ABSTRACT
The emphasis in the literature and in research pointed the other way. There was an abundance of conceptual and empirical work on problem solving—literally a dozen theoretical books and hundreds of experimental articles—but virtually no systematic work on problem finding, the posing and formulating of problems. A problem produces tensions driving the organism to think, and it ceases to think when the problem is resolved. Learning, thinking, problem solving, curiosity may indeed seem means for reducing certain drives, decreasing certain tensions; but that is not the only way to see them, and perhaps not even the primary way. The findings for the entire population of students from which the comparison groups were drawn showed that the measures of divergent thinking and intelligence were positively related but that the correlations were generally low. Problem finding appears to be a crucial component of creativity, and what is more, it can be observed and assessed with satisfactory reliability and validity.
