Lesson 3: Defining Creativity

How Can we Define Creativity?

The standard definition of creativity.

Since the 1950s, social scientists and educators have attempted to study creativity and the first part of that is generating an acceptable definition. Not surprisingly, just agreeing on a definition can be controversial. However, through the decades a standard definition has emerged: it is generally agreed that creativity is the ability to produce work that is both novel (original and unexpected), and valuable (appropriate, useful, functional, and meets the constraints of the task). This has come to be known as the standard definition of creativity (Runco & Jaegar, 2012). It is important to note that this definition is twofold:

(1) A creative response is first and foremost novel - it has to be unique/original. This seems rather uncontroversial in most discussions about what it means to be creative. There must be an aspect of “newness” from some point of view, such as from the point of view of the artist (new to him) or the culture (something never seen before within a group).

(2) A creative response is also valuable, as defined within a particular context. The value may be to a culture or group like Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans Links to an external site.(1962) or the value may be to an individual, like a child doodling and experiencing insight into how colors balance each other; in this case the personal insight is valuable to the child’s growth. Many synonyms for value have been offered throughout the history of creativity research such as relevance, usefulness, significance and appropriateness to the situation or task. Importantly, though specific ideas about value may change across time, people and situations, some idea of value remains important to a definition of creativity.

Originality without value or relevance may range from silly to psychotic. Also, there are many valuable contributions that are not original, such as following a formula to generate the right answer. This sort of value is generally not considered creative.

According to most of the literature on creativity, whether we are talking about fine art or design, complex aeronautical engineering or what to wear to your next work event, a creative expression or solution includes both novelty and value.

Issues in defining creativity

Though the standard definition is widely accepted many issues remain. Novel to who? Value according to what standard? The standard definition is broad enough to capture creativity from many perspectives, but this openness generates questions about how to apply the definition of creativity across these differing perspectives. For example, how do the definitional features of creativity apply when we talking about a creative person versus a creative product? What about when are we talking about a mental state, like the process an individual experiences during a creative period? Does our definition retain the same sense when we apply to the initial attempts of a child singing to herself versus the professional attempts of a seasoned composer?

Glück, Ernst & Unger (2002) showed that creativity is defined differently depending upon professional responsibilities. The authors compared 3 groups: a group of “free” artists, i.e. artists who were able to create anything they wanted such as painters, sculptors, and metal object designers to a group of “constrained” artists, i.e. artists who created for a specific goal such as architects and graphic designers to a group psychology students were not engaged professionally in any creative activity. The only aspect of creativity that all three groups agreed on was that a creative person should have many ideas. The free artists did not generally agree on any criteria for evaluating a creative work, whereas more constrained artists strongly agreed on the importance of function in evaluating a creative product. Students only generally agreed that originality is important to creative products. Thus, personal perspective and interaction with the art world confines what is viewed as creative.

There are many perspectives on creativity and the perspective taken constrains the scope of creativity. Thus, many researchers have spent time delineating different perspectives on creativity. One useful delineation is the 4 Ps: Person, Product,Process, and Press (press in this case just means environment, see Kaufman 2009).

Person Perspective - From this perspective, creativity refers to a certain type of person. From this perspective, one may ask if a certain person (like Picasso or your niece) is a creative individual. Further, what makes someone a creative individual?

Product Perspective – From this perspective, creativity refers to a tangible item like a painting, joke, film, or idea. A researcher may evaluate Picasso’s The Old Guitarist as a creative product. A researcher may ask what makes something creative in different contexts?

Process Perspective – From this perspective, creativity refers here to engaging in the task of bringing something new into the world. A researcher from this perspective might ask what are the cognitive steps involved in coming up with a creative product?

Press Perspective – This perspective focuses on the environment in which creativity emerges. Are certain environments more conducive to creativity?

Another distinction found in the creativity literature concerns the scope of the creativity. This distinction is referred to as Big-C vs. little-c creativity:

Big-C creativity is defined as eminent creativity and includes the kind of creativity that changed the field and continues to be known through history (Kaufman, 2009; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009). Big-C creativity includes Nobel-prize winning authors, Picasso-level artists and Darwin-category scientists. Big-C may describe people (like Mark Twain), ideas (like Evolutionary theory) or products (like Picasso’s Old Guitarist). Generally, if there isn’t an encyclopedia entry with more than 100 words on the person or work, it probably doesn’t fall into this category. Big C creativity is legendary creativity, having a huge impact on many people over a large span of time. It is hard to distinguish a person, idea, or object as qualifying for Big-C creativity when it is new. For example, many geniuses are not acknowledged as such in their own lifetime, although this is not always true (Simonton, 1998).

