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Creativity is a
phenomenon
A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...
whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an
idea
In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being ...
, a
scientific theory
A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that has been repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluatio ...
, a
musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called ...
, or a
joke
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laughter, laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with ...
) or a physical object (such as an
invention
An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an i ...
, a printed
literary work
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
, or a
painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...
).
Scholarly interest in creativity is found in a number of disciplines, primarily
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
,
business studies
Business studies, often simply called business, is a field of study that deals with the principles of business, management, and economics. It combines elements of accountancy, finance, marketing, organizational studies, human resource management, a ...
, and
cognitive science. However, it can also be found in
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
, the
humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...
(
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
,
the arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...
) and
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
, social sciences (
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
,
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
,
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
),
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
,
technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
and
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
. These disciplines cover the relations between creativity and general
intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
, personality type, mental and neural processes,
mental health
Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing cognition, perception, and behavior. It likewise determines how an individual handles stress, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making. Mental health ...
,
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
; the potential for fostering creativity through education, training,
leadership
Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets view ...
and organizational practices; the factors that determine how creativity is evaluated and perceived; the fostering of creativity for national economic benefit; and the application of creative resources to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning.
Etymology
The English word ''creativity'' comes from the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
term ''creare,'' "to create, make": its
derivational suffixes also come from Latin. The word "create" appeared in English as early as the 14th century, notably in Chaucer (in
The Parson's Tale
"The Parson's Tale" seems, from the evidence of its prologue, to have been intended as the final tale of Geoffrey Chaucer's poetic cycle ''The Canterbury Tales''. The "tale", which is the longest of all the surviving contributions by Chaucer's p ...
), to indicate divine creation.
However, its modern meaning as an act of human creation did not emerge until after
the Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
.
Definition
In a summary of scientific research into creativity, Michael Mumford suggested: "Over the course of the last decade, however, we seem to have reached a general agreement that creativity involves the production of
novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
, useful products" (Mumford, 2003, p. 110), or, in
Robert Sternberg
Robert J. Sternberg (born December 8, 1949) is an American psychologist and psychometrician. He is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University.
Sternberg has a BA from Yale University and a PhD from Stanford University, under advisor ...
's words, the production of "something original and worthwhile".
Authors have diverged dramatically in their precise definitions beyond these general commonalities: Peter Meusburger estimates that over a hundred different definitions can be found in the literature, typically elaborating on the context (field, organisation, environment etc.) which determines the originality and/or appropriateness of the created object, and the processes through which it came about.
As an illustration, one definition given by
Dr. E. Paul Torrance in the context of assessing an individual's creative ability, described it as "a process of becoming sensitive to problems, deficiencies, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, and so on; identifying the difficulty; searching for solutions, making guesses, or formulating hypotheses about the deficiencies: testing and retesting these hypotheses and possibly modifying and retesting them; and finally communicating the results."
Creativity in general is usually distinguished from
innovation
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity ...
in particular, where the stress is on implementation. For example,
Teresa Amabile
Teresa M. Amabile (born June 15, 1950) is an American academic who is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School.
Biography
Amabile is primarily known for her res ...
and Pratt (2016) define creativity as production of novel and useful ideas and innovation as implementation of creative ideas, while the
OECD
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
and
Eurostat
Eurostat ('European Statistical Office'; DG ESTAT) is a Directorate-General of the European Commission located in the Kirchberg, Luxembourg, Kirchberg quarter of Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. Eurostat's main responsibilities are to provide statis ...
state that "Innovation is more than a new idea or an invention. An innovation requires implementation, either by being put into active use or by being made available for use by other parties, firms, individuals or organisations."
There is also an emotional creativity which is described as a pattern of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience.
Aspects
Theories of creativity (particularly investigation of why some people are more creative than others) have focused on a variety of aspects. The dominant factors are usually identified as "the four Ps" – process, product, person, and place/press (according to
Mel Rhodes). A focus on ''process'' is shown in cognitive approaches that try to describe thought mechanisms and techniques for creative thinking. Theories invoking divergent rather than convergent thinking (such as
Guilford
Guildford is a town in Surrey, England. It gives its name to the Borough of Guildford, the Diocese of Guildford and the Parliamentary constituency of Guildford.
Guildford, Guilford, or Gildford may also refer to:
Places
Australia
* Guildfor ...
), or those describing the staging of the creative process (such as
Wallas) are primarily theories of creative process. A focus on creative ''product'' usually appears in attempts to measure creativity (psychometrics, see below) and in creative ideas framed as successful
memes
A meme ( ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural i ...
.
The psychometric approach to creativity reveals that it also involves the ability to produce more.
A focus on the nature of the creative ''person'' considers more general intellectual habits, such as openness, levels of
ideation, autonomy, expertise, exploratory behavior, and so on. A focus on ''place'' (sometimes called ''press'') considers the circumstances in which creativity flourishes, such as degrees of autonomy, access to resources, and the nature of gatekeepers. Creative lifestyles are characterized by nonconforming attitudes and behaviors as well as flexibility.
Conceptual history
Ancient
Most ancient cultures, including thinkers of
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...
,
Ancient China
The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), during the reign of king Wu Ding. Ancient historical texts such as the '' Book of Documents'' (early chapte ...
, and
Ancient India
According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. Quote: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by m ...
,
lacked the concept of creativity, seeing art as a form of discovery and not creation. The
ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cultu ...
had no terms corresponding to "to create" or "creator" except for the expression "" ("to make"), which only applied to (poetry) and to the (poet, or "maker") who made it.
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
did not believe in art as a form of creation. Asked in ''
The Republic'', "Will we say, of a painter, that he makes something?", he answers, "Certainly not, he merely
imitates."
It is commonly argued that the notion of "creativity" originated in
Western culture
Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''.
image:Plato Pio-Cle ...
s through
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
, as a matter of
divine inspiration
Divine inspiration is the concept of a supernatural force, typically a deity, causing a person or people to experience a creative desire. It has been a commonly reported aspect of many religions, for thousands of years. Divine inspiration is ofte ...
.
According to the historian
Daniel J. Boorstin
Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 – February 28, 2004) was an American historian at the University of Chicago who wrote on many topics in American and world history. He was appointed the twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress in ...
, "the early Western conception of creativity was the
Biblical story of creation given in the ''
Genesis
Genesis may refer to:
Bible
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
''."
However, this is not creativity in the modern sense, which did not arise until the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, creativity was the sole province of God; humans were not considered to have the ability to create something new except as an expression of God's work.
[; cf. ]Michel Weber
Michel Weber (born 1963) is a Belgian philosopher. He is best known as an interpreter and advocate of the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and has come to prominence as the architect and organizer of an overlapping array of international sc ...
,
Creativity, Efficacy and Vision: Ethics and Psychology in an Open Universe
" in Michel Weber and Pierfrancesco Basile (eds.), ''Subjectivity, Process, and Rationality'', Frankfurt/Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought XIV, 2006, pp. 263-281. A concept similar to that of Christianity existed in Greek culture. For instance,
Muse
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...
s were seen as mediating inspiration from the Gods.
Romans and Greeks invoked the concept of an external creative "
daemon
Daimon or Daemon (Ancient Greek: , "god", "godlike", "power", "fate") originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and of later Hellenistic religion and philosophy.
The word ...
" (Greek) or "
genius
Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for future works, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabiliti ...
" (Latin), linked to the sacred or the divine. However, none of these views are similar to the modern concept of creativity, and the individual was not seen as the cause of creation until the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
.
Renaissance
It was during the Renaissance that creativity was first seen, not as a conduit for the divine, but from the abilities of "
great men".
The rejection of creativity in favor of discovery and the belief that individual creation was a conduit of the divine would dominate the West probably until the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
and even later.
The development of the modern concept of creativity began in the Renaissance, when creation began to be perceived as having originated from the abilities of the individual and not God. This could be attributed to the leading intellectual movement of the time, aptly named
humanism
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "humani ...
, which developed an intensely human-centric outlook on the world, valuing the intellect and achievement of the individual. From this philosophy arose the
Renaissance man
A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific pro ...
(or polymath), an individual who embodies the principals of humanism in their ceaseless courtship with knowledge and creation. One of the most well-known and immensely accomplished examples is
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
.
Enlightenment and thereafter
However, the shift from divine inspiration to the abilities of the individual was gradual and would not become immediately apparent until the Enlightenment.
By the 18th century and the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, mention of creativity (notably in
aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
), linked with the concept of
imagination
Imagination is the production or simulation of novel objects, sensations, and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses. Stefan Szczelkun characterises it as the forming of experiences in one's mind, which can be re-creations ...
, became more frequent.
In the writing of
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influent ...
, imagination became a key element of human cognition;
William Duff was one of the first to identify imagination as a quality of
genius
Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for future works, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabiliti ...
, typifying the separation being made between talent (productive, but breaking no new ground) and genius.
As a direct and independent topic of study, creativity effectively received no attention until the 19th century.
Runco and Albert argue that creativity as the subject of proper study began seriously to emerge in the late 19th century with the increased interest in individual differences inspired by the arrival of
Darwinism
Darwinism is a scientific theory, theory of Biology, biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of smal ...
. In particular, they refer to the work of
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto- ...
, who through his
eugenicist
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
outlook took a keen interest in the heritability of intelligence, with creativity taken as an aspect of genius.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading mathematicians and scientists such as
Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association, ...
(1896) and
Henri Poincaré
Jules Henri Poincaré ( S: stress final syllable ; 29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The ...
(1908) began to reflect on and publicly discuss their creative processes.
Modern
The insights of Poincaré and von Helmholtz were built on in early accounts of the creative process by pioneering theorists such as
Graham Wallas
Graham Wallas (31 May 1858 – 9 August 1932) was an English socialist, social psychologist, educationalist, a leader of the Fabian Society and a co-founder of the London School of Economics.
Biography
Born in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, Walla ...
and
Max Wertheimer
Max Wertheimer (April 15, 1880 – October 12, 1943) was an Austro-Hungarian psychologist who was one of the three founders of Gestalt psychology, along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler. He is known for his book, ''Productive Thinking'', and f ...
. In his work ''Art of Thought'', published in 1926, Wallas presented one of the first models of the creative process. In the Wallas stage model, creative insights and illuminations may be explained by a process consisting of five stages:
:(i) ''preparation'' (preparatory work on a problem that focuses the individual's mind on the problem and explores the problem's dimensions),
:(ii) ''
incubation'' (where the problem is internalized into the unconscious mind and nothing appears externally to be happening),
:(iii) ''intimation'' (the creative person gets a "feeling" that a solution is on its way),
:(iv) ''illumination'' or insight (where the creative idea bursts forth from its
preconscious
In psychoanalysis, preconscious is the loci preceding consciousness. Thoughts are preconscious when they are unconscious at a particular moment, but are not repressed. Therefore, preconscious thoughts are available for recall and easily 'capable ...
processing into conscious awareness);
:(v) ''verification'' (where the idea is consciously verified, elaborated, and then applied).
Wallas' model is often treated as four stages, with "intimation" seen as a sub-stage.
Wallas considered creativity to be a legacy of the
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
ary process, which allowed humans to quickly adapt to rapidly changing environments. Simonton
provides an updated perspective on this view in his book, ''Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity''.
In 1927,
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found applicat ...
gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, later published as ''
Process and Reality
''Process and Reality'' is a book by Alfred North Whitehead, in which the author propounds a philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy. The book, published in 1929, is a revision of the Gifford Lectures he gave in 1927–28.
Whit ...
.'' He is credited with having coined the term "creativity" to serve as the ultimate category of his metaphysical scheme: "Whitehead actually coined the term – our term, still the preferred currency of exchange among literature, science, and the arts... a term that quickly became so popular, so omnipresent, that its invention within living memory, and by Alfred North Whitehead of all people, quickly became occluded".
Although psychometric studies of creativity had been conducted by The London School of Psychology as early as 1927 with the work of H. L. Hargreaves into the Faculty of Imagination, the formal
psychometric
Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally refers to specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and ...
measurement of creativity, from the standpoint of orthodox
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
literature, is usually considered to have begun with
J. P. Guilford
Joy Paul Guilford (March 7, 1897 – November 26, 1987) was an American psychologist best remembered for his psychometric study of human intelligence, including the distinction between convergent and divergent production.
