Background Work on Creativity

1. Background Work on Creativity 鄭晉昌 中央大學人力資源管理研究所教授

2. Creativity as a Neglected Research Topic • J. P. Guilford (1950) in his APA presidential address, challenged psychologists to address what he found to be neglected but extremely important attribute: Creativity. He reported less than two-tenths of one percent of the entries in Psychological Abstracts up to 1950 focused on creativity. • R. J. Sternberg & T. Lubart (1996) analyzed the no. of creativity references in Psychological Abstracts from 1975 to 1994 and found that only one-half of one percent of the articles concerned creativity.

3. Mystical Approaches • The creative person was seen as an empty vessel that a divine being filled with inspiration • Creativity is something that just doesn’t lend itself to scientific study, because it si a more spiritual process.

4. Pragmatic Approaches • This approach concerned primarily with developing creativity, secondarily with understanding it, but almost not at all with testing the validity of their ideas about it. • De Bono’s lateral thinking skills • Osborn’s synectics • Adams & Von Oech’s role play approaches as explorer, artist, judge and warrior to construct a series of false beliefs that interfere with or challenge creativity functioning in order to foster creativity productivity.

5. Psychodynamic Approach (1) • Psychodynamic approach can be considered the first of the major twentieth-century theoretical approaches to the study of creativity. These approaches relied on case studies of eminent creators. • These approaches has been criticized historically because of the difficulty of measuring proposed theoretical constructs. • Representative figures: Freud, Kubie • Compensation process: Creative work as a way to express their unconscious wishes in a publicly acceptable fashion. These unconscious wishes may concern power, riches, fame, honor, or love.

6. Psychodynamic Approach (2) • Adaptive regression & elaboration process: Adaptive regression is the primary process indicating intrusion of unmodulated thought in consciousness. Unmodulated thought can occur during active problem solving, but often occur during sleep, introxication from drugs, fantasies, or daydreams, or psychoses. Elaboration, the secondary process, refers to the reworking and transformation of primary process material through reality-oriented, ego-controlled thinking. • Adaptive regression and elaboration process occurs in the stage of preconscious, which falls between conscious reality and the encrypted unconscious, is the true source of creativity.

7. Psychometric Approaches (1) • These approaches use tests or scales for measuring creativity • Guilford (1950) used Unusual Uses Test for measuring “divergent thinking” • Torrance (1974) developed the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking that consist of several simple verbal and figural tasks involving divergent thinking plus other problem-solving skills. The tests can scored for fluency, flexibility, originalityandelaboration. Subtests of the Torrance battery includes asking questions, product improvement, unusual uses, circles.

8. Psychometric Approaches (2) • Some psychologists, such as Cox, Terman, Merrill, found high creative persons usual have high IQ by examining bio-data. • Cox in his research concludes that “(creative persons are) high but not highest in intelligence, combined with the greatest degree of persistent, will achieve greater eminence that the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence.”

9. Psychometric Approaches (3) • Three basic findings concerning conventional conceptions of intelligence as measured by IQ and creativity are generally agreed on • Creative people tend to show above average IQs, often above 120. • Above an IQ of 120, IQ does not seem to matter as much to creativity as it does below 120 • The correlation between IQ and creativity is variable, usually ranging from weak to moderate

10. Psychometric Approaches (4) • Positive side of psychometric approaches • The tests facilitated research by providing brief, easy to administer • Research was now possible with “ordinary people” • Negative side of psychometric approaches • Paper-and-pencil tests are trivial, inadequate measures of creativity • Critics suggested that neither fluency, flexibility, originality, nor elaboration scores captured the concept of creativity. Other possibilities include using the social consensus of judges. • Some researchers rejected the assumption that noneminent samples could shed light on eminent levels of creativity

11. Cognitive Approaches • These approaches seek to understand the mental representations and processes underlying creative thought • Weiberg (1986, 1988, 1993, 1999) has proposed that creativity involves essentially ordinary cognitive processes (ex. analogical transfer) yielding extraordinary products. • Finke, Ward, and Smith (1992) have proposed the Gene-plore model • A generative phase: an individual constructs mental representations referred to as pre-inventive structures, which have properties promoting creative discoveries. • An exploratory phase: these properties are used to come up with creative ideas. A number of mental processes may enter into these phases of creative invention, such as retrieval, association, synthesis, transformation, analogical transfer, and categorical reduction.

