THE NATURE OF HUMAN CREATIVITY (PDF)

Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press THE NATURE OF HUMAN CREATIVITY This book provides an overview of the approaches of leading scholars to understand- ing the nature of creativity, its measurement, its investigation, its development, and its importance to society. The authors are the 24 psychological scientists who are most frequently cited in the four major textbooks on creativity, and they can thus be con- sidered among the most eminent living scholars in the ield. Each author discusses how they deine creativity, the kinds of questions they have addressed, theories they have proposed, and a description of their research and the most interesting empiri- cal results it has produced. The chapters represent a wide range of substantive and methodological emphases, including psychometric, cognitive, expertise-based, devel- opmental, neuropsychological, cultural, systems, and group-diference approaches. The Nature of Human Creativity brings together an incredible diversity of viewpoints, help- ing students and researchers to see the points of consensus as well as the diferences in contemporary perspectives. robert j. sternberg is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg. Formerly, he was IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University. His PhD is from Stanford, and he has thirteen honorary doctorates. He has won the Grawemeyer Award in psychology and both the William James and James McKeen Cattell Awards from the Association for Psychological Science as well as more than two dozen other major awards and is a member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a past president of the American Psychological Association and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He is among the most cited psychologists in the world, with over 142,000 citations and an h-index of 185. james c. kaufman is Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut. He is the author or editor of more than 300 papers and 40 books, including Creativity 101 (2nd ed., 2016) and The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (with Robert J. Sternberg; 2010). He co-created the “The Four-C Model of Creativity” (with Ronald A. Beghetto) and conducted the study that spawned the Sylvia Plath efect. He is a past president of Division 10 (Society for Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts) of the American Psychological Association (APA) and is the president of the American Creativity Association. Professor Kaufman has won many awards, including Mensa’s research award, the Torrance Award from the National Association for Gifted Children, and APA’s Berlyne, Arnheim, and Farnsworth Awards. He cofounded two major journals (Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts and Psychology of Popular Media Culture) and currently co-edits the International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving.  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press THE NATURE OF HUMAN CREATIVITY edited by ROBERT J. STERNBERG AND JAMES C. KAUFMAN  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, usa 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi - 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107199811 doi: 10.1017/9781108185936 C⃝ Cambridge University Press 2018 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2018 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Names: Sternberg, Robert J., editor. | Kaufman, James C., editor. Title: The nature of human creativity / edited by Robert J. Sternberg, James C. Kaufman. Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2018. Identiiers: lccn 2017058260 | isbn 9781107199811 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Creative ability. Classiication: lcc bf408 .n3548 2018 | ddc 153.3/5 – dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058260 isbn 978-1-107-19981-1 Hardback isbn 978-1-316-64902-2 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press Contents List of Figures page viii List of Tables ix List of Contributors x Foreword xii Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi Preface xviii 1 Creativity and the Labor of Love 1 Teresa M. Amabile 2 The Trouble with “Creativity” 16 John Baer 3 Do We Choose Our Scholarly Paths or Do They Choose Us? My Relections on Exploring the Nature of Creativity in Educational Settings 32 Ronald A. Beghetto 4 Bringing Creativity down to Earth: A Long Labor Lost? 47 Arthur Cropley 5 In Search of the Creative Personality 63 Gregory J. Feist 6 From Fascination to Research: Progress and Problems in Creativity Research 77 Adrian Furnham 7 Creativity: The View from Big C and the Introduction of Tiny c 94 Howard Gardner and Emily Weinstein v  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press vi Contents 8 I Never Intended to Become a Research Psychologist 110 Beth A. Hennessey 9 What Creativity Can Be, and What Creativity Can Do 125 James C. Kaufman 10 Creativity across the Seven Cs 134 Todd Lubart 11 Creative Thinking in the Real World: Processing in Context 147 Michael D. Mumford, Robert Martin, Samantha Elliott, and Tristan McIntosh 12 It All Makes Sense Now That I Think about It: A Quarter-Century of Studying Creativity 166 Jonathan A. Plucker 13 Creative Cognition at the Individual and Team Levels: What Happens before and after Idea Generation 184 Roni Reiter-Palmon 14 The Malleability of Creativity: A Career in Helping Students Discover and Nurture Their Creativity 209 Joseph S. Renzulli 15 Everyday Creativity: Challenges for Self and World – Six Questions 224 Ruth Richards and Terri Goslin-Jones 16 Authentic Creativity: Mechanisms, Deinitions, and Empirical Eforts 246 Mark A. Runco 17 Pretend Play and Creativity: Two Templates for the Future 264 Sandra W. Russ 18 An Interdisciplinary Study of Group Creativity 280 R. Keith Sawyer 19 Creativity is Undeinable, Controllable, and Everywhere 291 Paul J. Silvia 20 Genius, Creativity, and Leadership: A Half-Century Journey through Science, History, Mathematics, and Psychology 302 Dean Keith Simonton  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press Contents vii 21 The Triangle of Creativity 318 Robert J. Sternberg 22 Creativity as a Continuum 335 Thomas B. Ward 23 Relections on a Personal Journey Studying the Psychology of Creativity 351 Robert W. Weisberg Afterword: The Big Questions in the Field of Creativity – Now and Tomorrow 374 Robert J. Sternberg and James C. Kaufman Index 381  