Developing the views ...
's address to the
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
in 1950.
The address helped to popularize the study of creativity and to focus attention on scientific approaches to conceptualizing creativity. Statistical analyses led to the recognition of creativity (as measured) as a separate aspect of human cognition to
IQ-type intelligence, into which it had previously been subsumed. Guilford's work suggested that above a threshold level of IQ, the relationship between creativity and classically measured intelligence broke down.
"Four C" model
James C. Kaufman
James C. Kaufman is an American psychologist known for his research on creativity. He is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. Previously, he taught at the California State University, Sa ...
and Beghetto introduced a "four C" model of creativity; ''mini-c'' ("transformative learning" involving "personally meaningful interpretations of experiences, actions, and insights"), ''little-c'' (everyday problem solving and creative expression), ''Pro-C'' (exhibited by people who are professionally or vocationally creative though not necessarily eminent) and ''Big-C'' (creativity considered great in the given field). This model was intended to help accommodate models and theories of creativity that stressed competence as an essential component and the historical transformation of a creative domain as the highest mark of creativity. It also, the authors argued, made a useful framework for analyzing creative processes in individuals.
The contrast of terms "Big C" and "Little c" has been widely used. Kozbelt, Beghetto and Runco use a little-c/Big-C model to review major theories of creativity.
Margaret Boden
Margaret Ann Boden (born 26 November 1936) is a Research Professor of Cognitive Science in the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex, where her work embraces the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and c ...
distinguishes between h-creativity (historical) and p-creativity (personal).
Robinson
and Anna Craft
have focused on creativity in a general population, particularly with respect to education. Craft makes a similar distinction between "high" and "little c" creativity
and cites
Ken Robinson as referring to "high" and "democratic" creativity.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihalyi (, hu, Csíkszentmihályi Mihály Róbert, ; 29 September 1934 – 20 October 2021) was a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognized and named the psychological concept of " flow", a highly focused mental ...
has defined creativity in terms of those individuals judged to have made significant creative, perhaps domain-changing contributions. Simonton has analysed the career trajectories of eminent creative people in order to map patterns and predictors of creative productivity.
Process theories
There has been much empirical study in
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
cognitive science of the processes through which creativity occurs. Interpretation of the results of these studies has led to several possible explanations of the sources and methods of creativity.
Incubation
Incubation is a temporary break from
creative problem solving
Creative problem-solving (CPS) is the mental process of searching for an original and previously unknown solution to a problem. To qualify, the solution must be novel and reached independently. The creative problem-solving process was originally de ...
that can result in insight.
There has been some empirical research looking at whether, as the concept of "incubation" in
Wallas' model implies, a period of interruption or rest from a problem may aid creative problem-solving. Early work proposed that creative solutions to problems arise mysteriously from the unconscious mind while the conscious mind is occupied on other tasks.
["]
This hypothesis is discussed in
Csikszentmihalyi's five-phase model of the creative process which describes incubation as a time that your unconscious takes over. This was supposed to allow for unique connections to be made without our consciousness trying to make logical order out of the problem.
Ward
lists various hypotheses that have been advanced to explain why incubation may aid creative problem-solving, and notes how some
empirical evidence
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
is consistent with a different hypothesis: Incubation aids creative problem in that it enables "forgetting" of misleading clues. Absence of incubation may lead the problem solver to become
fixated on inappropriate strategies of solving the problem.
Convergent and divergent thinking
J. P. Guilford
Joy Paul Guilford (March 7, 1897 – November 26, 1987) was an American psychologist best remembered for his psychometric study of human intelligence, including the distinction between convergent and divergent production.
Developing the views ...
drew a distinction between convergent and divergent production (commonly renamed
convergent and
divergent thinking
Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, "non-linear" manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent co ...
). Convergent thinking involves aiming for a single, correct solution to a problem, whereas divergent thinking involves creative generation of multiple answers to a set problem. Divergent thinking is sometimes used as a synonym for creativity in psychology literature or is considered the necessary precursor to creativity. Other researchers have occasionally used the terms ''flexible'' thinking or
fluid intelligence
The concepts of fluid intelligence (''g''f) and crystallized intelligence (''g''c) were introduced in 1963 by the psychologist Raymond Cattell. According to Cattell's psychometrically-based theory, general intelligence (''g'') is subdivided into ' ...
, which are roughly similar to (but not synonymous with) creativity.
Creative cognition approach
In 1992, Finke et al. proposed the "Geneplore" model, in which creativity takes place in two phases: a generative phase, where an individual constructs mental representations called "preinventive" structures, and an exploratory phase where those structures are used to come up with creative ideas. Some evidence shows that when people use their imagination to develop new ideas, those ideas are heavily structured in predictable ways by the properties of existing categories and concepts.
[Ward, T.B. (1995). What's old about new ideas. In S. M. Smith, T. B. Ward & R. A. & Finke (Eds.) ''The creative cognition approach'', 157–178, London: MIT Press.] Weisberg
argued, by contrast, that creativity only involves ordinary cognitive processes yielding extraordinary results.
The Explicit–Implicit Interaction (EII) theory
Helie and Sun
more recently proposed a unified framework for understanding
creativity in problem solving, namely the Explicit–Implicit Interaction (EII) theory of creativity. This new theory constitutes an attempt at providing a more unified explanation of relevant phenomena (in part by reinterpreting/integrating various fragmentary existing theories of
incubation and
insight
Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings:
*a piece of information
*the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intu ...
).
The EII theory relies mainly on five basic principles, namely:
# The co-existence of and the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge;
# The simultaneous involvement of implicit and explicit processes in most tasks;
# The redundant representation of explicit and implicit knowledge;
# The integration of the results of explicit and implicit processing;
# The iterative (and possibly bidirectional) processing.
A computational implementation of the theory was developed based on the
CLARION cognitive architecture and used to simulate relevant human data. This work represents an initial step in the development of process-based theories of creativity encompassing incubation, insight, and various other related phenomena.
Conceptual blending
In ''
The Act of Creation
''The Act of Creation'' is a 1964 book by Arthur Koestler. It is a study of the processes of discovery, invention, imagination and creativity in humour, science, and the arts. It lays out Koestler's attempt to develop an elaborate general theory ...
'',
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...
introduced the concept of ''bisociation'' – that creativity arises as a result of the intersection of two quite different frames of reference.
This idea was later developed into conceptual blending. In the 1990s, various approaches in cognitive science that dealt with
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...
,
analogy
Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject ( ...
, and
structure mapping have been converging, and a new integrative approach to the study of creativity in science, art and humor has emerged under the label
conceptual blending In cognitive linguistics, conceptual blending, also called conceptual integration or view application, is a theory of cognition developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. According to this theory, elements and vital relations from diverse scen ...
.
Honing theory
Honing theory, developed principally by psychologist
Liane Gabora Liane Gabora is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan. She is known for her theory of the "Origin of the modern mind through conceptual closure," which built on her earlier work on "Autocatalytic closure in a co ...
, posits that creativity arises due to the self-organizing, self-mending nature of a worldview. The creative process is a way in which the individual hones (and re-hones) an integrated worldview. Honing theory places emphasis not only on the externally visible creative outcome but also the internal cognitive restructuring and repair of the worldview brought about by the creative process. When faced with a creatively demanding task, there is an interaction between the conception of the task and the worldview. The conception of the task changes through interaction with the worldview, and the worldview changes through interaction with the task. This interaction is reiterated until the task is complete, at which point not only is the task conceived of differently, but the worldview is subtly or drastically transformed as it follows the natural tendency of a worldview to attempt to resolve dissonance and seek internal consistency amongst its components, whether they be ideas, attitudes, or bits of knowledge.
A central feature of honing theory is the notion of a potentiality state. Honing theory posits that creative thought proceeds not by searching through and randomly 'mutating' predefined possibilities, but by drawing upon associations that exist due to overlap in the distributed neural cell assemblies that participate in the encoding of experiences in memory. Midway through the creative process one may have made associations between the current task and previous experiences, but not yet disambiguated which aspects of those previous experiences are relevant to the current task. Thus the creative idea may feel 'half-baked'. It is at that point that it can be said to be in a potentiality state, because how it will actualize depends on the different internally or externally generated contexts it interacts with.
Honing theory is held to explain certain phenomena not dealt with by other theories of creativity – for example, how different works by the same creator are observed in studies to exhibit a recognizable style or 'voice', even in different creative outlets. This is not predicted by theories of creativity that emphasize chance processes or the accumulation of expertise, but it is predicted by honing theory, according to which personal style reflects the creator's uniquely structured worldview. Another example is in the environmental stimulus for creativity. Creativity is commonly considered to be fostered by a supportive, nurturing, trustworthy environment conducive to self-actualization. However, research shows that creativity is also associated with childhood adversity, which would stimulate honing.
Everyday imaginative thought
In everyday thought, people often spontaneously imagine alternatives to reality when they think "if only...". Their
counterfactual thinking
Counterfactual thinking is a concept in psychology that involves the human tendency to create possible alternatives to life events that have already occurred; something that is contrary to what actually happened. Counterfactual thinking is, as it ...
is viewed as an example of everyday creative processes. It has been proposed that the creation of counterfactual alternatives to reality depends on similar cognitive processes to rational thought.
Dialectical theory of creativity
The term "dialectical theory of creativity" dates back to psychoanalyst Daniel Dervin and was later developed into an interdisciplinary theory. The dialectical theory of creativity starts with the antique concept that creativity takes place in an interplay between order and chaos. Similar ideas can be found in neurosciences and psychology. Neurobiologically, it can be shown that the creative process takes place in a dynamic interplay between coherence and incoherence that leads to new and usable neuronal networks. Psychology shows how the dialectics of convergent and focused thinking with divergent and associative thinking leads to new ideas and products. Also, creative personality traits like the 'Big Five' seem to be dialectically intertwined in the creative process: emotional instability vs. stability, extraversion vs. introversion, openness vs. reserve, agreeableness vs. antagonism, and disinhibition vs. constraint. The dialectical theory of creativity applies also to counseling and psychotherapy.
Neuroeconomic framework for creative cognition
Lin and Vartanian developed a framework that provides an integrative neurobiological description of creative cognition.
This interdisciplinary framework integrates theoretical principles and empirical results from
neuroeconomics
Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to explain human decision-making, the ability to process multiple alternatives and to follow through on a plan of action. It studies how economic behavior can shape our understanding of the ...
,
reinforcement learning
Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine ...
,
cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental proces ...
, and
neurotransmission
Neurotransmission (Latin: ''transmissio'' "passage, crossing" from ''transmittere'' "send, let through") is the process by which signaling molecules called neurotransmitters are released by the axon terminal of a neuron (the presynaptic neuron), ...
research on the
locus coeruleus
The locus coeruleus () (LC), also spelled locus caeruleus or locus ceruleus, is a nucleus in the pons of the brainstem involved with physiological responses to stress and panic. It is a part of the reticular activating system.
The locus coerule ...
system. It describes how
decision-making
In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the Cognition, cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be ...
processes studied by neuroeconomists as well as activity in the locus coeruleus system underlie creative cognition and the
large-scale brain network
Large-scale brain networks (also known as intrinsic brain networks) are collections of widespread brain regions showing functional connectivity by statistical analysis of the fMRI BOLD signal or other recording methods such as EEG, PET and MEG. An ...
dynamics associated with creativity. It suggests that creativity is an
optimization
Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...
and
utility-maximization problem that requires individuals to determine the optimal way to exploit and explore ideas (
multi-armed bandit problem
In probability theory and machine learning, the multi-armed bandit problem (sometimes called the ''K''- or ''N''-armed bandit problem) is a problem in which a fixed limited set of resources must be allocated between competing (alternative) choices ...
). This utility maximization process is thought to be mediated by the locus coeruleus system and this creativity framework describes how
tonic and phasic locus coerulues activity work in conjunction to facilitate the exploiting and exploring of creative ideas. This framework not only explains previous empirical results but also makes novel and falsifiable predictions at different levels of analysis (ranging from neurobiological to cognitive and personality differences).
