Transforming the Elderly‘s Disadvantage into Advantage in Creativity Activities

Abstract

Due to the crystal intelligence accumulated in life, the elderly have their unique advantages in creativity. However, in creativity activities, the elderly often lack self-confidence and motivation to participate because they are often perceived as lacking creativity, this phenomenon related to the degree of intersection of crystal intelligence between the evaluators involved in creativity evaluation and the older creators involved in creativity activities. The cross degree of crystal intelligence is closely related to the age difference. It is hypothesized that the lower the age intersection between the evaluator and the older respondent on Stenberg's writing domain creativity test, the higher the score of "originality" from the evaluators for the older respondent on the test. The creativity test in the writing domain proposed by Robert J. Sternberg is selected as the tool for this experiment. First, 6 elderly people aged 65 years and above with similar life experiences were recruited to take the creativity test in the domain of writing. Then 30 evaluators were recruited to evaluate the writing of 6 elderly people. The evaluators were divided into three equal groups, The first group of evaluators were 14 years old, the second group of evaluators were 31 years old, and the third group of evaluators were 48 years old. The lower the age intersection between the evaluator and the older respondent on Stenberg's writing domain creativity test, the higher the evaluation of "originality" from the evaluator for the older respondent on the test. The results of this study can provide a corresponding reference for constructing a creativity activity for the elderly, allowing the elderly to get more positive evaluation in creativity activities.

Keywords: aging, creativity of the elderly, crystal intelligence, creative activities

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1001673