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press Figures 5.1 Functional model of the creative personality page 68 11.1 Model of creative problem-solving processes 149 13.1 Model of problem construction operations 187 14.1 The three-ring conception of giftedness 216 14.2 The schoolwide enrichment model 220 16.1 Hierarchy of approaches to the study of creativity 258 23.1 Reversible cube 354 23.2 Insight problems 355 23.3 Nine-Dot problem 358 23.4 Outline of a model of problem solving 361 23.5 Leonardo’s aerial screw 365 23.6 Possible conceptual links leading to Leonardo’s invention of the aerial screw through analytic thinking 366 23.7 Possible conceptual links leading to Wilkins’s invention of radar through analytic thinking 368 viii  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press Tables 2.1 Intercorrelations among creativity ratings (raw scores) page 20 2.2 Intercorrelations among creativity ratings; variance attributable to IQ removed 20 5.1 Deinitions of individual and overall scientiic creativity indices 71 17.1 Model of creativity and pretend play 267 21.1 Three types of deiance in the triangular theory of creativity 319 21.2 Types of creativity 324 ix  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press Contributors teresa m. amabile Harvard Business School john baer Rider University ronald a. beghetto University of Connecticut arthur cropley University of Hamburg mihalyi csikszentmihalyi Claremont Graduate School samantha elliott University of Oklahoma gregory j. feist San Jose State University adrian furnham University College, London howard gardner Harvard University terri goslin-jones Saybrook University beth a. hennessey Wellesley College james c. kaufman University of Connecticut todd lubart University of Paris Sorbonne City robert martin University of Oklahoma tristan mcintosh University of Oklahoma michael d. mumford University of Oklahoma jonathan a. plucker Johns Hopkins University roni reiter-palmon University of Nebraska at Omaha joseph s. renzulli University of Connecticut ruth richards Saybrook University x  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press List of Contributors xi mark a. runco University of Georgia sandra w. russ Case Western Reserve University r. keith sawyer University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill paul j. silvia University of North Carolina at Greensboro dean keith simonton University of California, Davis robert j. sternberg Cornell University thomas b. ward University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa robert w. weisberg Temple University emily weinstein Harvard University  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press Foreword Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi It is a daunting task to introduce such a magisterial collection written by some of the best scholars on the volume’s topic – the elusive and alluring subject of creativity. Writing this foreword is indeed quite a responsibility, as well as being a greatly valued honor. My irst article in this area of study was published just over half a century ago, in 1966, as a co-author to my thesis advisor, Jacob W. Getzels. It was entitled “Portrait of the Artist as an Explorer” and appeared in a now defunct journal called Trans-Action. Those were years when few psychologists studied creativity, and few schools ofered serious programs of study on the topic. Much has changed since. The arms race between the West and the Soviet Bloc halfway through the last century was at several points focused on the question of which country would be irst to launch a vehicle into space, then who would reach the moon irst with a human crew, and then who would get close enough to the farthest planets in our solar system to take good pictures of their surfaces. All of these highly charged political projects needed a great deal of cre- ativity to be completed – from the development of fuels to that of metals that could resist the heat caused by friction at reentry, to the provision of psychologically healthy environments during the long weeks of life under monotonous routines in cramped spaces. The demand for creative solutions to these unprecedented challenges had, as an unintended and unforeseen result, the efect of creating a market for creativity research in psychology. One of the earliest investigators of this topic, J. P. Guilford, was a ighter plane pilot in World War II and developed the irst tests of “divergent thinking,” which turned out to be good measures of a creative disposition. From those days in the early 1950s onward, scholarly interest in the cre- ative process has grown by leaps and bounds. It is not my task in this fore- word to rehearse all the stages of the progress in this domain, except to say that, in my opinion, it has been a great ride. But I don’t want to spend xii  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press Foreword xiii these lines rehearsing the past, exciting as it has been. Instead, let me com- ment on the future, and speciically on the future foreshadowed by the contributions to this volume. The Physiology of Creativity Although the neurological issues involved in the creative process are an important part of the puzzle, we have made remarkably little headway so far in identifying speciic brain areas, or neural pathways, that might be involved in the production of creative ideas – despite the fact that this had been the focus of research by the irst modern investigator of creativity, the Italian physician Cesare Lombroso, who, in 1891, published a treatise enti- tled The Man of Genius, which is one of the irst attempts to apply modern science to an understanding of creativity. (As is widely known, the good doctor came to the conclusion that creative thinking and mental disorders seem to co-occur at high rates of frequency and tend to appear more fre- quently in some kinship genealogies than in others, suggesting a strong genetic component to creativity – an issue that has been reappearing in the literature ever since, down to our days.) The neurophysiological approach is unlikely to disappear soon, or ever, from understanding this process; and the chapters in this collection dealing with this issue remind us of the state of the art in this important domain. The Sociocultural Context But whether creative ideas appear and become adopted does not depend entirely on what happens within the individual’s mind. History has shown that in certain places, at certain times, creativity reaches unprecedented