Behaviorism theory of creativity
Skinner attributed creativity to accidental behaviors that are reinforced by the environment. Spontaneous behaviors done by living creatures reflect past learned behavior. In Karen Pryor's book ''Don't Shoot the Dog'' she refers to how she reinforced a dolphin to display novel behaviors. This is what one can attribute to both those who are creative and those who appreciate creativity. A behaviorist may say that prior learning caused novel behaviors to be reinforced many times over and the individual has been shaped to produce increasingly novel behaviors. A creative person, according to this definition, would be someone who has been reinforced more often for novel behaviors than others. Behaviorists would also suggest that anyone can be creative, they just need to be reinforced to learn to produce novel behaviors.
Personal assessment
Psychometric approaches
J. P. Guilford
Joy Paul Guilford (March 7, 1897 – November 26, 1987) was an American psychologist best remembered for his psychometric study of human intelligence, including the distinction between convergent and divergent production.
Developing the views ...
's group,
which pioneered the modern
psychometric
Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally refers to specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and ...
study of creativity, constructed several performance-based tests to measure creativity in 1967:
* Plot Titles, where participants are given the plot of a story and asked to write original titles.
* Quick Responses is a word-association test scored for uncommonness.
* Figure Concepts, where participants were given simple drawings of objects and individuals and asked to find qualities or features that are common by two or more drawings; these were scored for uncommonness.
* Unusual Uses is finding unusual uses for common everyday objects such as bricks.
* Remote Associations, where participants are asked to find a word between two given words (e.g. Hand _____ Call)
* Remote Consequences, where participants are asked to generate a list of consequences of unexpected events (e.g. loss of gravity)
Originally, Guilford was trying to create a model for intellect as a whole, but in doing so also created a model for creativity. Guilford made an important assumption for creative research: creativity is not one abstract concept. The idea that creativity is a category rather than one single concept opened up the ability for other researchers to look at creativity with a whole new perspective.
Additionally, Guilford hypothesized one of the first models for the components of creativity. He explained that creativity was a result of having:
# Sensitivity to problems, or the ability to recognize problems;
# Fluency, which encompasses
#: a. Ideational fluency, or the ability rapidly to produce a variety of ideas that fulfill stated requirements;
#: b. Associational fluency, or the ability to generate a list of words, each of which is associated with a given word;
#: c. Expressional fluency, or the ability to organize words into larger units, such as phrases, sentences, and paragraphs;
# Flexibility, which encompasses
#: a. Spontaneous flexibility, or the ability to demonstrate flexibility;
#: b. Adaptive flexibility, or the ability to produce responses that are novel and high in quality.
This represents the base model by which several researchers would take and alter to produce their new theories of creativity years later.
Building on Guilford's work, tests were developed, sometimes called ''
Divergent Thinking
Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, "non-linear" manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent co ...
(DT)'' tests have been both supported and criticized.
For example,
Torrance developed the
Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking
Torrance, also spelled Torrence, is an originally Scottish surname. Torrance may also refer to:
Places
*Torrance, California, United States
*Torrance, East Dunbartonshire, Scotland
**Torrance railway station
* Torrance, Ontario, Canada
*Torrance, ...
in 1966. They involved task of divergent thinking and other problem-solving skills, which were scored on:
*
Fluency
Fluency (also called volubility and eloquency) is the property of a person or of a system that delivers information quickly and with expertise.
Language use
Language fluency is one of a variety of terms used to characterize or measure a person ...
– The total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus.
*
Originality
Originality is the aspect of created or invented works that distinguish them from replica, reproductions, clones, forgery, forgeries, or substantially derivative works. The modern idea of originality is according to some scholars tied to Romantici ...
– The statistical rarity of the responses among the test subjects.
* Elaboration – The amount of detail in the responses.
Considerable progress has been made in automated scoring of divergent thinking tests using semantic approach. When compared to human raters,
NLP techniques were shown to be reliable and valid in scoring the originality. The reported computer programs were able to achieve a correlation of 0.60 and 0.72 respectively to human graders.
Semantic network
A semantic network, or frame network is a knowledge base that represents semantic relations between concepts in a network. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, ...
s were also used to devise originality scores that yielded significant correlations with socio-personal measures. Most recently, an NSF-funded team of researchers led by
James C. Kaufman
James C. Kaufman is an American psychologist known for his research on creativity. He is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. Previously, he taught at the California State University, Sa ...
and Mark A. Runco combined expertise in creativity research, natural language processing, computational linguistics, and statistical data analysis to devise a scalable system for computerized automated testing (SparcIt Creativity Index Testing system). This system enabled automated scoring of DT tests that is reliable, objective, and scalable, thus addressing most of the issues of DT tests that had been found and reported.
The resultant computer system was able to achieve a correlation of 0.73 to human graders.
Social-personality approach
Some researchers have taken a social-personality approach to the measurement of creativity. In these studies, personality traits such as independence of judgement, self-confidence, attraction to complexity, aesthetic orientation, and risk-taking are used as measures of the creativity of individuals.
A
meta-analysis
A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...
by Gregory Feist showed that creative people tend to be "more open to new experiences, less conventional and less conscientious, more self-confident, self-accepting, driven, ambitious, dominant, hostile, and impulsive." Openness, conscientiousness, self-acceptance, hostility, and impulsivity had the strongest effects of the traits listed.
Within the framework of the
Big Five model of personality, some consistent traits have emerged.
Openness to experience
Openness to experience is one of the domains which are used to describe human personality in the Five Factor Model. Openness involves six facets, or dimensions: active imagination (fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, ...
has been shown to be consistently related to a whole host of different assessments of creativity. Among the other Big Five traits, research has demonstrated subtle differences between different domains of creativity. Compared to non-artists, artists tend to have higher levels of openness to experience and lower levels of conscientiousness, while scientists are more open to experience,
conscientious, and higher in the confidence-dominance facets of extraversion compared to non-scientists.
Self-report questionnaires
An alternative is using biographical methods. These methods use quantitative characteristics such as the number of publications, patents, or performances of a work. While this method was originally developed for highly creative personalities, today it is also available as
self-report questionnaires supplemented with frequent, less outstanding creative behaviors such as writing a short story or creating your own recipes. For example, the
Creative Achievement Questionnaire, a self-report test that measures creative achievement across 10 domains, was described in 2005 and shown to be reliable and valid when compared to other measures of creativity and to independent evaluation of creative output.
Besides the English original, it was also used in a Chinese,
French, and German-speaking
version. It is the self-report questionnaire most frequently used in research.
Intelligence
The potential relationship between creativity and
intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
has been of interest since the late 1900s, when a multitude of influential studies – from Getzels & Jackson,
[Getzels, J. W., & Jackson, P. W. (1962). Creativity and intelligence: Explorations with gifted students. New York: Wiley.] Barron,
[Barron, F. (1963). Creativity and psychological health. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company.] Wallach & Kogan,
[Wallach, M. A., & Kogan, N. (1965). Modes of thinking in young children: A study of the creativity-intelligence distinction. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.] and Guilford
[Guilford, J. P. (1967). The nature of human intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill.] – focused not only on creativity, but also on intelligence. This joint focus highlights both the theoretical and practical importance of the relationship: researchers are interested not only if the constructs are related, but also how and why.
There are multiple theories accounting for their relationship, with the three main theories as follows:
*Threshold Theory – Intelligence is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for creativity. There is a moderate positive relationship between creativity and intelligence until IQ ~120.
*Certification Theory – Creativity is not intrinsically related to intelligence. Instead, individuals are required to meet the requisite level intelligence in order to gain a certain level of education/work, which then in turn offers the opportunity to be creative. Displays of creativity are moderated by intelligence.
*Interference Theory – Extremely high intelligence might interfere with creative ability.
[Sternberg, R. J. (1996). Successful Intelligence. New York: Simon & Schuster.]
Sternberg and O'Hara
[Sternberg, R. J., & O'Hara, L. A. (1999). Creativity and intelligence. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 251–272). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.] proposed a framework of five possible relationships between creativity and intelligence:
#Creativity is a subset of intelligence
#Intelligence is a subset of creativity
#Creativity and intelligence are overlapping constructs
#Creativity and intelligence are part of the same construct (coincident sets)
#Creativity and intelligence are distinct constructs (disjoint sets)
Creativity as a subset of intelligence
A number of researchers include creativity, either explicitly or implicitly, as a key component of intelligence.
''Examples of theories that include creativity as a subset of intelligence''
*Sternberg's Theory of Successful intelligence
(see
Triarchic theory of intelligence
The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence or Three Forms of Intelligence, formulated by psychometrician Robert Sternberg, aims to go against the psychometric approach to intelligence and take a more cognitive approach, which leaves it to the category o ...
) includes creativity as a main component, and comprises three sub-theories: Componential (Analytic), Contextual (Practical), and Experiential (Creative). Experiential sub-theory – the ability to use pre-existing knowledge and skills to solve new and novel problems – is directly related to creativity.
*The
Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory
The Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory (commonly abbreviated to CHC), is a psychological theory on the structure of human cognitive abilities. Based on the work of three psychologists, Raymond B. Cattell, John L. Horn and John B. Carroll, the Catte ...
includes creativity as a subset of intelligence. Specifically, it is associated with the broad group factor of long-term storage and retrieval (Glr). Glr narrow abilities relating to creativity include: ideational fluency, associational fluency, and originality/creativity. Silvia et al. conducted a study to look at the relationship between divergent thinking and verbal fluency tests, and reported that both fluency and originality in divergent thinking were significantly affected by the broad level Glr factor. Martindale extended the CHC-theory in the sense that it was proposed that those individuals who are creative are also selective in their processing speed. Martindale argues that in the creative process, larger amounts of information are processed more slowly in the early stages, and as the individual begins to understand the problem, the processing speed is increased.
*The Dual Process Theory of Intelligence posits a two-factor/type model of intelligence. Type 1 is a conscious process, and concerns goal directed thoughts, which are explained by ''g''. Type 2 is an unconscious process, and concerns spontaneous cognition, which encompasses daydreaming and implicit learning ability. Kaufman argues that creativity occurs as a result of Type 1 and Type 2 processes working together in combination. The use of each type in the creative process can be used to varying degrees.
Intelligence as a subset of creativity
In this relationship model, intelligence is a key component in the development of creativity.
''Theories of creativity that include intelligence as a subset of creativity''
*Sternberg & Lubart's Investment Theory. Using the metaphor of a stock market, they demonstrate that creative thinkers are like good investors – they buy low and sell high (in their ideas). Like under/low-valued stock, creative individuals generate unique ideas that are initially rejected by other people. The creative individual has to persevere, and convince the others of the ideas value. After convincing the others, and thus increasing the ideas value, the creative individual 'sells high' by leaving the idea with the other people, and moves onto generating another idea. According to this theory, six distinct, but related elements contribute to successful creativity: intelligence, knowledge, thinking styles, personality, motivation, and environment. Intelligence is just one of the six factors that can either solely, or in conjunction with the other five factors, generate creative thoughts.
*Amabile's Componential Model of Creativity.
In this model, there are three within-individual components needed for creativity – domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant processes, and task motivation – and 1 component external to the individual: their surrounding social environment. Creativity requires a confluence of all components. High creativity will result when an individual is: intrinsically motivated, possesses both a high level of domain-relevant skills and has high skills in creative thinking, and is working in a highly creative environment.
*Amusement Park Theoretical Model. In this four-step theory, both domain-specific and generalist views are integrated into a model of creativity. The researchers make use of the metaphor of the amusement park to demonstrate that within each of these creative levels, intelligence plays a key role:
**To get into the amusement park, there are initial requirements (e.g., time/transport to go to the park). Initial requirements (like intelligence) are necessary, but not sufficient for creativity. They are more like prerequisites for creativity, and if an individual does not possess the basic level of the initial requirement (intelligence), then they will not be able to generate creative thoughts/behaviour.
**Secondly are the subcomponents – general thematic areas – that increase in specificity. Like choosing which type of amusement park to visit (e.g. a zoo or a water park), these areas relate to the areas in which someone could be creative (e.g. poetry).
