Now that we understand that there are many different components, parts, and perspectives on what creativity is, I would like to piece together the core arguments in each of these theories to define creativity, not as an single entity, but as an broad category. Wallas outlined the stages that lead to a creative insight: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. The third component, analytical ability, is often measured by traditional intelligence tests. Intelligence contributes using three elements drawn from Sternberg's triarchic theory (later expanded into the theory of successful intelligence). This model is used to explain differing views on … To name just a few, we highlight KEYS (Amabile, et al., 1996); the Team Climate for Innovation (TCI; Anderson & West, 1998; West & Farr, 1989); the Siegal Scale of Support for Innovation (SSSI; Siegel & Kaemmerer, 1978), and the Creative Climate Questionnaire (CCQ, Ekvall, 1996). -b. Adaptive flexibility, or the ability to produce responses that are novel and high in quality, This represents the base model by which several researchers would take and alter to produce their new theories of creativity years later. Since this time, things have not slowed down, and the sheer volume of research on creativity continues to increase. Major test developers may not be willing to support extensive test development efforts for tests of such limited potential use. Renzulli distinguishes between two types of giftedness – schoolhouse (i.e., what would be measured by an ability or achievement test) and creative-production. The two articles that constituted that debate (Baer, 1998b; Plucker, 1998) addressed this crucial domain specificity/generality question, a hugely significant one for creativity research and theory. This change in the rudimentary parts of the creative process has caused our overarching view of creativity to switch from viewing it as a personality trait to being a broad category that better encompasses all types of creativity than a singular model could ever hope to. The componential theory of creativity is a comprehensive model of the social and psychological components necessary for an individual to produce creative work. What creativity is & is not (4 bullets) It was first articulated by Teresa Amabile in 1983 and has undergone considerable evolution since then. This theory breaks down how personality effects creativity into two options: The evolution of creative theory has brought our understanding of what creativity is from Guilford's solely cognitive representation in the 1900's to our modern day model that includes intellect, context (problem type and motivation), and personality each as factors of influence. This article presents a triangular theory of creativity. These skills include tolerance for ambiguity, self-discipline, and risk-taking. Creativity-relevant skills are personal factors that are associated with creativity. At the mini-c level of creativity, what one creates might not be revolutionary but it is new and meaningful to them. Jausovec (1989), comparing the effects of positive, negative and neutral mood on analogical transfer in insight problems, reported a complex set of findings. Creativity theory is a set of models and concepts for explaining creativity, the act of creating something non-obvious that is unusually valuable. He stated that there were five types of operations, four types of content, and six types of products adding to a total of one hundred and twenty different types of possible metal tasks (he would later expand this number to one hundred and eighty different mental tasks, but for now let's focus on the original one hundred and twenty.) For this reason, and because creativity theories have historically been one-size-fits-all theories, domain general theories of creativity continue to have great appeal. Even with the three criteria for creativity … Creativity is an elusive concept that has intrigued researchers for years. (Plucker, 1998, p. 179), J. Baer, in Encyclopedia of Creativity (Second Edition), 2011. This chapter provides a comparative review of major contemporary theories of creativity. The theories are entitled creativity as a function of behavior, of personality, and of cognitive processes, respectively. They found no support for the notion that the high creatives were accessing more remote associates earlier on and argued that “creativity … may not necessarily imply a special organization of associative memory, but it may rather rely on advanced executive abilities allowing for a highly effective access [to] and processing of memory content” (p. 287). To give a sense of the significance of this issue in the world of creativity research and theory, the Creativity Research Journal has published just one invited debate (in the form of a pair of Point-Counterpoint articles) in its history. Wertheimer, 1958). Ultimately, creativity is not about one thing, but about a system of things. General, domain-transcending theories – if true – would have far greater power than domain specific theories that account only for creativity in a limited content domain. Figure 2. (2015) also deeply considered the connections between creativity theories that are dual-process, and in more general dual-process theories of cognition. In one task, a facilitating effect of positive mood