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11 - Creativity and Constraint: Friends, Not Foes

from SECTION TWO - CREATIVITY AND REASON IN COGNITION AND NEUROSCIENCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

By
Catrinel Haught-Tromp
Edited by
James C. Kaufman  and
John Baer
Catrinel Haught-Tromp
Affiliation:
Rider University
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
John Baer
Affiliation:
Rider University, New Jersey
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Summary

The complex and sometimes elusive concept of creativity has inspired many creative approaches to its study. Despite competing accounts and progressively more methodical empirical scrutiny, creativity still seems surrounded by a fuzzy aura of ambiguity. Its very definition remains open to debate, and many other related issues risk to be buried under a similar state of inconclusiveness: Is creativity domain-specific or not (Ambrose, 2009; Baer, 1998, 2011, 2012; Silva, Kaufman, & Pertz, 2009)? Does it refer to a process, a set of aptitudes, or the resulting product? How is creativity assessed (e.g., Kaufman & Baer, 2012)? Is creativity restricted to only a few geniuses, or does creative potential exist in everyone? Does gender (e.g., Baer, 1997) or mental illness 2001 play a role (e.g., Kaufman, 2001)? Is creativity important (Kaufman, Davis, & Beghetto, 2012; Runco & Abdullah, 2014; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995)? If so, how does one best study it (Ambrose, 2006; Ambrose, Sriraman, & Pierce, 2014)? From a neuroimaging perspective (see Arden, Chavez, Grazioplene, & Jung, 2010 for an overview), how does creative thought develop in the brain, and where?

One of the less debated claims is that creativity can and does manifest itself in virtually all areas of human life. Creative instances range from a moving piano sonata to an original fashion show, from a major scientific breakthrough to witty dialogue in a novel, from an innovative business initiative to an inspired soccer game. Indeed, the adjective creative can precede a vast number of nouns: a creative experiment, creative architecture, a creative poem, creative landscaping.

Although creativity is often extolled in domains such as music, painting, and literature, few of us would readily associate it with more mundane tasks, such as making dinner or writing a note for someone's birthday. Why are we generally reluctant to apply the label creative to the production of an original meal or a sentence? The reason is a widespread intuition that “true” creativity must bring about, via its outcome, some major change or important contribution in an acknowledged field. For example, Sternberg, Kaufman, and Pretz (2002) put forth a Propulsion Theory of Creative Contributions to describe the processes by which a creative act can impact an entire field. Boden (1990) discussed this difference between two types of creativity: psychological (P-creativity) and historic (H-creativity).

Type
Chapter
Information
Creativity and Reason in Cognitive Development , pp. 211 - 225
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

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