12. Social-personality Approaches (1) • These approaches have focused on personality variables, motivational variables, and socio-cultural environment as source of creativity. • Representative figures: Amabile, Barron, Eysenck, Gough, MacKinnon • Relevant personality traits concerning personality include independence of judgment, self-confidence, attraction to complexity, aesthetic orientation, and risk taking.

13. Social-personality Approaches (2) • Motivation factors concerning creativity include intrinsic motivation, need for order, need for achievement • Social environment factors concerning creativity include cultural diversity, war, availability of role models, availability of resources, and number of competitors in a domain

14. Evolutional Approaches • D. Cample (1960) suggested the same mechanisms that have been applied to the study of the evolution of organism could be applied to the evolution of (creative) ideas. • The idea underlying this approach is that there are two basic steps in the generation and propagation of creative ideas: • The first step is blind variation • The second step is selective retention • Sternberg (1997) argued that good creators may or may not have more ideas than other people but they have better ideas.

15. Confluence Approaches (1) • These approaches hypothesized that multiple components must converge for creativity to occur. • (Amabile) People implicit theory contain combination of cognitive and personality elements, such as “connect ideas”, “sees similarities and differences”, “has flexibility”, “has aesthetic taste”, “is unorthodox”, “is motivated”, “is inquisitive”, and “questions societal norms”. • (Gruber) Evolving systems model hypothesized that a person’s knowledge, purpose, and affect grow over time, amplify deviations that an individual encounters, and lead to creative products.

16. Confluence Approaches (2) • (Csikszentmihalyi) has taken a different “System” approach and highlights the interaction of the individual, domain, and field. An individual draws on information in a domain and transforms or extends it via cognitive processes, personality traits, and motivation. The field, consisting of people who control or influence a domain, evaluates and selects new ideas. The domain, a culturally defined symbol system, preserves and transmits creative products to other individuals and future generations.

17. Confluence Approaches (3) • (Gardner) Multiple Intelligence Framework indicates most greatest creative persons actually had strengths in more than one intelligence and that they had notably weakness in others. First, they tended to have a matrix of support at the time of their creative breakthroughs.Second, they tended to drive a “Faustian bargain” whereby they gave up many of the pleasures people typically enjoy in life in order to attain extraordinary success in their careers. • Sigmund Freud (intrapersonal), Albert Einstein (logical-mathematical), Pablo Picasso (spatial), Igor Stravinsky (musical), T. S. Eliot (linguistic), Martha Graham (bodily-kinesthetic), Mohandas Gandhi (interpersonal) • (Sternberg) Investment Theory of Investment…

18. The Investment Theory of Creativity as a Decision 鄭晉昌 中央大學人力資源管理研究所教授

19. What is Investment Theory of Creativity? • The theory concerns the decision to be creativeand is based on the notion that creative people decide to buy low and sell high in the world of ideas --- that is, they generate ideas that tend to “defy the crowd” (buy low) and then, when they have persuaded many people, they sell high, meaning they move on to the next unpopular idea.

20. Experimental Materials for Research in Investment Theory • Research within the framework has used tasks to experiment and to support the model • Writing short stories using unusual titles • Drawing pictures with unusual themes • Devising creative advertisements for boring products • Solving unusual scientific problems

21. Six Distinct but Interrelated Resources Required for Creativity (1) • Intellectual abilities • The creative skill to see problems in new ways and escape the bounds of conventional thinking • The analytic skill to recognize which of one’s ideas are worth pursuing and which are not • The practical-contextual skill to know how to persuade others of the value of one’s ideas • Knowledge • One needs to decide to use one’s past knowledge, but also decide to let the knowledge become a hindrance rather than a help. • Styles of thinking • A legislative style is particularly important for creativity