levels, and then it dies out. In Western cultures, creativity blossomed in Egypt, in Greece, in Italy, and then in several European countries – some breaking boundaries in art, or in architecture, or in literature, or in reli- gion, or in science, and sometimes in all of these domains at once. The most credible explanation for these spurts in the development of culture is that the environmental conditions – the economic, religious, social, polit- ical, and educational institutions of society – are sometimes well equipped to encourage and support new ideas and their implementation, thereby bestowing recognition and appreciation on the individuals proposing the novelty, and it is these conditions that explain the fact that for many cen- turies before the current era, so many novel works of art were produced on the tiny island of Milos between 15,000 and 150 BCE, or how Athens  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press xiv Foreword became a center of art much later, or Florence between roughly 1400 and 1550, or Paris in the nineteenth century. In the present volume, the examination of the sociocultural context is not a central issue, but its efects are often implied in the analysis. Of course, it is impossible for a single volume to do full justice to every relevant per- spective, and this should leave ample opportunities for scholars to include this important, and sorely neglected, viewpoint in future works. Education The educational perspective has been of long-standing interest to educa- tional scholars, and its importance is well represented in this volume. For a long time, educational research has been focused on convergent thinking, or the traditional patterns of repetition and memorization that for centuries constituted the backbone of scholastic learning. My maternal grandfather in his late seventies would often wake up from his afternoon naps screaming and lailing – his recurrent nightmare being that of having to pass his high school graduation exams that included the memorization of 8,000 lines from the Odyssey, in the original Greek. I also remember how I learned one of the basic laws of solid geometry, by memorizing a short ditty, which in Hungarian went as follows: Minden vizbe mártott test, a sújából annyit veszt, amennyi az általa, kiszoritott viz súja. This ditty in English means “Every object placed in water, will lose as much of its weight, as the weight of the water it displaces.” These were memorable learning experiences illustrating convergent thinking. But few teachers, and then often against oicial educational policy, took the trouble of encouraging divergent thinking in their students. One example of the latter would be László Rátz, a mathematics teacher in the Lutheran high school of Budapest, active between the two world wars. First, he tacked a page to the classroom wall on which a complex mathematical equation had been written. Then he challenged his students to provide the best proof for the equation within the next thirty days. Some of the students rose to the challenge; among them were Leo Szilárd, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, and John von Neumann. Their solution to the problems posed by their teacher were passed along among the students, and after a while, mimeographed copies of the proposed solutions could be bought at newsstands in Budapest. Just one of his students became a Nobel Prize winner in science, but at least half a dozen of them became leaders in their discipline. In the speech he gave when accepting his Nobel Prize, Eugene Wigner reminisced about his teacher with the following words:  Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-19981-1 — The Nature of Human Creativity Edited by Robert J. Sternberg , James C. Kaufman Frontmatter More Information www.cambridge.org © in this web service Cambridge University Press Foreword xv “There were many superb teachers at the Lutheran gymnasium. But the greatest was my mathematics teacher László Rátz. Rátz was known not only throughout our gymnasium but also by the church and government hierarchy and among many of the teachers in the country schools. I still keep a photograph of Rátz in my workroom because he had every quality of a miraculous teacher: He loved teaching. He knew the subject and how to kindle interest in it. He imparted the very deepest understanding. Many gymnasium teachers had great skill, but no one could evoke the beauty of the subject like Rátz. Rátz cared deeply about mathematics as a discipline. He took special care to ind his better students and to inspire them. Rátz felt so privileged to tutor a phenomenon like [John] von Neumann that he refused any money for it. Who could know that this precocious ten-year- old would someday become a great mathematician? Somehow Rátz knew. And he discovered it very quickly. Rátz was just as nice to me and nearly as devoted as he was to Neumann. Rátz was the only gymnasium teacher to invite me into his home. There were no private lessons. But Rátz lent me many well-chosen books, which I read thoroughly and made sure to return in good condition.” Teachers like Rátz are probably rare in each generation. But their exam- ple can be followed and should become a model for every educator: love what you are teaching, love whom you are teaching, and help them to become as good scholars in the discipline as they can be. Leadership and Business Throughout history, leaders of society and commerce had to keep their eyes open for new ways to do their business. If they did not, chances were good that they would miss important opportunities and mismanage their jobs. It is true that great empires have thrived on stability and tradition: the Egyptian, the Macedonian, and the empires of Asia for long periods actively discouraged novelty. In the long run, however, no nation and no economic enterprise can prosper without building novelty into its fund of knowledge. Nowadays, creativity, governance, and the economy are so intertwined that it is diicult to imagine being successful in one of these areas without also having developed the other two to a healthy degree. The study of creativity in the workplace, intensely pursued at the State University of New York at Bufalo, is well represented in this volume by Teresa Amabile’s chapter (Chapter 1), as well as by several others. Creativity in governance, or politics, is still a largely unexplored area, even though statesmen clearly difer in their ability to perceive, value, and implement