Lecture 15 – Creativity 1

Three issues:

1. Definition – what is creativity?

2. Scientific approaches to creativity

3. Practical approaches

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Definition

Reed: “Creating a novel and useful product or situation.

Sternberg & Ben-Zeev (2001): “Creativity is the ability to produce work that is novel (original and unexpected), high in quality, and appropriate (useful and meets the task constraints of tasks).”

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Scientific Approaches to Creativity

Guilford (1950) reported that on 2/10ths of 1% of entries in Psychological Abstracts up to 1950 were studies of creativity.

Sternberg & Ben-Zeev (2001) reported that about 5/10ths of 1% of entries in Psychological Abstracts for the years 1975-1994 were studies of creativity. 1.5% of entries for that period (3 times as many) were studies of reading.

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Scientific Approaches to Creativity

Psychodynamic approach:

• Freud: creativity arises from the tension between conscious reality and unconscious drives.

• Creative work provides an acceptable way to express unconscious wishes publicly.

• These wishes refer to things like power, wealth, fame, love

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Psychodynamic approach

Kris (1952)

• adaptive regression: intrusion of unmodulated thoughts into consciousness

• elaboration: reworking of those thoughts into reality-oriented thoughts

This approach used case studies only, so has not been central in scientific study of creativity

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Psychometric Approach

Cox (1926)

• estimated IQ for 301 eminent people who lived between 1450 and 1850. (Average ratings)

• found correlation between IQ and rank order of eminence to .16. Simonton (1975): r = 0.

• Cox: Highest persistence + OK intelligence > Highest intelligence + OK persistence

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Research on Creativity

Psychometric approach:

Guilford (1950): It’s difficult to study only eminent people such as Einstein or Michelangelo, because there are so few of them.

Guilford suggested studying creativity in ordinary people using tasks like the unusual uses test (e.g., “think of as many uses as possible for a brick”).

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Psychometric Approach

Torrance (1974) – Tests of Creative Thinking.

• simple tasks requiring divergent thinking and problem-solving

• scored for fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration

• e.g., Asking Questions, Circles, Product Improvement, Unusual Uses

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Torrance Tests

Asking questions – write out all the qs you can think of based on a drawing of a scene.

Circles – expand empty circles into different drawings and give the drawings titles.

Unusual uses – list interesting and unusual uses of a cardboard box.

P.I. – ways to change a toy monkey to be more fun

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Psychometric Approach

Mednick – Remote Associates Test

Said that creative thinking involves forming new relations among elements, with those relations being useful in some way or matching a standard.

Cake Blue CottageSurprise Line Birthday

Quick & objective test – but is it a good theory?

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Psychometric Approaches

Sternberg & Ben-Zeev on IQ and creativity

1. Creative people tend to have IQs > 120.

2. Above 120, IQ does not seem to matter

3. Role of IQ varies depending upon which aspect of intelligence is involved, as well as field of creativity (e.g., art & music vs. science & math).

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Research on Creativity

Cognitive approaches

Goal is to understand mental representations underlying creativity and process that operate on those representations.

Weisberg (1999) – it is the products of creative processes that are remarkable, not the processes themselves.

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Cognitive Approach

Weisberg & Alba (1981)

Asked subjects to solve the nine-dot problem:

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Weisberg & Alba (1981)

Solution of the problem depends upon going outside the box.

But people given that insight still had trouble solving this problem.

Weisberg: Thus, “extraordinary insight” is not the explanation. Solver goes through a set of ordinary cognitive processes; ‘insight’ doesn’t help.

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What might those cognitive processes be?

Finke’s Geneplore model:

• There are two main processes in creativity – generation and exploration.

• Generation – create pre-inventive structures

• Exploration – use those structures to produce creative ideas.

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Finke’s Geneplore Model

Person creates mental representations of objects that emphasize certain qualities. (Generative)

Then, person uses these repns. to create new ideas or objects. (Exploratory)

Because this is a cognitive theory, it emphasizes processes like retrieval, association, analogy, transformation, & categorical reduction.

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Confluence Approaches

Csikszemtmihalyi (1988, 1996) – interaction of individual, domain, and field

Domain – stores information, problemsIndividual – guided to a problem by a domain, draws on information in that domain, transforms and extends it through cognition, personality, and motivationField – people who control or influence domain evaluate and select new ideas (e.g., critics).

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Confluence Approaches

Sternberg & Lubart (1995) – Investment Theory

Creative people buy low and sell high in the world of ideas. Buying low – pursuing ideas that are unknown or unfashionable. Selling high means convincing people the idea is great.

Requires confluence of six resources: knowledge, intellect, thinking style, personality, motivation, and environment.

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Sternberg & Lubart’s Investment Theory

Knowledge – To know domain without being bound by that knowledgeIntellect – be synthetic, analytic, practicalThinking – preference for thinking in new waysPersonality – persistence, willingness to take sensible risks, tolerance for ambiguity, SEMotivation – Intrinsic, task-focused; you must love what you are doing; don’t focus on rewardsEnvironment – supportive; providing a forum

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Practical Approaches

• Primary concern is developing creativity

• Secondary concern is understanding creativity

• No concern with testing ideas empirically

Issue – does the commercial success of some practical approaches damage the scientific study of creativity, as Sternberg & Ben-Zeev claim?

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Practical Approaches

Edward De Bono – Lateral Thinking

• taking a broad view, with multiple viewpoints

• PMI – plus, minus, interesting

• po – as in hypothesis, suppose, possible, poetry

• “hats” – data, intuition, criticism, generation

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Practical Approaches

Osborn (1953) – Brainstorming

• Ad-man developed Brainstorming to encourage people to ‘open up.’• Recommended non-judgmental atmosphere where all ideas would be considered.• Where’s the filter? Do you reject an idea before offering it publicly? Or offer it publicly perhaps to be rejected by group?• He argued that critical approach is inhibtory

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