on an analogical transfer task was obtained. As the evidence surrounding the importance of interaction between associative and executive processing in creative thought continues to emerge, at both the behavioral and neural levels, many have articulated a need for dual-process theoretical frameworks that can more fully account for this interplay. She argued that three variables were needed for creativity to occur: domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills, and task motivation. Divergent thinking as a general class of thinking skills is still a useful construct, however, both (a) because it makes this wide range of skills more coherent and easy to conceptualize and (b) because it makes it simpler to postulate and identify the appropriate domain-specific divergent thinking skills that will be important within any given domain or microdomain. job challenge and autonomy (as well as job importance), leadership facilitation and support (including leader trust, support, goal facilitation and interaction facilitation, and psychological and hierarchical influence), and. In other words, intrinsic motivation determines the extent to which domain relevant skills and creativity-relevant skills will be fully and appropriately applied towards successful creative performance. Atchley, Strayer, & Atchley, 2012; Ball & Stevens, 2009; Beaty & Silvia, 2012, 2013; Benedek, Franz, Heene, & Neubauer, 2012; Chein & Weisberg, 2014; Gilhooly, Fioratou, Anthony, & Wynn, 2007; Gupta, Jang, Mednick, & Huber, 2012; Nusbaum & Silvia, 2011; Silvia, 2008; Silvia & Beaty, 2012, Beaty, Silvia, Nusbaum, Jauk, & Benedek (2014), Beaty, Benedek, Kaufman, and Silvia (2015), Abraham, Rutter, Bantin, & Hermann, 2018; Beaty et al., 2015; Heinonen et al., 2016, The Effect of Mood On Creativity in the Innovative Process, Even if we keep strictly within the specific task domain of creative problem-solving, however, several findings anomalous to the positive mood-enhance-, Domain Specificity: Introduction and Overview, Within the field of creativity research, psychologists tend to stick to the study of humans. Much of the core creativity research and theory is rooted in the arts, but writing and visual art have been more traditional subjects. Guilford's address, and his conceptualization of divergent and convergent thinking, sparked a massive influx of research on creativity. In his article “Analysis of creativity” Mel Rhodes (1961) analyzed 40 definitions of creativity and 16 definitions of imagination, and developed and proved the holistic model of creativity – 4 Ps, representing it as the interaction of 4 factors: process, product, person, and press. Good ideas do not always sell themselves – the creative person needs to devise strategies for and expend effort in selling those ideas. There has not been a synthesized collection and exchange of ideas between the two communities until now, however, despite the clear benefits to understanding the benefits of creativity in both an evolutionary and cognitive sense. A good example is Mednick's (1962) seminal Psychological Review paper, The associative basis of the creative process. PLAY. knm763. Another neural network identified as important for creativity is the salience network, which includes the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula (Abraham, Rutter, Bantin, & Hermann, 2018; Beaty et al., 2015; Heinonen et al., 2016). Match. The importance of context was further stressed by Woodman, Sawyer and Griffin (1993). Thus there are many different divergent thinking skills rather than a single divergent thinking skill. Organizational creativity research has its intellectual roots both in creativity research in general, which has been conducted primarily within psychology, and on macro-level approaches to the study of organizational innovation. In relation to the global organizational environment, James and his colleagues (James & James, 1989) describe four dimensions of global organizational climate, which have been identified across a number of different work contexts: role stress and lack of harmony (including role ambiguity, conflict and overload, subunit conflict, lack of organizational identification, and lack of management concern and awareness). The investment theory of creativity, proposed in collaboration with Todd Lubart, holds that creativity is in large part a decision. Climate refers to the perceptions of the work environment and the term can designate descriptions and perceptions at the individual, group, or organizational level of analysis. West, Claudia A. Sacramento, in Handbook of Organizational Creativity, 2012. In addition to reviewing existing dual-process theories of creativity, Sowden et al. knm763. The chapter is organized into two major sections. For any real conceptual progress to occur, existing theories must be continually constrained by more and better data and analyses, and generate new constructs for measurement and analysis in their turn. On the minus side, many theories, generally speaking, have not progressed far beyond earlier speculative claims and have often failed to spark the identification of new phenomena and counterintuitive testable hypotheses. What creativity is & is not (4 bullets) ), R.J. Sternberg, J.C. Kaufman, in Encyclopedia of Creativity (Second Edition), 2011. What is different about