22. Six Distinct but Interrelated Resources Required for Creativity (2) • Personality • Willingness to overcome obstacles, willingness to take sensible risks, willingness to tolerate ambiguity, and self-efficacy • Motivation • Intrinsic, and task-oriented motivation is essential to creativity • Environment • Supportive environment for “crowd-defying” ideas

23. Hypothesis of Confluence of Six Components • There may be thresholds for some components below which creativity is not possible regardless of the levels of other components • Partial compensation may occur in which a strength on one component counteracts a weakness on another component • Interactions may occur between components, such as intelligence and motivation, in which high levels on both components could multiplicatively enhance creativity

24. Developing Creativity as a Decision (1) • Redefine problems • Question and analyze assumptions • Do not assume that creative ideas sell themselves: Sell them • Encourage idea generation • Recognize that knowledge is a double-edged sward and act accordingly • Encourage children to identify and surmount obstacles

25. Developing Creativity as a Decision (2) • Encourage sensible risk-taking • Encourage tolerance of ambiguity • Help children build self-efficacy • Help children find what they love to do • Teach children the importance of delaying gratification • Role-model creativity • Cross-fertilize ideas

26. Developing Creativity as a Decision (3) • Allow time for creative thinking • Instruct and assess for creativity • Reward creativity • Allow mistakes • Take responsibility for both successes and failures • Encourage creative collaboration • Imagine things from others’ points of view • Maximize person-environment fit

27. The Propulsion Theory of Creative Contribution 鄭晉昌 中央大學人力資源管理研究所教授

28. Views of Creative Contributions (1) • Creative contribution as paradigm shift • Kuhn (1970) distinguished between normal and revolutionary science • Gardner’s distinguish five types of creative contributions • Solving a well-defined problem • Devising an encompassing theory • Creating a “frozen work” • Performing a ritualized work • Rendering a high-stakes performance

29. Views of Creative Contributions (2) • Maslow (1967) distinguish two types of creative contributions • Primary creativity is the kind of a person uses to become self-actualized • Secondary creativity is the kind that leads to creative achievements typically recognized by a field

30. Eight Types of Creative Contribution • Contributions that accept current paradigm • Replication • Redefinition • Forward incrementation • Advance forward incrementation • Contributions that reject current paradigm and attempt to replace them • Redirection • Reconstruction / redirection • Reinitiation • Contributions that merge disparate current paradigms • Integration

31. Replication (1) • Replications are important because they can help either to establish the validity or invalidity of contributions, or the utility or lack of utility of approaches

32. Replication (2) • Example • Jensen (1982) and others argued that correlations between scores on choice reaction-time tests and scores on intelligence tests suggest that individual differences in human intelligence could be traced to individual differences in velocity of neural condition. However, such interpretation of results were somewhat speculative. • Venon and Mori (1992) tested and seemingly confirmed that Jensen’s hypothesis. They developed a paradigm whereby they could measures speed of neural condition in the arm. They found that neural conduction velocity did indeed predict scores on conventional tests of intelligence. However, Wickett & Vernon (1994) failed to replicate the study.

33. Redefinition (1) • Work of “redefinition” type is judged to be creative to the extent that redefinition of the field is different from the earlier definition (novelty) and to the extent that the redefinition is judged to be plausible or correct (quality)

34. Redefinition (2) • Example • Spearman (1904, 1927) who invented factor analysis and used this technique to argue that underlying performance on all tests of mental abilities is a general factor, which he labeled g. • Thomson (1939) proposed that although Spearman was correct in positing a general factor underlying performance on mental tests, he was incorrect in his interpretation of it. According to Thomson, the general factor actually represents the working of multitudinous “bonds.” These bonds are all alleged to be those mental processes common to performance on all mental tests. He proposed to change not the empirical status of work on intelligence and argued that the field was not where Spearman and others thought it to be.

35. Forward Incrementation (1) • Forward incrementation represents the most common type of creative contribution. It occurs when a piece of work takes the field at the point where it is and moves it forward from that point in the space of contributions in the direction it is already going.