**Thirdly, there are specific domains. After choosing the type of park to visit e.g. waterpark, you then have to choose which specific park to go to. Within the poetry domain, there are many different types (e.g. free verse, riddles, sonnet, etc.) that have to be selected from.
**Lastly, there are micro-domains. These are the specific tasks that reside within each domain e.g. individual lines in a free verse poem / individual rides at the waterpark.
Creativity and intelligence as overlapping yet distinct constructs
This possible relationship concerns creativity and intelligence as distinct, but intersecting constructs.
''Theories that include Creativity and Intelligence as Overlapping Yet Distinct Constructs''
*Renzulli's Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness. In this conceptualisation, giftedness occurs as a result from the overlap of above average intellectual ability, creativity, and task commitment. Under this view, creativity and intelligence are distinct constructs, but they do overlap under the correct conditions.
*
PASS theory of intelligence. In this theory, the planning component – relating to the ability to solve problems, make decisions and take action – strongly overlaps with the concept of creativity.
*Threshold Theory (TT). A number of previous research findings have suggested that a threshold exists in the relationship between creativity and intelligence – both constructs are moderately positively correlated up to an IQ of ~120. Above this threshold of an IQ of 120, if there is a relationship at all, it is small and weak.
TT posits that a moderate level of intelligence is necessary for creativity.
In support of the TT,
Barron reported finding a non-significant correlation between creativity and intelligence in a gifted sample and a significant correlation in a non-gifted sample. Yamamoto in a sample of secondary school children, reported a significant correlation between creativity and intelligence of ''r'' = 0.3, and reported no significant correlation when the sample consisted of gifted children. Fuchs-Beauchamp et al. in a sample of preschoolers found that creativity and intelligence correlated from ''r'' = 0.19 to ''r'' = 0.49 in the group of children who had an IQ below the threshold; and in the group above the threshold, the correlations were ''r'' = <0.12. Cho et al. reported a correlation of 0.40 between creativity and intelligence in the average IQ group of a sample of adolescents and adults; and a correlation of close to ''r'' = 0.0 for the high IQ group. Jauk et al. found support for the TT, but only for measures of creative potential, not creative performance.
Much modern day research reports findings against TT. Wai et al. in a study using data from the longitudinal Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth – a cohort of elite students from early adolescence into adulthood – found that differences in SAT scores at age 13 were predictive of creative real-life outcomes 20 years later. Kim's meta-analysis of 21 studies did not find any supporting evidence for TT, and instead negligible correlations were reported between intelligence, creativity, and divergent thinking both below and above IQ's of 120. Preckel et al., investigating fluid intelligence and creativity, reported small correlations of ''r'' = 0.3 to ''r'' = 0.4 across all levels of cognitive ability.
Creativity and intelligence as coincident sets
Under this view, researchers posit that there are no differences in the mechanisms underlying creativity in those used in normal problem solving; and in normal problem solving, there is no need for creativity. Thus, creativity and Intelligence (problem solving) are the same thing. Perkins referred to this as the 'nothing-special' view.
Weisberg & Alba examined problem solving by having participants complete the
nine dots puzzle
The nine dots puzzle is a mathematical puzzle whose task is to connect nine squarely arranged points with a pen by four (or fewer) straight lines without lifting the pen.
The puzzle has appeared under various other names over the years.
History ...
– where the participants are asked to connect all nine dots in the three rows of three dots using four straight lines or less, without lifting their pen or tracing the same line twice. The problem can only be solved if the lines go outside the boundaries of the square of dots. Results demonstrated that even when participants were given this insight, they still found it difficult to solve the problem, thus showing that to successfully complete the task it is not just insight (or creativity) that is required.
Creativity and intelligence as disjoint sets
In this view, creativity and intelligence are completely different, unrelated constructs.
Getzels and Jackson
administered five creativity measures to a group of 449 children from grades 6–12, and compared these test findings to results from previously administered (by the school) IQ tests. They found that the correlation between the creativity measures and IQ was
''r'' = 0.26. The high creativity group scored in the top 20% of the overall creativity measures, but were not included in the top 20% of IQ scorers. The high intelligence group scored the opposite: they scored in the top 20% for IQ, but were outside the top 20% scorers for creativity, thus showing that creativity and intelligence are distinct and unrelated.
However, this work has been heavily criticised. Wallach and Kogan
highlighted that the creativity measures were not only weakly related to one another (to the extent that they were no more related to one another than they were with IQ), but they seemed to also draw upon non-creative skills. McNemar noted that there were major measurement issues, in that the IQ scores were a mixture from three different IQ tests.
Wallach and Kogan
administered five measures of creativity, each of which resulted in a score for originality and fluency; and 10 measures of general intelligence to 151 5th grade children. These tests were untimed, and given in a game-like manner (aiming to facilitate creativity). Inter-correlations between creativity tests were on average ''r'' = 0.41. Inter-correlations between intelligence measures were on average ''r'' = 0.51 with each other. Creativity tests and intelligence measures correlated ''r'' = 0.09.
Neuroscience
![Distributed network of voxel clusters associated with divergent thinking](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Distributed_network_of_voxel_clusters_associated_with_divergent_thinking.jpg)
The
neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...
of creativity looks at the operation of the brain during creative behaviour. It has been addressed
[Kenneth M Heilman, MD, Stephen E. Nadeau, MD, and David Q. Beversdorf, MD. "Creative Innovation: Possible Brain Mechanisms" Neurocase (2003)](_blank)
in the article "Creative Innovation: Possible Brain Mechanisms". The authors write that "creative innovation might require coactivation and communication between regions of the brain that ordinarily are not strongly connected." Highly creative people who excel at creative innovation tend to differ from others in three ways:
* they have a high level of specialized knowledge,
* they are capable of
divergent thinking
Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, "non-linear" manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent co ...
mediated by the
frontal lobe
The frontal lobe is the largest of the four major lobes of the brain in mammals, and is located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere (in front of the parietal lobe and the temporal lobe). It is parted from the parietal lobe by a groove betwe ...
.
* and they are able to modulate
neurotransmitter
A neurotransmitter is a signaling molecule secreted by a neuron to affect another cell across a synapse. The cell receiving the signal, any main body part or target cell, may be another neuron, but could also be a gland or muscle cell.
Neuro ...
s such as
norepinephrine
Norepinephrine (NE), also called noradrenaline (NA) or noradrenalin, is an organic chemical in the catecholamine family that functions in the brain and body as both a hormone and neurotransmitter. The name "noradrenaline" (from Latin '' ad'', ...
in their frontal lobe.
Thus, the frontal lobe appears to be the part of the
cortex
Cortex or cortical may refer to:
Biology
* Cortex (anatomy), the outermost layer of an organ
** Cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the vertebrate cerebrum, part of which is the ''forebrain''
*** Motor cortex, the regions of the cerebral cortex i ...
that is most important for creativity.
This article also explored the links between creativity and sleep,
mood and
addiction disorders
Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to engage in certain behaviors, one of which is the usage of a drug, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use oft ...
, and
depression.
In 2005, Alice Flaherty presented a three-factor model of the creative drive. Drawing from evidence in brain imaging, drug studies and lesion analysis, she described the creative drive as resulting from an interaction of the frontal lobes, the
temporal lobe
The temporal lobe is one of the four Lobes of the brain, major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain.
The temporal lobe ...
s, and
dopamine
Dopamine (DA, a contraction of 3,4-dihydroxyphenethylamine) is a neuromodulatory molecule that plays several important roles in cells. It is an organic compound, organic chemical of the catecholamine and phenethylamine families. Dopamine const ...
from the
limbic system
The limbic system, also known as the paleomammalian cortex, is a set of brain structures located on both sides of the thalamus, immediately beneath the medial temporal lobe of the cerebrum primarily in the forebrain.Schacter, Daniel L. 2012. ''Ps ...
. The frontal lobes can be seen as responsible for idea generation, and the temporal lobes for idea editing and evaluation. Abnormalities in the frontal lobe (such as depression or anxiety) generally decrease creativity, while abnormalities in the temporal lobe often increase creativity. High activity in the temporal lobe typically inhibits activity in the frontal lobe, and vice versa. High dopamine levels increase general
arousal
Arousal is the physiological and psychological state of being awoken or of sense organs stimulated to a point of perception. It involves activation of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) in the brain, which mediates wakefulness, th ...
and goal directed behaviors and reduce
latent inhibition
Latent inhibition (LI) is a technical term in classical conditioning, where a familiar stimulus takes longer to acquire meaning (as a signal or conditioned stimulus) than a new stimulus. The term originated with Lubow and Moore in 1973. The LI eff ...
, and all three effects increase the drive to generate ideas. A 2015 study on creativity found that it involves the interaction of multiple neural networks, including those that support associative thinking, along with other
default mode network
In neuroscience, the default mode network (DMN), also known as the default network, default state network, or anatomically the medial frontoparietal network (M-FPN), is a large-scale brain network primarily composed of the dorsal medial prefro ...
functions.
Similarly, in 2018, Lin and Vartanian proposed a
neuroeconomic framework that precisely describes
norepinephrine
Norepinephrine (NE), also called noradrenaline (NA) or noradrenalin, is an organic chemical in the catecholamine family that functions in the brain and body as both a hormone and neurotransmitter. The name "noradrenaline" (from Latin '' ad'', ...
's role in creativity and modulating
large-scale brain networks
Large-scale brain networks (also known as intrinsic brain networks) are collections of widespread brain regions showing functional connectivity by statistical analysis of the fMRI BOLD signal or other recording methods such as EEG, PET and MEG. An ...
associated with creativity.
This framework describes how neural activity in different brain regions and networks like the
default mode network
In neuroscience, the default mode network (DMN), also known as the default network, default state network, or anatomically the medial frontoparietal network (M-FPN), is a large-scale brain network primarily composed of the dorsal medial prefro ...
are tracking
utility
As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosopher ...
or subjective value of ideas.
In 2018, experiments showed that when the brain suppresses obvious or 'known' solutions, the outcome is solutions that are more creative. This suppression is mediated by alpha oscillations in the right temporal lobe.
Working memory and the cerebellum
Vandervert described how the brain's frontal lobes and the cognitive functions of the
cerebellum
The cerebellum (Latin for "little brain") is a major feature of the hindbrain of all vertebrates. Although usually smaller than the cerebrum, in some animals such as the mormyrid fishes it may be as large as or even larger. In humans, the cerebel ...
collaborate to produce creativity and innovation. Vandervert's explanation rests on considerable evidence that all processes of
working memory
Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, ...
(responsible for processing all thought) are adaptively modeled for increased efficiency by the cerebellum. The cerebellum (consisting of 100 billion neurons, which is more than the entirety of the rest of the brain) is also widely known to adaptively model all bodily movement for efficiency. The cerebellum's adaptive models of working memory processing are then fed back to especially frontal lobe working memory control processes where creative and innovative thoughts arise. (Apparently, creative insight or the "aha" experience is then triggered in the temporal lobe.)
According to Vandervert, the details of creative adaptation begin in "forward" cerebellar models which are anticipatory/exploratory controls for movement and thought. These cerebellar processing and control architectures have been termed Hierarchical Modular Selection and Identification for Control (HMOSAIC). New, hierarchically arranged levels of the cerebellar control architecture (HMOSAIC) develop as mental mulling in working memory is extended over time. These new levels of the control architecture are fed forward to the frontal lobes. Since the cerebellum adaptively models all movement and all levels of thought and emotion, Vandervert's approach helps explain creativity and innovation in sports, art, music, the design of video games, technology, mathematics, the
child prodigy
A child prodigy is defined in psychology research literature as a person under the age of ten who produces meaningful output in some domain at the level of an adult expert. The term is also applied more broadly to young people who are extraor ...
, and thought in general.