the study of creativity is that in other fields of research the newest theory often replaces the older theories. There has been one outstanding edited book on the topic—Animal Innovation by Simon Reader and Kevin Laland (Oxford University Press, 2003)—but it was, with some exceptions, focused on work by animal researchers. This idea is the foundation for a rich stream of research that has strongly contributed to the understanding of organizational creativity and innovation. While being closely related to cognitive ability, personality is another internal factor that affects the creative process. According to the creativity theory, we no longer care (or have never cared) about social approval when in the creative zone. Examples of his components of creativity include Guilford's divergent thinking components (fluency, flexibility, and originality), and being open to new experiences, curious, willing to take risks, and sensitive to aesthetic characteristics. Based on qualitative and quantitative work, the authors identified the following eight dimensions: Focusing on a theory of psychological processes, Ekval and colleagues (Ekvall, 1996; Ekvall & Ryhammar, 1999; Ekvall & Tangebergandersson, 1986; Isaksen, Lauer, Ekvall, & Britz, 2000) proposed a 9 dimensional model integrating: We note that other models more strongly embedded in organizational management theory have also been developed (e.g., Abbey & Dickson, 1983; Tesluk, Farr, &. Learn. Vosburg (1998b) made similar observations. An important part of this process will be to incorporate findings from more general dual-process theories of cognition. Speculating on the gross disregard of creativity up to that point, Guilford (1950) argued that many to that point had viewed genius and creativity as largely synonymous, with intelligence seen as being able to capture most of the meaningful variance in individual creative capacity. The second element, practical ability, is needed to communicate creative ideas to other people (i.e., ‘selling’ an idea). Because creativity is as dynamic and diverse as previously stated, the need for multiple theories to be correct to fit any given context arises. Central to this ability is being able to redefine problems. Functionality:The idea needs to actually work or possess some degree of usefulness. Guilford. It is quite possible that both domain specificity and generality are true, each in part and in its own way. It is interesting to note that the task where positive mood was found to be detrimental is a typical insight problem (the Radiation Problem; Duncker, 1945), held in the classical literature to be a representative indicator of core creative processes in creative problem-solving (e.g. James C. Kaufman, in Creativity and the Performing Artist, 2017. Creativity testers will necessarily have to determine in which domain(s) of creativity they are interested, because under a domain-specific theory of creativity, general creative thinking skill becomes an empty construct. (p. 16). In order to contextualize the importance of climate on organizational creativity and innovation it is useful to look at how this literature evolved. The theories themselves each argue that creativity is caused by different factors. In this model, a creative person is like a talented Wall Street investor. (It might also make creativity less interesting, but because such a theory is impossible, we will never know. This synthetic ability includes three knowledge-acquisition components. Similarly, domain specificity of creativity means that creativity testing as currently practiced is necessarily inadequate and of limited validity. Gravity. Although these efforts had already been initiated (e.g., Baldridge & Burnham, 1975), the social–psychological approach brought a new impetus to this research agenda. The circles representing creativity and intelligence overlap. Innovation can be seen as encompassing two major stages, the development of ideas— creativity; followed by their implementation—the introduction of new and improved products, services, and ways of doing things at work. This constitutes a deviation from a majority of cognitive psychological research, though this focus is unsurprising given that creativity has been defined by the content of generated thought and the relatively clear demarcation between the functional purpose of generation and evaluation. Michael A. Even as psychology became well established as a science, the study of creativity remained largely untouched by empirical inquiry and conceptions of autonomy and control remained theoretically imprecise and ill-articulated. Biologists or ethologists usually either focus on animal problem solving or else consider creativity to be an evolutionary adaptation. John Baer, in Domain Specificity of Creativity, 2016, If large-scale, domain-general creativity theory is impossible, why is it so attractive? In the article, The shifting sands of creative thinking: Connections to dual-process theory, Sowden, Pringle, and Gabora (2015) systematically review the multiple theories in creativity that can be conceptualized as dual-process in nature. We react to things we have seen and our experiences; that is from where we build our new ideas. Vygotsky believed that creativity arises from any human activity that produces something new. Despite the well-developed