1. Three issues:
Definition – what is creativity?
Scientific approaches to creativity
Practical approaches

2. 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).”

3. 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 were studies of creativity. 1.5% of entries for that period (3 times as many) were studies of reading.

4. 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

5. 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

6. Psychometric Approach
Cox (1926)
estimated IQ for 301 eminent people who lived between 1450 and (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

7. 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”).

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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 Cottage
Surprise Line Birthday
Quick & objective test – but is it a good theory?

11. Psychometric Approaches
Sternberg & Ben-Zeev on IQ and creativity
Creative people tend to have IQs > 120.
Above 120, IQ does not seem to matter
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).

12. 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.

13. Cognitive Approach
Weisberg & Alba (1981)
Asked subjects to solve the nine-dot problem:

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. Confluence Approaches
Csikszemtmihalyi (1988, 1996) – interaction of individual, domain, and field
Domain – stores information, problems
Individual – guided to a problem by a domain, draws on information in that domain, transforms and extends it through cognition, personality, and motivation
Field – people who control or influence domain evaluate and select new ideas (e.g., critics).

18. 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.

19. Sternberg & Lubart’s Investment Theory
Knowledge – To know domain without being bound by that knowledge
Intellect – be synthetic, analytic, practical
Thinking – preference for thinking in new ways
Personality – persistence, willingness to take sensible risks, tolerance for ambiguity, SE
Motivation – Intrinsic, task-focused; you must love what you are doing; don’t focus on rewards
Environment – supportive; providing a forum

20. 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?

21. 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

22. 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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