Essentially, Vandervert has argued that when a person is confronted with a challenging new situation, visual-spatial working memory and speech-related working memory are decomposed and re-composed (fractionated) by the cerebellum and then blended in the cerebral cortex in an attempt to deal with the new situation. With repeated attempts to deal with challenging situations, the cerebro-cerebellar blending process continues to optimize the efficiency of how working memory deals with the situation or problem. Most recently, he has argued that this is the same process (only involving visual-spatial working memory and pre-language vocalization) that led to the evolution of language in humans. Vandervert and Vandervert-Weathers have pointed out that this blending process, because it continuously optimizes efficiencies, constantly improves prototyping attempts toward the invention or innovation of new ideas, music, art, or technology. Prototyping, they argue, not only produces new products, it trains the cerebro-cerebellar pathways involved to become more efficient at prototyping itself. Further, Vandervert and Vandervert-Weathers believe that this repetitive "mental prototyping" or mental rehearsal involving the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex explains the success of the self-driven, individualized patterning of repetitions initiated by the teaching methods of the
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2008 by Sal Khan. Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also in ...
. The model proposed by Vandervert has, however, received incisive critique from several authors.
REM sleep
Creativity involves the forming of associative elements into new combinations that are useful or meet some requirement. Sleep aids this process.
REM
Rem or REM may refer to:
Music
* R.E.M., an American rock band
* ''R.E.M.'' (EP), by Green
* "R.E.M." (song), by Ariana Grande
Organizations
* La République En Marche!, a French centrist political party
* Reichserziehungsministerium, in Nazi G ...
rather than
NREM sleep
Non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM), also known as quiescent sleep, is, collectively, sleep stages 1–3, previously known as stages 1–4. Rapid eye movement sleep (REM) is not included. There are distinct electroencephalographic and other char ...
appears to be responsible.
This has been suggested to be due to changes in
cholinergic
Cholinergic agents are compounds which mimic the action of acetylcholine and/or butyrylcholine. In general, the word "choline" describes the various quaternary ammonium salts containing the ''N'',''N'',''N''-trimethylethanolammonium cation. F ...
and
noradrenergic
Norepinephrine (NE), also called noradrenaline (NA) or noradrenalin, is an organic chemical in the catecholamine family that functions in the brain and body as both a hormone and neurotransmitter. The name "noradrenaline" (from Latin '' ad'', ...
neuromodulation
Neuromodulation is the physiological process by which a given neuron uses one or more chemicals to regulate diverse populations of neurons. Neuromodulators typically bind to metabotropic, G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) to initiate a second m ...
that occurs during REM sleep.
During this period of sleep, high levels of acetylcholine in the
hippocampus
The hippocampus (via Latin from Greek , 'seahorse') is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. The hippocampus is part of the limbic system, a ...
suppress feedback from the hippocampus to the
neocortex
The neocortex, also called the neopallium, isocortex, or the six-layered cortex, is a set of layers of the mammalian cerebral cortex involved in higher-order brain functions such as sensory perception, cognition, generation of motor commands, sp ...
, and lower levels of acetylcholine and norepinephrine in the neocortex encourage the spread of associational activity within neocortical areas without control from the hippocampus. This is in contrast to waking consciousness, where higher levels of norepinephrine and acetylcholine inhibit recurrent connections in the neocortex. It is proposed that REM sleep aids creativity by allowing "neocortical structures to reorganize associative hierarchies, in which information from the hippocampus would be reinterpreted in relation to previous semantic representations or nodes."
Affect
Some theories suggest that creativity may be particularly susceptible to
affective influence. As noted in
voting behavior
Voting behavior is a form of electoral behavior. Understanding voters' behavior can explain how and why decisions were made either by public decision-makers, which has been a central concern for political scientists, or by the electorate. To inter ...
, the term "affect" in this context can refer to liking or disliking key aspects of the subject in question. This work largely follows from findings in psychology regarding the ways in which affective states are involved in human judgment and decision-making.
Positive affect relations
According to
Alice Isen, positive affect has three primary effects on cognitive activity:
# Positive affect makes additional cognitive material available for processing, increasing the number of cognitive elements available for association;
# Positive affect leads to defocused attention and a more complex cognitive context, increasing the breadth of those elements that are treated as relevant to the problem;
# Positive affect increases cognitive flexibility, increasing the probability that diverse cognitive elements will in fact become associated. Together, these processes lead positive affect to have a positive influence on creativity.
Barbara Fredrickson
Barbara Lee Fredrickson (born June 15, 1964) is an American professor in the department of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology. She is also the Principal Inves ...
in her
broaden-and-build The broaden-and-build theory in positive psychology suggests that positive emotions (such as happiness, and perhaps interest and anticipation) broaden one's awareness and encourage novel, exploratory thoughts and actions. Over time, this broadened ...
model suggests that positive emotions such as joy and love broaden a person's available repertoire of cognitions and actions, thus enhancing creativity.
According to these researchers, positive emotions increase the number of cognitive elements available for association (attention scope) and the number of elements that are relevant to the problem (cognitive scope). Day-by-day psychological experiences including emotions, perceptions, and motivation will significantly impact creative performance. Creativity is higher when emotions and perceptions are more positive and when intrinsic motivation is stronger.
Various meta-analyses, such as Baas et al. (2008) of 66 studies about creativity and affect support the link between creativity and positive affect.
Computational creativity
Jürgen Schmidhuber
Jürgen Schmidhuber (born 17 January 1963) is a German computer scientist most noted for his work in the field of artificial intelligence, deep learning and artificial neural networks. He is a co-director of the Dalle Molle Institute for Artif ...
's formal
theory
A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be s ...
of creativity postulates that creativity, curiosity, and interestingness are by-products of a simple
computational
Computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that follows a well-defined model (e.g., an algorithm).
Mechanical or electronic devices (or, historically, people) that perform computations are known as ''computers''. An espe ...
principle for measuring and optimizing learning progress. Consider an agent able to manipulate its environment and thus its own
sensory inputs. The agent can use a
black box
In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The te ...
optimization method such as
reinforcement learning
Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine ...
to learn (through informed trial and error) sequences of actions that maximize the expected sum of its future
reward
Reward may refer to:
Places
* Reward (Shelltown, Maryland), a historic home in Shelltown Maryland
* Reward, California (disambiguation)
* Reward-Tilden's Farm, a historic home in Chestertown Maryland
Arts, entertainment, and media
* "Rewa ...
signals. There are extrinsic reward signals for achieving externally given goals, such as finding food when hungry. But Schmidhuber's
objective function
In mathematical optimization and decision theory, a loss function or cost function (sometimes also called an error function) is a function that maps an event or values of one or more variables onto a real number intuitively representing some "cos ...
to be maximized also includes an additional, intrinsic term to model "wow-effects". This non-standard term motivates purely creative behavior of the agent even when there are no external goals. A wow-effect is formally defined as follows. As the agent is creating and predicting and encoding the continually growing history of actions and sensory inputs, it keeps improving the predictor or encoder, which can be implemented as an
artificial neural network
Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains.
An ANN is based on a collection of connected unit ...
or some other
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
device that can exploit regularities in the data to improve its performance over time. The improvements can be measured precisely, by computing the difference in computational costs (storage size, number of required synapses, errors, time) needed to encode new observations before and after learning. This difference depends on the encoder's present subjective knowledge, which changes over time, but the theory formally takes this into account. The cost difference measures the strength of the present "wow-effect" due to sudden improvements in
data compression
In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...
or computational speed. It becomes an intrinsic reward signal for the
action selector. The objective function thus motivates the action optimizer to create action sequences causing more wow-effects. Irregular, random data (or noise) do not permit any wow-effects or learning progress, and thus are "boring" by nature (providing no reward). Already known and predictable regularities also are boring. Temporarily interesting are only the initially unknown, novel, regular patterns in both actions and observations. This motivates the agent to perform continual, open-ended, active, creative exploration. Schmidhuber's work is highly influential in
intrinsic motivation
Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-dire ...
which has emerged as a research topic in its own right as part of the study of
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
and
robotics
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...
.
According to Schmidhuber, his objective function explains the activities of scientists, artists, and
comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing
Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and entertaining events or situations while the person or a ...
s.
For example,
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...
s are motivated to create experiments leading to observations obeying previously unpublished
physical law
Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) a ...
s permitting better
data compression
In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...
. Likewise, composers receive intrinsic reward for creating non-arbitrary melodies with unexpected but regular harmonies that permit wow-effects through data compression improvements.
Similarly, a comedian gets intrinsic reward for "inventing a novel joke with an unexpected
punch line
A punch line (a. k. a. punch-line or punchline) concludes a joke; it is intended to make people laugh. It is the third and final part of the typical joke structure. It follows the introductory framing of the joke and the narrative which sets up ...
, related to the beginning of the story in an initially unexpected but quickly learnable way that also allows for better compression of the perceived data."
Schmidhuber argues that ongoing
computer hardware
Computer hardware includes the physical parts of a computer, such as the computer case, case, central processing unit (CPU), Random-access memory, random access memory (RAM), Computer monitor, monitor, Computer mouse, mouse, Computer keyboard, ...
advances will greatly scale up rudimentary
artificial
Artificiality (the state of being artificial or manmade) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity.
Connotations
Artificiality ...
scientists and artists based on simple implementations of the basic principle since 1990.
He used the theory to create
low-complexity art Low-complexity art, first described by Jürgen Schmidhuber in 1997 and now established as a seminal topic within the larger field of computer science, is art that can be described by a short computer program (that is, a computer program of small Kol ...
and an attractive
human face
The face is the front of an animal's head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may affe ...
.
Creativity and mental health
A study by psychologist
J. Philippe Rushton
John Philippe Rushton (December 3, 1943 – October 2, 2012) was a Canadian psychologist and author. He taught at the University of Western Ontario until the early 1990s, and became known to the general public during the 1980s and 1990s for resea ...
found creativity to correlate with
intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
and
psychoticism Psychoticism is one of the three traits used by the psychologist Hans Eysenck in his P–E–N model (psychoticism, extraversion and neuroticism) model of personality.
Nature
Psychoticism is conceptually similar to the ''constraint'' factor i ...
. Another study found creativity to be greater in
schizotypal
Schizotypal personality disorder (STPD or SPD), also known as schizotypal disorder, is a mental disorder, mental and Abnormal behaviour, behavioral disease#Disorder, disorder. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM classific ...
than in either
schizophrenic
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
individuals or those without mental health conditions. While divergent thinking was associated with bilateral activation of the
prefrontal cortex
In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14, BA24, BA25, BA32, BA44, BA45, BA46, ...
, schizotypal individuals were found to have much greater activation of their ''right'' prefrontal cortex. This study hypothesizes that such individuals are better at accessing both hemispheres, allowing them to make novel associations at a faster rate. In agreement with this hypothesis,
ambidexterity
Ambidexterity is the ability to use both the right and left hand equally well. When referring to objects, the term indicates that the object is equally suitable for right-handed and left-handed people. When referring to humans, it indicates that ...
is also associated with schizotypal and schizophrenic individuals. Three recent studies by Mark Batey and Adrian Furnham have demonstrated the relationships between schizotypal and hypomanic personality and several different measures of creativity.
Particularly strong links have been identified between creativity and
mood disorder
A mood disorder, also known as an affective disorder, is any of a group of conditions of mental and behavioral disorder where a disturbance in the person's mood is the main underlying feature. The classification is in the ''Diagnostic and Stat ...
s, particularly
manic-depressive disorder
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of Depression (mood), depression and periods of abnormally elevated Mood (psychology), mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevat ...
(a.k.a.
bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
) and
depressive disorder
A mood disorder, also known as an affective disorder, is any of a group of conditions of mental and behavioral disorder where a disturbance in the person's mood is the main underlying feature. The classification is in the ''Diagnostic and Stat ...
(a.k.a.
unipolar disorder
Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive depression (mood), low mood, low self-esteem, and anhedonia, loss of interest or pleasure in normally e ...
). In ''Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament'',
Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield Jamison (born June 22, 1946) is an American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. She holds the post of the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and Ps ...
summarizes studies of mood-disorder rates in
writer
A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...
s,
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
s, and
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...
s. She also explores research that identifies
mood disorder
A mood disorder, also known as an affective disorder, is any of a group of conditions of mental and behavioral disorder where a disturbance in the person's mood is the main underlying feature. The classification is in the ''Diagnostic and Stat ...
s in such famous writers and artists as
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...
