The concept of creativity Monday The concept of creativity

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

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

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

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

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)

Distribution of creativity as a trait

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 .......

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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”

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

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

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

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)

Example: what can we do with these elements?

Constraints Marketing & advertisement domain Metaphorical meaning Synthesis of elements

Product

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

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

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

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

Four dots problem

Bad solutions

Good solution

Creative solution

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