1. The concept of creativity
Monday
The concept of creativity

2. The object of definition
PPPP approach (Mooney)
Product
Person
Process
Press
PPPE  environment

3. Creative product If something is creative, it is both:
new
valuable (or at least appropriate)
Noncreative products are:
New but worthless
Valuable but lacking novelty
Worthless and lacking novelty

4. Values and domains of creativity
Values Goal Domain
cognitive truth science
esthetic beauty art
pragmatic usefulness technology
ethical goodness politics

5. Morris I. Stein’s definition
Creativity is a process leading to a new product that is acceptable as useful or tenable for a group of persons during some period of time
Relativism
social
cultural
historic
Pieces of work become creative and may lose this attribute

6. Creativity as an attribute of the person
Elitist approach
uppercase CREATIVITY
Genius, eminence, high achievement
Egalitarian approach
lowercase creativity
just a trait (everybody has it)

7. Distribution of creativity as a trait

8. Potential creativity Creativity without masterpieces Symptoms:
Curiosity, explorative behavior, putting questions
Remote associations
Rejection of superficial explanations
Visual thinking
The use of analogy and metaphor

9. Levels of creativity „Fluid” creativity „Crystallized” creativity
Idea generation
„Crystallized” creativity
Solution of a problem, attainment of a goal
Mature creativity
Solution of an important problem
Eminent creativity
Fundamental (paradigmatic) change

10. The dimension of time p
sec min hour week month year 10 y 20 y t

11. Factors influencing the temporal factor
Inwestment (Sternberg & Lubart)
Expert knowledge acquisition
Leadership ability (Simonton)
Maturation of recipients

12. Criteria of creativity
Explicit
well-defined
operationalized
Implicit
intuitional
not verbalized

13. Explicit criteria Criteria of high achievement
Simonton’s approach: how to measure originality of a composer?
J. P. Guilford’s approach
fluency
flexibility
originality
(elaboration)

14. Guilford’s tests Unusual Uses Consequences How can we use: a brick
a broom
Consequences
What would happen if:
people had three legs
we had to pay checks for laughing

15. Implicit criteria Consensual assessment Emotional criteria
Teresa Amabile: a product or behavior is creative if appropriately chosen observers agree for that
Emotional criteria
Jerome Bruner: creative piece of work leads us to „effective surprise”

16. Cognitive science perspective
Creativity as a process
Peculiarities of creative cognition
perception
thinking
memory
Categorization
Knowledge structures
.....
No need for individual assessment

17. The Geneplore model Finke, Ward & Smith(1992)
Creative cognition approach
Geneplore = generation + exploration
The notion of „preinventive structure”

18. General scheme expansion generation & of preinventive interpretation
structures
expansion
&
interpretation
Constraints

19. Generative processes Generate preinventive structures Six groups
memory retrieval
association
synthesis („mental blends”)
new concepts
transfer of knowledge
category reduction
(e.g., rose as a flavor generator)

20. Example: what can we do with these elements?

21. Constraints Marketing & advertisement domain Metaphorical meaning
Synthesis of elements

22. Product

23. Interpretation Logo of golfing club wine lovers club
pregnancy treatment center
???

24. The creative interaction approach
Goal
Tentative structure
Mutual and continual influence
Strategies
Obstacles

25. Creative strategies (examples)
The germ strategy
Start with any idea, then work on it
The guiding emotion strategy
„warm feeling of being right” (Gordon)
cold feeling of being wrong
The vicarious problem strategy
Think about something similar and „borrow” ideas

26. Obstacles Cognitive Emotional Social mental set frame of reference
anxiety
low tolerance for ambiguity
Social
external pressures
shame

27. Four dots problem

28. Bad solutions

29. Good solution

30. Creative solution

31. Conclusions Creative cognition is just cognition
Peculiarities refer to the way a process is executed and controlled
The level of creativity decides on the organization of the creative process