What is creativity? (2024)

California State University,Northridge

• Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate orrecognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be usefulin solving problems, communicating with others, and entertainingourselves and others. (page 396)

• Three reasons why people are motivated to be creative:
  1. need for novel, varied, and complex stimulation
  2. need to communicate ideas and values
  3. need to solve problems (page 396)

• In order to be creative, you need to be able to viewthings in new ways or from a different perspective. Among otherthings, you need to be able to generate new possibilities or newalternatives. Tests of creativity measure not only the number ofalternatives that people can generate but the uniqueness of thosealternatives. the ability to generate alternatives or to seethings uniquely does not occur by change; it is linked to other,more fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility,tolerance of ambiguity or unpredictability, and the enjoyment ofthings heretofore unknown. (page 394)

• ..."creative" refers to novel products of value, as in"The airplane was a creative invention." "Creative" also refers tothe person who produces the work, as in, ?Picasso was creative." "Creativity," then refers both to the capacity to produce suchworks, as in "How can we foster our employees' creativity?" and tothe activity of generating such products, as in "Creativityrequires hard work." (page 4)
  
• All who study creativity agree that for something to becreative, it is not enough for it to be novel: it must have value,or be appropriate to the cognitive demands of the situation." (page 4)

• Ways that "creativity" is commonly used:
  1. Persons who express unusual thoughts, who are interestingand stimulating - in short, people who appear to unusually bright.
  2. People who experience the world in novel and original ways. These are (personally creative) individuals whose perceptions arefresh, whose judgements are insightful, who may make importantdiscoveries that only they know about.
  3. Individuals who have changes our culture in some important way. Because their achievement are by definition public, it is easier towrite about them. (e.g., Leonardo, Edison, Picasso, Einstein,etc.) (pages 25-26)

• The Systems Model of Creativity: (pages 27-28)
  1. the creative domain, which is nested in culture -the symbolic knowledge shred by a particular society or by humanityas a whole (e.g., visual arts)
  2. the field, which includes all the gatekeepers of thedomain (e.g., art critics, art teachers, curators of museums, etc.)
  3. the individual person, who using the symbols of thegiven domain (such as music, engineering, business, mathematics)has a new idea or sees a new pattern, and when this novelty isselected by the appropriate field for inclusion into the relevantdomain

• Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes anexisting domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a newone...What counts is whether the novelty he or she produces isaccepted for inclusion in the domain." (page 28)
• Characteristics of the creative personality: (pages 58-73)
  1. Creative individuals have a great deal of energy, but theyare also often quiet and at rest.
  2. Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at thesame time.
  3. Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness anddiscipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
  4. Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasyant one end, and rooted sense of reality at the other.
  5. Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on thecontinuum between extroversion and introversion.
  6. Creative individuals are also remarkable humble and proud atthe same time.
  7. Creative individuals to a certain extent escape rigid genderrole stereotyping and have a tendency toward androgyny.
  8. Generally, creative people are thought to be rebellious andindependent.
  9. Most creative persons are very passionate about their work, yetthey can be extremely objective about it as well.
  10. The openness and sensitivity of creative individuals oftenexposes them to suffering pain yet also a great deal ofenjoyment.