creativity

creativity, the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form.

Individual qualities of creative persons

A number of personality characteristics have been shown to be associated with creative productivity. One of these is autonomy: creative individuals tend to be independent and nonconformist in their thoughts and actions. Equally important is mastery of a particular domain—that is, a sphere of activity or knowledge that requires a high level of ability. For example, in applying their knowledge of computers to the design of the Apple II, inventors Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak revolutionized the computer industry by appealing to individuals as well as businesses. French fashion designer Coco Chanel forever changed the way women dressed by designing simple yet stylish clothes. On the other hand, creative people may not have equally strong gifts across the spectrum of human ability. (A notable exception was Leonardo da Vinci, whose achievements in the visual arts, mechanics, and engineering disclosed the talents of a creative polymath.) Some creative people show an interest in apparent disorder, contradiction, and imbalance—perhaps because they are challenged by asymmetry and chaos. Creative individuals may also exhibit a high degree of self-assurance. Some possess an exceptionally deep, broad, and flexible awareness of themselves. Others are shown to be intellectual leaders with a great sensitivity to problems.

The unconventionality of thought that is sometimes found in creative persons may be in part a resistance to acculturation, which may be seen as demanding surrender of one’s unique fundamental nature. In fact, independence is critical to the creative process, in that creative people must often be able to work alone and must also be willing to express ideas or develop products that others might perceive as radical. It should be pointed out, however, that a nonconformist lifestyle is not essential to creativity; indeed, many creative individuals lead quite ordinary lives, expressing their autonomy mainly in their unconventional ideas and work. Another trait common among creative people is that of introversion. While this does not imply a lack of social skills, it suggests that creative people tend to be reflective and inner-directed; they look to their own intuition rather than depending upon interaction with others to inform their attitudes and responses.

A third crucial characteristic combines curiosity and problem seeking. Creative individuals seem to have a need to seek novelty and an ability to pose unique questions. In Defying the Crowd (1995), for example, the American psychologists Robert Sternberg and Todd Lubart likened the combined traits of autonomy and problem solving to buying low and selling high in the “marketplace of ideas.” By this they meant that the creative individual identifies a unique need—perhaps a problem or opportunity that no one else recognizes. This is the “buying low” phase, because it typically involves dismissing a popular solution and embracing an unheard-of solution or an idea that has no currency. When creative persons find a better solution, they then work toward “selling” others on the concept. This process can be seen in the work of inventors such as Margaret Knight, who designed a number of household and industrial devices, Raymond Kurzweil, who designed text scanners and speech-recognition software, and Dean Kamen, whose numerous inventions include medical devices, water-purification systems, and the IBOT, a motorized wheelchair.

High intelligence is common in creative persons, yet while they can meet the problems of life as rationally as anyone else can, their intellect does not rule at the expense of intuition or other seemingly nonrational influences. Most studies of the relationship of creativity to intelligence have also shown that extreme general intelligence does not necessarily kindle creativity. Findings such as these contributed to the “threshold” model of intelligence and creativity, which claims that, above a certain level, intelligence has little correlation with creativity—i.e., a highly intelligent person may not be as highly creative. It may be that intelligence sets the limits on the amount of information a person can learn and retain, while creative thinking provides the flexibility necessary for the original production of ideas. A distinction is sometimes made between convergent thinking (the analytic reasoning measured by intelligence tests) and divergent thinking (exemplified by a richness of ideas and originality of thought). Both seem necessary to creative performance, although the degree of each varies according to the task or occupation (i.e., a mathematician may exhibit more convergent than divergent thinking, while an artist would exhibit the reverse).

Psychological experiments in the fields of motivation and learning have demonstrated the power of novelty as an inducement to action. This stems from the tension that exists between the regularity of daily life and interruptions that bring possibilities of new experience. Psychological studies of highly creative people have characterized this tension in terms of such dualities as intellect and intuition, the conscious and the unconscious, mental health and mental disorder, the conventional and the unconventional, and complexity and simplicity.

Other qualities of creative individuals were identified by the American educational psychologist E. Paul Torrance. They include fluency, or the ability to think of many ideas rapidly; flexibility, the capacity to use ideas and tools in unusual ways; and originality, the capacity to think of novel ideas and products. In 1966 Torrance and his colleagues developed a means of assessment, the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT), that accounts for all of these skills. The TTCT became one of the most widely used measures of creativity. Torrance provided additional support for his approach in follow-up studies of his subjects after 7, 12, and 22 years, and the passage of time has shown the TTCT to be among the more valid of all creativity tests.