(who shot himself after
electroconvulsive treatment
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a psychiatric treatment where a generalized seizure (without muscular convulsions) is electrically induced to manage refractory mental disorders.Rudorfer, MV, Henry, ME, Sackeim, HA (2003)"Electroconvulsive the ...
),
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
(who drowned herself when she felt a depressive episode coming on), composer
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...
(who died in a mental institution), and even the famed
visual artist
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts al ...
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...
.
A study looking at 300,000 persons with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or unipolar depression, and their relatives, found overrepresentation in creative professions for those with bipolar disorder as well as for undiagnosed siblings of those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. There was no overall overrepresentation, but overrepresentation for artistic occupations, among those diagnosed with schizophrenia. There was no association for those with unipolar depression or their relatives.
Another study involving more than one million people, conducted by Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute, reported a number of correlations between creative occupations and mental illnesses. Writers had a higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse, and were almost twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves. Dancers and photographers were also more likely to have bipolar disorder.
[Roberts, Michelle. Creativity 'closely entwined with mental illness'. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19959565. 16 October 2012.]
As a group, those in the creative professions were no more likely to have psychiatric disorders than other people, although they were more likely to have a close relative with a disorder, including anorexia and, to some extent, autism, the ''Journal of Psychiatric Research'' reports.
People who have worked in the arts industry throughout history have faced many environmental factors that are associated with and can sometimes influence mental illness. Including things such as poverty, persecution, social alienation, psychological trauma, substance abuse, and high stress. In fact, according to psychologist Robert Epstein, PhD, creativity can be obstructed through stress.
So, while research has found that people are the most creative in positive moods, it might be pursuing a career that causes some problems.
Conversely, research has shown that creative activities such as art therapy, poetry writing, journaling, and reminiscence can promote mental well-being.
Bipolar Disorders and Creativity
Nancy Andreasen was one of the first known researchers to carry out a large scale study revolving around creativity and whether mental illnesses have an impact on someone's ability to be creative. Originally she had expected to find a link between creativity and schizophrenia but her research sample had no real history of schizophrenia from the book authors she pooled. Her findings instead showed that 80% of the creative group had previously had some form of mental illness episode in their lifetime.
When she performed follow up studies over a 15-year period, she found that 43% of the authors had bipolar disorder compared to the 1% of the general public that has the disease. In 1989 there was another study done by Kay Redfield Jamison that reaffirmed those statistics by having 38% of her sample of authors having a history of mood disorders. Anthony Storr who is a prominent psychiatrist remarked that, "The creative process can be a way of protecting the individual against being overwhelmed by depression, a means of regaining a sense of mastery in those who have lost it, and, to a varying extent, a way of repairing the self-damaged by bereavement or by the loss of confidence in human relationships which accompanies depression from whatever cause."
According to a study done by Shapiro and Weisberg, there appears to be a positive correlation between the manic upswings of the cycles of bipolar disorder and the ability for an individual to be more creative.
The data that they had collected and analyzed through multiple tests showed that it was in fact not the depressive swing that many believe to bring forth dark creative spurts, but the act of climbing out of the depressive episode that sparked creativity. The reason behind this spur of creative genius could come from the type of self-image that the person has during a time of hypomania. A hypomanic person may be feeling a bolstered sense of self-confidence, creative confidence, and sense of individualism.
In reports from people who were diagnosed with bipolar disorder they noted themselves as having a larger range of emotional understanding, heightened states of perception, and an ability to connect better with those in the world around them. Other reported traits include higher rates of productivity, higher senses of self-awareness, and a greater understanding of empathy. Those who have bipolar disorder also understand their own sense of heightened creativity and ability to get immense amounts of tasks done all at once. McCraw, Parker, Fletcher, & Friend (2013) report that out of 219 participants (aged 19 to 63) that have been diagnosed bipolar disorder 82% of them reported having elevated feelings of creativity during the hypomanic swings.
Giannouli believes that the creativity a person diagnosed with bipolar disorder feels comes as a form of "stress management". In the realm of music, one might be expressing their stress or pains through the pieces they write in order to better understand those same feelings. Famous authors and musicians along with some actors would often attribute their wild enthusiasm to something like a hypomanic state.
The artistic side of society has also been notorious for behaviors that are seen as maladapted to societal norms. Side effects that come with bipolar disorder match up with many of the behaviors that we see in high-profile creative personalities; these include, but are not limited to, alcohol addiction, drug abuse including stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens and dissociatives, opioids, inhalants, and cannabis, difficulties in holding regular occupations, interpersonal problems, legal issues, and a high risk of suicide.
Weisberg believes that the state of mania sets "free the powers of a thinker". What he implies here is that not only has the person become more creative they have fundamentally changed the kind of thoughts they produce.
In a study done of poets, who seem to have especially high percentages of bipolar authors, it was found that over a period of three years those poets would have cycles of really creative and powerful works of poetry. The timelines over the three-year study looked at the poet's personal journals and their clinical records and found that the timelines between their most powerful poems matched that of their upswings in bipolar disorder.
Personality
Creativity can be expressed in a number of different forms, depending on unique people and environments. A number of different theorists have suggested models of the creative person. One model suggests that there are four "Creativity Profiles" that can help produce growth, innovation, speed, etc.
:(i) ''Incubate'' (Long-term Development)
:(ii) ''Imagine'' (Breakthrough Ideas)
:(iii) ''Improve'' (Incremental Adjustments)
:(iv) ''Invest'' (Short-term Goals)
Research by Dr Mark Batey of the Psychometrics at Work Research Group at
Manchester Business School
Alliance Manchester Business School (Alliance MBS) is the business school of the University of Manchester in Manchester, England. One of the most prestigious business schools in the United Kingdom, it is also the second oldest in the UK, and pro ...
has suggested that the creative profile can be explained by four primary creativity traits with narrow facets within each
: (i) "Idea Generation" (Fluency, Originality, Incubation and Illumination)
: (ii) "Personality" (Curiosity and Tolerance for Ambiguity)
: (iii) "Motivation" (Intrinsic, Extrinsic and Achievement)
: (iv) "Confidence" (Producing, Sharing and Implementing)
This model was developed in a sample of 1000 working adults using the statistical techniques of Exploratory Factor Analysis followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis by Structural Equation Modelling.
An important aspect of the creativity profiling approach is to account for the tension between predicting the creative profile of an individual, as characterised by the
psychometric
Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally refers to specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and ...
approach, and the evidence that team creativity is founded on diversity and difference.
One characteristic of creative people, as measured by some psychologists, is what is called ''divergent production''. ''Divergent production'' is the ability of a person to generate a diverse assortment, yet an appropriate amount of responses to a given situation.
One way of measuring ''divergent production'' is by administering the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking assesses the diversity, quantity, and appropriateness of participants responses to a variety of open-ended questions.
Other researchers of creativity see the difference in creative people as a cognitive process of dedication to problem solving and developing expertise in the field of their creative expression. Hard working people study the work of people before them and within their current area, become experts in their fields, and then have the ability to add to and build upon previous information in innovative and creative ways. In a study of projects by design students, students who had more knowledge on their subject on average had greater creativity within their projects. Other researchers emphasize how creative people are better at balancing between divergent and convergent production, which depends on an individual's innate preference or ability to explore and exploit ideas.
The aspect of motivation within a person's personality may predict creativity levels in the person. Motivation stems from two different sources, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is an internal drive within a person to participate or invest as a result of personal interest, desires, hopes, goals, etc. Extrinsic motivation is a drive from outside of a person and might take the form of payment, rewards, fame, approval from others, etc. Although extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation can both increase creativity in certain cases, strictly extrinsic motivation often impedes creativity in people.
From a personality-traits perspective, there are a number of traits that are associated with creativity in people. Creative people tend to be more open to new experiences, are more self-confident, are more ambitious, self-accepting, impulsive, driven, dominant, and hostile, compared to people with less creativity.
From an evolutionary perspective, creativity may be a result of the outcome of years of generating ideas. As ideas are continuously generated, the need to evolve produces a need for new ideas and developments. As a result, people have been creating and developing new, innovative, and creative ideas to build our progress as a society.
In studying exceptionally creative people in history, some common traits in lifestyle and environment are often found. Creative people in history usually had supportive parents, but rigid and non-nurturing. Most had an interest in their field at an early age, and most had a highly supportive and skilled mentor in their field of interest. Often the field they chose was relatively uncharted, allowing for their creativity to be expressed more in a field with less previous information. Most exceptionally creative people devoted almost all of their time and energy into their craft, and after about a decade had a creative breakthrough of fame. Their lives were marked with extreme dedication and a cycle of hard-work and breakthroughs as a result of their determination.
Another theory of creative people is the ''investment theory of creativity''. This approach suggest that there are many individual and environmental factors that must exist in precise ways for extremely high levels of creativity opposed to average levels of creativity. In the ''investment'' sense, a person with their particular characteristics in their particular environment may see an opportunity to devote their time and energy into something that has been overlooked by others. The creative person develops an undervalued or under-recognised idea to the point that it is established as a new and creative idea. Just like in the financial world, some investments are worth the buy in, while others are less productive and do not build to the extent that the investor expected. This ''investment theory of creativity'' views creativity in a unique perspective compared to others, by asserting that creativity might rely to some extent on the right investment of effort being added to a field at the right time in the right way.
Malevolent creativity
So called ''malevolent creativity'' is associated with the "dark side" of creativity.
This type of creativity is not typically accepted within society and is defined by the intention to cause harm to others through original and innovative means. Malevolent creativity should be distinguished from negative creativity in that negative creativity may unintentionally cause harm to others, whereas malevolent creativity is explicitly malevolently motivated. While it is often associated with criminal behaviour, it can also be observed in ordinary day-to-day life as lying, cheating and betrayal.
Crime
Malevolent creativity is often a key contributor to crime and in its most destructive form can even manifest as terrorism. As creativity requires deviating from the conventional, there is a permanent tension between being creative and producing products that go too far and in some cases to the point of breaking the law. Aggression is a key predictor of malevolent creativity, and studies have also shown that increased levels of aggression also correlates to a higher likelihood of committing crime.
Predictive factors
Although everyone shows some levels of malevolent creativity under certain conditions, those that have a higher propensity towards it have increased tendencies to deceive and manipulate others to their own gain. While malevolent creativity appears to dramatically increase when an individual is placed under unfair conditions, personality, particularly aggressiveness, is also a key predictor in anticipating levels of malevolent thinking. Researchers Harris and Reiter-Palmon investigated the role of aggression in levels of malevolent creativity, in particular levels of implicit aggression and the tendency to employ aggressive actions in response to problem solving. The personality traits of physical aggression, conscientiousness, emotional intelligence and implicit aggression all seem to be related with malevolent creativity.
Harris and Reiter-Palmon's research showed that when subjects were presented with a problem that triggered malevolent creativity, participants high in implicit aggression and low in premeditation expressed the largest number of malevolently-themed solutions. When presented with the more benign problem that triggered prosocial motives of helping others and cooperating, those high in implicit aggression, even if they were high in impulsiveness, were far less destructive in their imagined solutions. They concluded premeditation, more than implicit aggression controlled an individual's expression of malevolent creativity.
The current measure for malevolent creativity is the 13-item test Malevolent Creativity Behaviour Scale (MCBS).
Cultural differences in creativity
Creativity is viewed differently in different countries. For example, cross-cultural research centered on
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
found that Westerners view creativity more in terms of the individual attributes of a creative person, such as their aesthetic taste, while Chinese people view creativity more in terms of the social influence of creative people (i.e., what they can contribute to society). Mpofu et al. surveyed 28 African languages and found that 27 had no word which directly translated to 'creativity' (the exception being
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
). The principle of
linguistic relativity
The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view, worldview or cognition, and ...
(i.e., that language can affect thought) suggests that the lack of an equivalent word for 'creativity' may affect the views of creativity among speakers of such languages. However, more research would be needed to establish this, and there is certainly no suggestion that this linguistic difference makes people any less (or more) creative;
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
has a rich heritage of creative pursuits such as
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
,
art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
, and
storytelling
Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural pre ...