body of research that has been amassed on autonomous processes in creativity, there remain threads of research that connect back to the notion that intelligence and executive functions, which include inhibition, interference control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility (see Diamond, 2013), are indeed important for creative thought. Another theory that views creativity as a mix of different abilities is Amabile's componential model of creativity. West’s team climate model (1990) and Amabile and colleagues’ work environment model (1996) are arguably the most widely validated models of climate for creativity and innovation. -b. Associational fluency, or the ability to generate a list of words, each of which is associated with a given word. Spell. Sowden et al. Of these one hundred and twenty different mental tasks Guilford identified one specific operation as "divergent production" and marked it as being a vital component of creativity. Tests of creativity in specific content domains – which might use the consensual assessment technique to evaluate the creativity of products, or might instead find simpler (perhaps paper-and-pencil) techniques for assessing domain specific skills – would still be possible in principle, but they could be of only limited range and applicability. Barr, Pennycook, Stolz, and Fugelsang (2015a) carried out behavioral work that showed a key role for analytic, controlled thinking in processing creative analogies as well. Specifically, Unworth looked two aspects of context:  The problem type and motivation. Creativity theories must either become domain specific themselves or find some general approach to dealing with these domain-based differences. For instance, Beaty et al. Moving from the implications of domain specificity for creativity theory to its implications for creativity testing, a domain specific understanding of creativity provides a very direct challenge to existing notions of how to test creativity. Looking at resting-state connectivity, Beaty et al. An original recipe that produces a dish that tastes too terrible to eat cannot be creative. Creativity can be defined in many different ways because it is such a broad term. Creativity Theories Relevant to Innovation (Ref. We will use this model as a way of briefly highlighting theories and research that will be helpful background material in reading this book. Our vision was for a dialog between those who study creativity in animals and those who study the same topic in humans. In another task, positive mood was detrimental to performance, whereas in a third task, no significant differences between the different moods appeared. If creativity is domain specific, what exactly is one to test? This statement characterizes the historically difficult relationship existent between gifted individuals and society and, between science and creativity research" (Bergquist, "A Comparative View of Creativity Theories", p.1). Finally, selective comparison involves relating new information to old information in a novel way. Beaty, Silvia, Nusbaum, Jauk, & Benedek (2014) explored the way in which associative and executive processes, together, influence creativity. An implication of the investment theory of creativity is … Their review showed that much of the historical theorization of dual-processes in creativity research has centered upon the distinction between generation and evaluation, rather than autonomy and control. One way of organizing creativity research is the "Four P" model, which distinguishes the creative person, process, product, and press (i.e., environment) (Rhodes, 1961). Neuroscientific research has shown an increase in frontopolar cortex activation when individuals identify or generate more creative analogies (with higher creativity quantified by increased semantic distance between the constituent elements of an analogy; see Green, 2016 for a review; also see Kenett, 2018 for a review of quantitative measure of semantic distance in creativity research). Unsworth argues that context was just as important of a factor of creativity as cognitive ability was. We sought a wide variety of contributors and commenters, both in terms of fields (we span psychology, biology, neuroscience, engineering, business, ecology, and education) and location (the contributors come from 12 countries). -a. Spontaneous flexibility, or the ability to demonstrate flexibility. Before I am able to explain several of the leading theories of creativity, one must understand a confusing intricacy surrounding this topic of study. theory to other creativity theories, the article describes this theory’s evolution and impact. The Investment Theory of Creativity by Sternberg, creativity has six sources that require confluence: Intelligence, Knowledge, Style of thinking, Personality, Motivation, and Learning environmental contexts. (2015) suggest that to “further reconcile the associative and executive theories, a dual-process model may be the best approach” and could “provide a promising approach to understanding the relative contributions of automatic and controlled processes in creative thought” (p. 1195). ScienceDirect ® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. ScienceDirect ® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. 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