Subjects generating pictograms of abstract verbal concepts showed a preference for using concrete rather than abstract representations, even for very low concreteness values. As level of concreteness decreased, a greater variety of ideas was produced in the pictograms, but this was accompanied by a decrease in stereotype strength. There was a significant correlation between the judges' rankings of the best representation of the meaning of a concept and its stereotype strength. However, in about one fifth of these judgements, a unique idea (i.e. produced by only one subject) received the highest ranking, suggesting that concrete representation of an abstract concept may in some cases be related to creativity.
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Sheila Jones (1983) studied this question.
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