How Dogmatic Beliefs Harm Creativity and Higher-level Thinking

This collection of 18 essays by education, international studies, critical thinking, history, sociology, and psychology scholars from the US, Canada, and Germany explores the nature of dogmatic thinking from different perspectives and how it affects high-level creativity and thinking. They consider how dogmatism can distort or suppress scholarly progress in academic disciplines and affect the thinking of military leaders and policy makers; its relationship to genocide; its effect on ethical behavior; its connections to the authoritarian mindset; its effects on the ideological, cultural, and socioeconomic dimensions of societies; specific influences on education, including the No Child Left Behind Act, the influence of authoritarianism in politics, and ecological intelligence; implications for creative intelligence, with discussion of creativity within disciplines, a parsimonious theory of creativity, the lack of creativity in the college admissions process, the problems with thinking too broadly, aspects that affect creativity, traits common to creative individuals, and international differences; and alternative models of schooling. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Don Ambrose is professor of graduate education at Rider University, editor of the Roeper Review, and past chair of the Conceptual Foundations Division of the National Association for Gifted Children.

Robert J. Sternberg is President and Professor of Psychology and Education of the University of Wyoming, and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He is a former president of the American Psychological Association and the Eastern Psychological Association.