.

Fortunately/Unfortunately

This is a fun game that builds ability to reverse direction and view things from a different perspective. This game can be played by the whole group at the same time, and everyone takes turns telling the good news and bad news in a story. The first person is given a prompt (e.g “I took out the assignment from my bag”) and he has to say a sentence that begins with the word “Fortunately” (e.g. “Fortunately, it was a very simple assignment”). The next person has to come up with the bad news and start the sentence with “Unfortunately” (e.g. “Unfortunately, it had been due the last week”) and so on.

So the next time you are running out of steam in a brainstorming session, take a break and try an improvisation game or two!