. Nevertheless, it is true that there has been very little research on creativity in Africa, and there has also been very little research on creativity in Latin America. Creativity has been more thoroughly researched in the northern hemisphere, but here again there are cultural differences, even between countries or groups of countries in close proximity. For example, in Scandinavian countries, creativity is seen as an individual attitude which helps in coping with life's challenges, while in Germany, creativity is seen more as a process that can be applied to help solve problems.
Organizational creativity
![Training meeting in an ecodesign stainless steel company in brazil](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Training_meeting_in_an_ecodesign_stainless_steel_company_in_brazil.jpg)
It has been the topic of various research studies to establish that organizational effectiveness depends on the creativity of the workforce to a large extent. For any given organization, measures of effectiveness vary, depending upon its mission, environmental context, nature of work, the product or service it produces, and customer demands. Thus, the first step in evaluating organizational effectiveness is to understand the organization itself – how it functions, how it is structured, and what it emphasizes.
Amabile
and Sullivan and Harper
argued that to enhance creativity in business, three components were needed:
* Expertise (technical, procedural and intellectual knowledge),
* Creative thinking skills (how flexibly and imaginatively people approach problems),
* and Motivation (especially
intrinsic motivation
Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-dire ...
).
There are two types of motivation:
*
extrinsic motivation
Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-dire ...
–
external
External may refer to:
* External (mathematics), a concept in abstract algebra
* Externality
In economics, an externality or external cost is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party' ...
factors, for example
threat
A threat is a communication of intent to inflict harm or loss on another person. Intimidation is a tactic used between conflicting parties to make the other timid or psychologically insecure for coercion or control. The act of intimidation for co ...
s of being fired or money as a reward,
*
intrinsic motivation
Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-dire ...
– comes from inside an individual, satisfaction, enjoyment of work, etc.
Six managerial practices to encourage motivation are:
* Challenge – matching people with the right assignments;
* Freedom – giving people
autonomy
In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's ...
choosing means to achieve goals;
*
Resource
Resource refers to all the materials available in our environment which are technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and wants. Resources can broadly be classified upon their ...
s – such as time, money, space, etc. There must be balance fit among resources and people;
* Work group features –
diverse, supportive teams, where members share the excitement, willingness to help, and recognize each other's talents;
*
Supervisor
A supervisor, or lead, (also known as foreman, boss, overseer, facilitator, monitor, area coordinator, line-manager or sometimes gaffer) is the job title of a lower-level management position that is primarily based on authority over workers or ...
y encouragement – recognitions, cheering, praising;
* Organizational support – value emphasis, information sharing,
collaboration
Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...
.
Nonaka, who examined several successful Japanese companies, similarly saw creativity and knowledge creation as being important to the success of organizations.
[(Nonaka, 1991)] In particular, he emphasized the role that
tacit knowledge
Tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge—as opposed to formal, codified or explicit knowledge—is knowledge that is difficult to express or extract, and thus more difficult to transfer to others by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. This ...
has to play in the creative process.
In business,
originality
Originality is the aspect of created or invented works that distinguish them from replica, reproductions, clones, forgery, forgeries, or substantially derivative works. The modern idea of originality is according to some scholars tied to Romantici ...
is not enough. The idea must also be appropriate – useful and
actionable.
Creative competitive intelligence is a new solution to solve this problem. According to Reijo Siltala it links creativity to
innovation
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity ...
process and
competitive intelligence
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process and forward-looking practices used in producing knowledge about the competitive environment to improve organizational performance. It involves the systematic collection and analysis of information from ...
to creative workers.
Creativity can be encouraged in people and professionals and in the workplace. It is essential for innovation, and is a factor affecting economic growth and businesses. In 2013, the sociologist Silvia Leal Martín, using the Innova 3DX method, suggested measuring the various parameters that encourage creativity and innovation: corporate culture, work environment, leadership and management, creativity, self-esteem and optimism, locus of control and learning orientation, motivation, and fear.
Similarly, social psychologists, organizational scientists, and management scientists (who conduct extensive research on the factors that influence creativity and innovation in teams and organizations) have developed integrative theoretical models that emphasize the roles of team composition, team processes, and organizational culture. These theoretical models also emphasize the mutually reinforcing relationships between them in promoting innovation.
The investigation by Sai Loo, an academic and author of research monographs,
[Loo, S. (2017) Creative Working in the Knowledge Economy. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge Ltd. ; . https://www.routledge.com/Creative-Working-in-the-Knowledge-Economy/Loo/p/book/9781138211391] on creative working in the knowledge economy brings together studies of creativity as described in this web page. It offers connections with the sections on the '"Four C" model', 'Theories of creative processes', 'Creativity as a subset of intelligence', 'Creativity and personality', and 'In organisations'. It is the last section that the investigation addresses.
Research studies of the knowledge economy may be classified into three levels: macro, meso and micro. Macro studies refer to investigations at a societal or transnational dimension. Meso studies focus on organisations. Micro investigations centre on the minutiae workings of workers. There is also an interdisciplinary dimension such as research from businesses, economics, education, human resource management, knowledge and organizational management, sociology, psychology, and knowledge economy-related sectors – especially information technology (IT) software and advertising.
Loo studies how individual workers in the knowledge economy use their creativity and know-how in the advertising and IT software sectors. It examines this phenomenon across three developed countries of England, Japan, and Singapore to observe global perspectives. Specifically, the study uses qualitative data from semi-structured interviews of the related professionals in the roles of creative directing and copywriting (in advertising), and systems software developing and software programme managing.
The study
offers a conceptual framework of a two-dimensional matrix of individual and collaborative working styles, and single and multi-contexts. The investigation draws on literature sources from the four disciplines of economics, management, sociology, and psychology. The themes arising from the analysis of knowledge work and creativity literature serve to create a distinct theoretical framework of creative knowledge work. These workers apply their cognitive abilities, creative personalities and skill sets in the areas of science, technology, or culture industries to invent or discover new possibilities – e.g. a medium, product or service. These work activities may be done individually or collectively. Education, training and 'encultured environments' are necessary for the performance of these creative activities. Acts of creativity are viewed as asking new questions over and above those questions asked by an intelligent person, seeking novelty when reviewing a situation, and creating something that is different and novel, i.e. a 'variation' on the idea of existing ideas in a domain. This framework is evidenced by the empirical chapters on the micro-workings of creative workers in the two knowledge economy sectors from global perspectives.
This investigation identifies a definition of creative work, three types of work and the necessary conditions for it to occur. These workers use a combination of creative applications including anticipatory imagination, problem-solving, problem seeking, and generating ideas and aesthetic sensibilities. Taking aesthetic sensibilities as an example, for a creative director in the advertising industry, it is a visual imagery whether still or moving via a camera lens, and for a software programmer, it is the innovative technical expertise in which the software is written. There are specific creative applications for each of the sectors such as emotional connection in the advertising sector, and the power of expression and sensitivity in the IT software sector. In addition to the creative applications, creative workers require abilities and aptitudes to carry out their roles. Passion for one's job is generic. For copywriters, this passion is identified with fun, enjoyment and happiness alongside attributes such as honesty (regarding the product), confidence, and patience in finding the appropriate copy. Knowledge is also required in the disciplines of the humanities (e.g. literature), the creative arts (e.g. painting and music) and technical-related know-how (e.g. mathematics, computer sciences and physical sciences). In the IT software, technical knowledge of computer languages (e.g. C++) is especially significant for programmers whereas the degree of technical expertise may be less for a programme manager, as only knowledge of the relevant language is necessary to understand the issues for communicating with the team of developers and testers.
There are three types of work. One is intra-sectoral (e.g. 'general sponge' and 'in tune with the zeitgeist'
dvertising and 'power of expression' and 'sensitivity'
T software
T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is deri ...
. The second is inter-sectoral (e.g. 'integration of advertising activities'
dvertising and 'autonomous decentralized systems'
DST software
T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is deri ...
. The third relates to changes in culture/practices in the sectors (e.g. 'three-dimensional trust' and 'green credentials'
dvertising and 'collaboration with HEIs and industry' and 'ADS system in the Tokyo train operator'
T software
T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is deri ...
.
The necessary conditions for creative work to exist are a supportive environment such as supportive information, communications and electronic technologies (ICET) infrastructure, training, work environment and education.
This investigation has implications for lifelong learning of these workers informally and formally. Teaching institutions need to offer multi-disciplinary knowledge of humanities, arts and sciences and it has impacts on the programme structure, delivery approaches and assessments. At a macro level, governments need to offer a rich diet of cultural activities, outdoor activities and sports fixtures that inform potential creative workers in the areas of video gaming and advertising. This study has implications for work organisations that support and encourage collaborative working alongside individual working, offer opportunities to engage in continuous professional development (formally and informally), and foster an environment, which promotes experiential functioning and supports experimentation.
Team composition
Diversity between team members' backgrounds and knowledge can increase team creativity by expanding the total collection of unique information that is available to the team and by introducing different perspectives that can integrate in novel ways. However, under some conditions, diversity can also decrease team creativity by making it more difficult for team members to communicate about ideas and causing interpersonal conflicts between those with different perspectives. Thus, the potential advantages of diversity must be supported by appropriate team processes and organizational cultures in order to enhance creativity.
Recent study by An Zeng et al. found that studies of fresh research teams is associated with higher creativity or originality.
Team processes
Team communication
norm
Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) and technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) consist of materials, usually industrial wastes or by-products enriched with radioactive elements found in the envir ...
s, such as respecting others' expertise, paying attention to others' ideas, expecting information sharing, tolerating disagreements,
negotiating
Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties to reach the desired outcome regarding one or more issues of conflict. It is an interaction between entities who aspire to agree on matters of mutual interest. The agreement c ...
, remaining open to others' ideas, learning from others, and building on each other's ideas, increase team creativity by facilitating the social processes involved with
brainstorming
Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members.
In other words, brainstorming is a situation where a grou ...
and
problem solving
Problem solving is the process of achieving a goal by overcoming obstacles, a frequent part of most activities. Problems in need of solutions range from simple personal tasks (e.g. how to turn on an appliance) to complex issues in business an ...
. Through these processes, team members are able to access their collective pool of knowledge, reach shared understandings, identify new ways of understanding problems or tasks, and make new connections between ideas. Engaging in these social processes also promotes positive team
affect, which facilitates collective creativity.
Organizational culture
Supportive and motivational environments that create
psychological safety
Psychological safety is the belief that you won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. In teams, it refers to team members believing that they can take risks without being shamed by other team mem ...
by encouraging risk taking and tolerating mistakes increase team creativity as well.
Organizations in which
help-seeking Help-seeking theory postulates that people follow a series of predictable steps to seek help for their inadequacies, it is a series of well-ordered and purposeful cognitive and behavioral steps, each leading to specific types of solutions.
Help-see ...
,
help giving, and
collaboration
Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...
are rewarded promote innovation by providing opportunities and contexts in which team processes that lead to collective creativity can occur. Additionally,
leadership style
A leadership style is a leader's method of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. Various authors have proposed identifying many different leadership styles as exhibited by leaders in the political, business or other fiel ...
s that downplay status hierarchies or power differences within an organization and empower people to speak up about their ideas or opinions also help to create cultures that are conducive to creativity.
Constraints
There is a long-standing debate on how material constraints (e.g., lack of money, materials, or equipment) affect creativity. In psychological and managerial research, two competing views in this regard prevail. In one view, many scholars propose a negative effect of material constraints on innovation and claim that material constraints starve creativity.
The proponents of this view argue that adequate material resources are needed to engage in creative activities like experimenting with new solutions and idea exploration.
In an opposing view, scholars assert that people tend to stick to established routines or solutions as long as they are not forced to deviate from them by constraints. In this sense, Neren posits that scarcity is an important driver of creativity. Consistently, Gibbert and Scranton demonstrated how material constraints facilitated the development of
jet engine
A jet engine is a type of reaction engine discharging a fast-moving jet of heated gas (usually air) that generates thrust by jet propulsion. While this broad definition can include rocket, Pump-jet, water jet, and hybrid propulsion, the term ...
s in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
To reconcile these competing views, contingency models were proposed.
