Relaxation as the form of incubation in the creative thinking process

Abstract

Wallas (1926) used the term 'incubation' to describe that stage of the creative thinking process during which a problem is set aside and no conscious thought is given to it. He proposed two forms of incubation: conscious mental work on another problem and relaxation. Experimental studies on incubation have tended to focus on the former. Yet some writers, who have linked hemispheric theory to the Wallas conception of incubation (e.g. Gowan, 1981; Rubenzer, 1981), have posited that relaxation is an essential ingredient of incubation. The focus of this study was on relaxation as the form of incubation, with guided imagery as the mode relaxation. The research hypotheses were expressed as null hypotheses thus: 1. There will be no significant differences, in terms of the scoring scale variables of fluency, flexibility and originality on a Just Suppose activity, between the creative responses of subjects under a guided imagery incubation and the creative responses of subjects under a continuous work condition. 2. There will be no significant differences, in terms of the scoring scale variables of fluency, flexibility and originality on a Just Suppose activity, between the creative responses of right hemisphere dominant thinkers and the creative responses of other types of thinkers under the guided imagery incubation condition. The results of an analysis of variance on the experimental data failed to reject the hypotheses at the .05 level. There were a number of factors in the research design that could explain the results. Therefore, it was deemed premature to conclude that relaxation as the form of incubation, in the mode of guided imagery, is ineffective. Possible explanations for the failure to reject the null hypotheses are discussed and a number of recommendations are made for further research on incubation.