In contrast, little c creativity represents the every day kind of creativity such as adding a new twist to a family recipe, telling amusing jokes in a conversation, or knitting a sweater (Kaufman, 2009; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009). We may not be Picasso, but we may be inspired to draw a unicorn superhero to make our youngest daughter smile, and this certainly seems to qualify as creativity. As we adapt our colors and shadows and revise our image on the basis of feedback (smiles and giggles, perhaps) we are being creative even if these shading and coloring techniques have been discovered before and will do nothing to revolutionize our cultural notions of art. Little-c creativity includes every day problem solving and adaptation (Simonton, 2003) as well as attempts to develop a creative skill (Richardson, 1990; Silvia, Beaty, Nusbaum, Eddington, Levin-Aspenson, Kwapil, 2014).

Kaufman and Begetto (2007, 2009) have proposed that these 2 distinctions are not refined enough; they do not capture the broad scope and meaningful distinctions within sub-genius level creativity. Think about it – does it make sense to include in the same category my 4-year old niece’s attempt to draw her mom, a freshman art student refining her talent and discovering new techniques to express herself and a person who just successfully opened his own art gallery in New York City after many years of experimentation, rejection and revision in the professional art world? All of these would traditionally be lumped in to the “little-c” category and it seems intuitive that there is something missing from this account (Kaufman & Beghetto, 2013).

Thus, 2 new categories have been proposed: mini-C and Pro-C. Mini-C is defined as the creative insights involved in learning (Kaufman & Begetto, 2009). More specifically, the “novel and personally meaningful interpretation of actions and events” (Kaufman, 2009). For example, a 4^th grader learning basic scientific concepts and discovering they could be applied to answer questions about the mysterious noise in the closet after dark is applying new concepts creatively. Another example, used by the authors is that of Helen Keller

It isn’t exactly a new idea that words stand for objects, but her own discovery of this was a personal revolution! Kaufman (2009) goes on to say, “In mini-c, the initial spark of creativity doesn’t have to be held up to the same standards that we use for typical everyday creativity. To qualify as mini-C level creativity, an idea or product doesn’t need to be new and original, necessarily, just new and original to the creator at the time. The quality or appropriateness would also not be held to the same standards as “little-c” creativity.

Kaufman and Beghetto (2007, 2009) further argue for a fourth category: Pro-C. This category includes people who are creative in their professional lives but have not reached the status of eminence. For example, there are over 30 animators listed on the credits for Zootopia Links to an external site.. It is likely that most of them had to be creative, generating novel ideas appropriate to the movie, on a regular basis. This is beyond the level of creativity required to qualify for mini-C and everyday creativity, but is unlikely to be acknowledged as eminent. Thus, Kaufman and Beghetto (2013) define Pro-C category as “expert-level creativity that has not yet attained legendary status” (p. 230).

In their 2013 paper, Kaufman and Beghetto (2013) address the psychological reality of the 4-c system. In that paper, college students were asked to rate 20 behaviors on how creative they thought they were. Behaviors included “A creative action that changes and entire field,” “A personally meaningful new insight’ and some non-creative behaviors such as “following directions carefully.” They found that participants tended to rate non-creative items the lowest, followed by mini-c, rated items conveying little and pro-C creativity about the same, followed by Big-C. In a follow-up study, the authors found that people made clear, intuitive distinctions among all 5 categories (the four Cs plus non-creative behaviors; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2016). It does seem that people instinctively make these distinctions.

Two concepts related to creativity, but distinct from creativity are divergent thinking and cognitive flexibility.

Divergent thinking is the ability to generate multiple ideas from a single starting point. Divergent thinking is usually identified as a sub-component of creativity, although some researchers have used the terms interchangeability (see Sternberg, 2001). For example, in brainstorming you are required to generate several possible solutions or ideas. Divergent thinking is usually contrasted with convergent thinking, which starts from multiple points and seeks the right or best possible solution (Guilford, 1967). For example, answering any multiple-choice question is an example of convergent thinking. When you do the quiz for this lecture, I am asking you to come up with the right or the best answer and there is only one best response. This is the traditional mode of learning and education. Divergent thinking is considered a cognitive process that underlies creativity but is not to be confused with creativity itself (Furnham).

Cognitive flexibility has been defined as the ability to consider multiple aspects of stimuli simultaneously (Cartwright, 2002). Cognitive flexibility is a concept used in different contexts than creativity, but retains the most definitional features of creativity: novel thinking that is appropriate to the situation. Someone with a high degree of cognitive flexibility can see two sides of an issue, see things from another point of view, and consider all possibilities. For example, you must have cognitive flexibility to overcome functional fixedness: When your prior knowledge makes the functions, uses or roles assigned to objects become fixed. Cognitive flexibility is viewed as a personality characteristic that is associated with creativity, but is best thought of as a sort of open-mindedness that may enable creativity.

Creativity is generally defined as something novel and valuable ... but what is considered novel and valuable is determined by the perspective taken. In the next section, we will investigate ways researchers have attempted to measure creativity. As you read, try to think about what perspectives have been or could be adopted for each measure.

Take a minute to take some notes:  Name and describe some different perspectives of creativity.

 

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