36. Forward Incrementation (2) • For example • After the initial groundbreaking study of Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) on cognitive dissonance, huge numbers of follow-up studies were done on phenomena of cognitive dissonance and cognitive consistency. • Most studies published in scientific journals can be characterized as forward incrementation

37. Advance Forward Incrementation (1) • An advance forward incrementation is a work whose potential typically is not realized at its premiere, yet is later recognized as a step along the historical path of a genre, and then seen as a work ahead of its time.

38. Advance Forward Incrementation (2) • Example • Royer (1971) published an article that was an information-processing analysis of the digit-symbol task on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). In the article, Royer showed hoe information-processing analysis could be used to decompose performance on the task and understand the elementary information processes underlying the performance. Royer’s work forshadowed the later work of Hunt and Sternberg, but his work went largely unnoticed.

39. Redirection (1) • Redirection involves accepting the field where it is at a given time but attempting to move it in a new direction. Work of this type is creative to the extent that it moves a field in a direction (novelty) and to the extent that this direction is seen as desirable for research (quality)

40. Redirection (2) • Example • The pioneering Hunt, Frost, and Lunneborg (1973) article mentioned earlier suggested that researchers of intelligence use cognitive-psychological paradigms to study intelligence. The basic idea was to correlate scores on cognitive tasks (such as lexical access) with scores on psychometric tests. • Sternberg (1977) used cognitive techniques different from that suggested by Hunt. In particular, he suggested that complex cognitive tasks (such as analogies & classifications – high levels of intelligent thought) be used instead of simple cognitive tasks and that the goal should be decomposed information processing on these tasks into its elementary information-processing components.

41. Reconstruction (1) • The creators suggests that the field should move backward to a previous point but from there move in a direction divergent from that it had taken.

42. Reconstruction (2) • Example • B. F. Skinner (1972) analysis of creativity represents an example of reconstruction. Skinner apparently was perturbed that the behavioristic principles that he and his colleagues believed applied to all behavior. The 1972 paper was, in large part, an argument that the field of creativity had lost its foundations, and that it needed to return to the kinds of behavioristic analyses that Skinner believed he and others had shown could account for creative behavior.

43. Reinitiation (1) • In reinitiation, a contributor suggests that a field or subfield has reached an undesirable point or has exhausted itself moving in the direction in which it is moving. But rather than suggesting that the field or subfield move in a different direction from where it is. This form of creative contribution represents a major paradigm shift.

44. Reinitiation (2) • Example • Spearman (1904) reinvented the filed of intelligence theory and research by his invention of factor analysis and by proposing his two-factor theory based on his factor-analytic results. Spearman’s contribution was put theorizing about intelligence on a firm quantitative footing. • Binet & Simon (1916) reinvented the field of intelligence measurement. Whereas Galton (1883) has proposed that intelligence should be understood in terms of simple psychological processes, Binet and Simon proposed that intelligence should be understood in terms of higher-order processes of judgment. For the most part, the measurements of intelligence today are still based on this notion of Binet and Simon.

45. Integration (1) • The creator puts together two types of ideas previously seen as unrelated or even as opposed.

46. Integration (2) • Example • Bob Silvers (1997) tasks George Seurat’s pointillist technique of using many small dots to form a larger work and combines it with the field photography.

47. General Issues • Creative contributions can vary in novelty and quality. • Types of creative contributions do not immediately translate into levels of creative contributions • What is viewed as creative will depend on the match between what an individual has to offer and what the context is willing to accept and value.

48. Understand Creativity-related Phenomena via the Propulsion Model (1) • The mode suggests that positive or negative reactions to a given contribution are likely to vary with the type of creativity evinced in a given creative contribution. • The propulsion model helps psychologists better understand the nature of the relation between creativity and leadership. • The propulsion model helps address the question of whether programs based on artificial intelligence are creative.

49. Understand Creativity-related Phenomena via the Propulsion Model (2) • The propulsion model may be relevant to the long-standing issue of the extent to which creativity is domain-specific or domain-general. It is speculative that the ability to do reasonably successful forward incrementations may be largely domain-general and may even be highly correlated with scores on tests of conventional (analytic) abilities. However, the ability to perform a reinitiation may be quite a bit more domain-specific, requiring a sense or even feeding for a field that goes well beyond the kinds of more generalized analytical abilities.