The rationale behind these models is that certain
contingency factors (e.g., creativity climate or creativity relevant skills) influence the relationship between constraints and creativity.
These contingency factors reflect the need for higher levels of motivation and skills when working on creative tasks under constraints.
Depending on these contingency factors, there is either a positive or negative relationship between constraints and creativity.
The sociology of creativity
Creativity research for most of the twentieth century was dominated by psychology and business studies, with little work done in sociology as a discipline. While since the turn of the millennium, there has been more attention paid by sociological researchers,
it has yet to establish itself as a specific research field, with reviews of sociological research into creativity a rarity in high impact literature.
While psychology has tended to focus on the individual as the locus of creativity, sociological research is directed more at the structures and context within which creative activity takes place, primarily based in the more long-standing field of the
sociology of culture
The sociology of culture, and the related cultural sociology, concerns the systematic analysis of culture, usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a member of a society, as it is manifested in the society. For Georg Simmel, ...
, which finds its roots in the works of
Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 p ...
,
Durkheim, and
Weber
Weber (, or ; German: ) is a surname of German origin, derived from the noun meaning " weaver". In some cases, following migration to English-speaking countries, it has been anglicised to the English surname 'Webber' or even 'Weaver'.
Notable pe ...
. This has meant a particular focus on the cultural and creative industries as sociological phenomena. Such research has covered a variety of areas, including the economics and production of culture, the role of creative industries in development, and the rise of the "creative class".
Economic views
Economic approaches to creativity have focussed on three aspects – the impact of creativity on economic growth, methods of modelling markets for creativity, and the maximisation of economic creativity (innovation).
In the early 20th century,
Joseph Schumpeter
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (; February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an Austrian-born political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of German-Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Ha ...
introduced the economic theory of ''
creative destruction
Creative destruction (German: ''schöpferische Zerstörung'') is a concept in economics which since the 1950s is the most readily identified with the Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpeter who derived it from the work of Karl Marx and pop ...
'', to describe the way in which old ways of doing things are endogenously destroyed and replaced by the new. Some economists (such as
Paul Romer
Paul Michael Romer (born November 6, 1955) is an American economist and policy entrepreneur who is a University Professor in Economics at New York University. Romer is best known as the former Chief Economist of the World Bank and for co-recei ...
) view creativity as an important element in the recombination of elements to produce new technologies and products and, consequently, economic growth. Creativity leads to
capital
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
, and creative products are protected by
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
laws.
Mark A. Runco
Mark may refer to:
Currency
* Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
* East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic
* Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927
* Finn ...
and Daniel Rubenson have tried to describe a "
psychoeconomic" model of creativity.
In such a model, creativity is the product of endowments and active investments in creativity; the costs and benefits of bringing creative activity to market determine the supply of creativity. Such an approach has been criticised for its view of creativity consumption as always having positive
utility
As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosopher ...
, and for the way it analyses the value of future innovations.
The ''
creative class
The creative class is the posit of American urban studies theorist Richard Florida for an ostensible socioeconomic class. Florida, a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of To ...
'' is seen by some to be an important driver of modern economies. In his 2002 book, ''The Rise of the Creative Class'',
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
Richard Florida
Richard L. Florida is an American urban studies theorist focusing on social and economic theory. He is a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU's School of Professional Studies. ...
popularized the notion that regions with "3 T's of economic development: Technology, Talent and Tolerance" also have high concentrations of
creative professional
A creative professional who is also known as a creative specialist is a person who is employed for the extraction of skills in creative endeavors. Creative professions include writing, art, design, theater, television, radio, motion pictures, rela ...
s and tend to have a higher level of economic development.
Fostering creativity
Several different researchers have proposed methods of increasing the creativity of an individual. Such ideas range from the
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
-cognitive, such as
Osborn-
Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process
Creative may refer to:
*Creativity, phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is created
* "Creative" (song), a 2008 song by Leon Jackson
* Creative class, a proposed socioeconomic class
* Creative destruction, an economic term
* Creative dir ...
,
Synectics Synectics is a problem solving methodology that stimulates thought processes of which the subject may be unaware. This method was developed by George M. Prince (April 5, 1918 – June 9, 2009) , science-based creative thinking, Purdue Creative Thinking Program, and
Edward de Bono's
lateral thinking
Lateral thinking is a manner of solving problems using an indirect and creative approach via reasoning that is not immediately obvious. It involves ideas that may not be obtainable using only traditional step-by-step logic. The term was first ...
; to the highly structured, such as
TRIZ
TRIZ (; russian: теория решения изобретательских задач, ', lit. "theory of inventive problem solving") is “the next evolutionary step in creating an organized and systematic approach to problem solving. The deve ...
(the Theory of Inventive Problem-Solving) and its variant Algorithm of Inventive Problem Solving (developed by the Russian scientist
Genrich Altshuller
Genrikh Saulovich Altshuller (Ге́нрих Сау́лович Альтшу́ллер, ) (born Tashkent, Uzbek SSR, USSR, 15 October 1926; died Petrozavodsk, Russia, 24 September 1998), was a Soviet engineer, inventor, and writer. He is most ...
), and Computer-Aided
morphological analysis.
Daniel Pink
Daniel H. Pink (born July 23, 1964) is an American author. He has written seven books; five of them are ''New York Times'' bestsellers. He was a host and a co- executive producer of the 2014 National Geographic Channel social science TV series ...
, in his 2005 book ''A Whole New Mind'', repeating arguments posed throughout the 20th century, argues that we are entering a new age where creativity is becoming increasingly important. In this ''conceptual age'', we will need to foster and encourage ''right-directed thinking'' (representing creativity and emotion) over ''left-directed thinking'' (representing logical, analytical thought). However, this simplification of 'right' versus 'left' brain thinking is not supported by the research data.
Nickerson
provides a summary of the various creativity techniques that have been proposed. These include approaches that have been developed by both academia and industry:
# Establishing purpose and intention
# Building basic skills
# Encouraging acquisitions of domain-specific knowledge
# Stimulating and rewarding curiosity and exploration
# Building motivation, especially internal motivation
# Encouraging confidence and a willingness to take risks
# Focusing on mastery and self-competition
# Promoting supportable beliefs about creativity
# Providing opportunities for choice and discovery
# Developing self-management (metacognitive skills)
# Teaching techniques and strategies for facilitating creative performance
# Providing balance
Managing the need for closure
Experiments suggest the
need for closure
Closure or need for closure (NFC), used interchangeably with need for cognitive closure (NFCC), are social psychological terms that describe an individual's desire for a clear, firm answer to a question and an aversion toward ambiguity.
The term ...
of task participants, whether as a reflection of personality or induced (through time pressure), negatively impacts creativity. Accordingly, it has been suggested that reading fiction, which can reduce the cognitive need for closure, may help to encourage creativity.
Education policies
Some see the conventional system of
schooling
A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compuls ...
as stifling of creativity and attempt (particularly in the
preschool
A preschool, also known as nursery school, pre-primary school, or play school or creche, is an educational establishment or learning space offering early childhood education to children before they begin compulsory education at primary school ...
/
kindergarten
Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cent ...
and early school years) to provide a creativity-friendly, rich, imagination-fostering environment for young children.
Researchers have seen this as important because technology is advancing our society at an unprecedented rate and creative problem solving will be needed to cope with these challenges as they arise.
In addition to helping with problem solving, creativity also helps students identify problems where others have failed to do so.
See the Waldorf School as an example of an education program that promotes creative thought.
Promoting intrinsic motivation and problem solving are two areas where educators can foster creativity in students. Students are more creative when they see a task as intrinsically motivating, valued for its own sake.
To promote creative thinking, educators need to identify what motivates their students and structure teaching around it. Providing students with a choice of activities to complete allows them to become more intrinsically motivated and therefore creative in completing the tasks.
Teaching students to solve problems that do not have well defined answers is another way to foster their creativity. This is accomplished by allowing students to explore problems and redefine them, possibly drawing on knowledge that at first may seem unrelated to the problem in order to solve it.
In adults, mentoring individuals is another way to foster their creativity. However, the benefits of mentoring creativity apply only to creative contributions considered great in a given field, not to
everyday creative expression.
Musical creativity is a gateway to the flow state. A place conducive to spontaneity, improvisation, and creativity. Recent studies have shown that we should emphasize students' creative side and integrate more creativity into their curriculums. A reason for this is that "Students aiming to express themselves and connect with peers through music will be able to tap into higher-order brain regions during improvisation rather than limiting themselves to the areas seen for rudimentary pattern generator" (Landau, 2017:30). Schools should teach this Buddhist philosophy to help musicians, for example, better understand what's happening when you're in a creative process and ways to realize it better. In this sense, an improvisation is a form of self-expression that can generate connectivity amongst peers and surpasses the age-old rudimentary aspects of school.
Scotland
In the
Scottish education system
Education in Scotland is overseen by the Scottish Government and its executive agency Education Scotland. Education in Scotland has a history of universal provision of public education, and the Scottish education system is distinctly differ ...
, creativity is identified as a core skillset for learning, life and work and is defined as "a process which generates ideas that have value to the individual. It involves looking at familiar things with a fresh eye, examining problems with an open mind, making connections, learning from mistakes and using imagination to explore new possibilities."
The need to develop a shared language and understanding of creativity and its role across every aspect of learning, teaching and continuous improvement was identified as a necessary aim and a set of four skills is used to allow educators to discuss and develop creativity skills across all subjects and sectors of education – curiosity, open-mindedness, imagination and problem solving. Distinctions are made between creative learning (when learners are using their creativity skills), creative teaching (when educators are using their creativity skills) and creative change (when creativity skills are applied to planning and improvement)
Scotland's national Creative Learning Plan
supports the development of creativity skills in all learners and of educators' expertise in developing creativity skills. A range of resources have been created to support and assess thi
including a national review of creativity across learning by Her Majesty's Inspectorate for Education.
Academic journals
See also
Notes
References
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Jacques Hadamard, Hadamard, Jacques, ''The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field'' (Dover, 1954)
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Jung, C. G., ''The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Volume 8. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche''. (Princeton, 1981)
* Kanigel, Robert, ''The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan'' (Washington Square Press, 1992)
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Lehrer, Jonah (2012), ''Imagine: How Creativity Works''.
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Sabaneev, Leonid. The Psychology of the Musico-Creative Process // Psyche. - Vol. 9 (July 1928). - pp. 37–54.
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von Franz, Marie-Louise, ''Psyche and Matter'' (Shambhala, 1992)
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* Miyake, A., & Shah, P. (Eds.). (1999). Models of working memory: Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Schmahmann, J. (Ed.). (1997). The cerebellum and cognition. New York: Academic Press.
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Tatarkiewicz, Władysław, ''A History of Six Ideas: an Essay in Aesthetics'', translated from the Polish by
Christopher Kasparek
Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a Scottish-born writer of Polish descent who has translated works by numerous authors, including Ignacy Krasicki, Bolesław Prus, Florian Znaniecki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Marian Rejewski, and Władysław K ...
, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1980.
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* Vandervert, L. (2003b). The neurophysiological basis of innovation. In L. V. Shavinina (Ed.) The international handbook on innovation (pp. 17–30). Oxford, England: Elsevier Science.
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* Vandervert, L. (in press). How the blending of cerebellar internal models can explain the evolution of thought and language. Cerebellum.
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* Vandervert, L., & Vandervert-Weathers, K. (in press). New brain-imaging studies indicate how prototyping is related to entrepreneurial giftedness and innovation education in children. In L. Shavinina (Ed.), The International Handbook of Innovation Education. London: Routlage.
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* Gielen, P. (2013). Creativity and other Fundamentalisms. Mondriaan: Amsterdam.
Further reading
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J. P. Guilford
Joy Paul Guilford (March 7, 1897 – November 26, 1987) was an American psychologist best remembered for his psychometric study of human intelligence, including the distinction between convergent and divergent production.
Developing the views ...
's 1950 inaugural speech to the
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
, reproduced in
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External links
;Videos
* Raphael DiLuzio (2012-06-28) o
7 Steps of Creative Thinking
{{Authority control
Aptitude
Cognition
Concepts in aesthetics
Concepts in metaphilosophy
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Metaphysics of mind
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