Begin at the Beginning: Reflections on the Career of Arthur Cropley

Abstract

Arthur Cropley's academic career began in the early 1960s and, more than 50 years later, shows few signs of abating. Over this lengthy period, he has made important contributions not only to creativity research, but to a range of related areas of psychology. Arthur Cropley has also been an influential figure in the careers of several generations of graduate students and academics, and I recount his influence on my own journey through postgraduate study. His long and productive career should serve as an inspiration to all academics, both in the field of creativity and in the discipline of psychology more broadly. The results of a previously unpublished study of the predictive validity of a battery of divergent and convergent thinking tests derived from a follow up of a grade school cohort (n = 151) initially studied by Arthur were reported. Using multiple regression analysis the relative efficiency of the two sets of predictors were examined in relation to both academic and non academic criteria obtained 6 years later. The general finding was that while both the divergent and convergent measures accounted for significant variance of these criteria, it depended on the ordering of which set was considered first, with the second set usually not accounting for variance of these criteria already accounted for by the first.