3 Points for today’s lecture

1. 3 Points for today’s lecture • Definition – what is creativity? • Scientific approaches to creativity • Cox; Guilford; Torrance; Mednick; Weisberg; Finke; Sternberg • Practical approaches • De Bono; Osborne

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 1975-1994 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 • 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 = .16. Simonton (1975): r = 0. • Cox: Highest persistence + OK intelligence > Highest intelligence + OK persistence

7. Psychometric Approach - Guilford • 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 • 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 of Creative Thinking • Asking questions – write out all questions 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. • Product Improvement – ways to change a toy monkey to make it more fun

10. Psychometric Approach - Mednick • Mednick – Remote Associates Test • Creative thinking involves forming new relations among elements, such that relations are useful or match a standard. Example test items: • Cake Blue Cottage _____? • Surprise Line Birthday _____? • Task: find word that goes with all three in a line. • Quick & objective test – but is it a good theory?

11. Psychometric Approaches - Sternberg • 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) – products of creative processes are remarkable, not the processes themselves.

13. Cognitive Approach – Weisberg & Alba 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 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 • Csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1996) – creativity requires 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 – convincing people the idea is great.

19. Sternberg & Lubart’s Investment Theory • Requires confluence of six resources: • knowledge • intellect • thinking style • personality, • motivation • and environment.

20. 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

21. Practical Approaches • Primary concern is developing creativity • Secondary concern is understanding creativity • No concern with testing ideas empirically • Does the commercial success of some practical approaches damage the scientific study of creativity, as Sternberg & Ben-Zeev claim?

22. 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

23. 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 inhibitory