Jazz and American identity: Case study of a college course.

The present article served as a follow-up to Tietze (2006), which explored the potential relevance of listening to Jazz as a tool for enhancing the undergraduate liberal arts educational experience. A holistic pedagogical structure, based on a model incorporating cognitive and emotional dimensions of experience and Erikson's (1997) theory of identity development, utilized recent developments in neuroscience including the brain's engagement in the process of creativity, and was applied to developing an undergraduate course titled, "Jazz and American Identity." For the present article, a case study approach was used to assess the process of learning through student response to this course. Several general themes emerged from the students' work, and a number of samples were summarized from end-of-term projects which explored a connection between an understanding of their own individual identity development in relationship to the semester's course content; a history of Jazz as metaphor for presentation of issues in American cultural development. Results indicated that a proactive approach toward combining play, art, and self-understanding forms an example of a creative process every human may engage in--the creation and development of one's unique identity. Themes for future research were also discussed; among them the use of anecdotal journal writing as data to "translate" listening and expressive skills to more clearly articulate human experience of emotional states, relationships between verbal and procedural memory, parallels between language and music processing, and connection between the worlds of science and the arts, especially the expansion of Jazz into a world-wide phenomenon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measurements, causes, and effects of creativity.

In this article, I express my appreciation for the Korean teacher who recognized my potential and my American mentors who helped me identify the creative energy in myself. I discuss how living a “wonderful” Korean life smothered the essence of my being. Next, the overview of my research in creativity is discussed in 3 categories: measurement of creativity, causes of creativity, and effects of creativity. One effect of creativity summarizes how creativity can manifest itself as either a gift or a curse. The article ends with affirming that individualism promotes creativity and a discussion of the direction of my future research, which centers on helping students and adults identify the creative energy in themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological study of creativity.

In this review of the psychological study of creativity there are 4 emphases; products, process, measurement, and personality. 3 main issues concern questions of: definition and criteria, the process viewed temporally, and necessary personal and environmental conditions. The relationship between creativity and intelligence is discussed to illustrate the need for conceptual reorganization as well as correlational data. We should now be able to utilize personality and stylistic modes as criterion variables and to study how these factors are related at different age levels to behavior that is judged to be creative. This approach holds promise for providing a functional, developmental understanding of creativity. (124 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation.

Reviews the book, Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation by R. Keith Sawyer (2006). Explaining Creativity is a refreshing analysis of creativity within a broad range of creative domains that are often neglected in scientific treatments of creativity. The book is divided into five parts. In the first part, Sawyer reviews previous conceptions of creativity, such as "creativity comes from the unconscious," and "everyone is creative" and claims many such conceptions are myths. The second part of the book reviews individualist approaches to creativity. In the third part of the book, Sawyer reviews evidence from sociology, culture, and history to show how researchers from various perspectives all converge on the importance of context for recognizing creativity. The fourth part reviews the creative process of performance-based, collaborative artistic forms of creativity, such as installation art, screenwriting, sitcom writing, jazz improvisation, and comedy improvisation. The fifth section shows how science and business creativity are also embedded in a social context and can be even more reliant on collaboration than artistic creativity. The book then ends with tips for being more creative. A complete textbook on creativity should be comprehensive, present all the evidence and viewpoints, and be critical of everything. This is not such a book. Nonetheless, this is one of the first books to go beyond the psychological study of creativity and to synthesize various different levels of analysis to understand diverse creative behaviors. To this end, the book is highly recommended to nearly anyone that wants to have a more complete understanding of how creativity operates in today's world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural borders and mental barriers: The relationship between living abroad and creativity.

Despite abundant anecdotal evidence that creativity is associated with living in foreign countries, there is currently little empirical evidence for this relationship. Five studies employing a multimethod approach systematically explored the link between living abroad and creativity. Using both individual and dyadic creativity tasks, Studies 1 and 2 provided initial demonstrations that time spent living abroad (but not time spent traveling abroad) showed a positive relationship with creativity. Study 3 demonstrated that priming foreign living experiences temporarily enhanced creative tendencies for participants who had previously lived abroad. In Study 4, the degree to which individuals had adapted to different cultures while living abroad mediated the link between foreign living experience and creativity. Study 5 found that priming the experience of adapting to a foreign culture temporarily enhanced creativity for participants who had previously lived abroad. The relationship between living abroad and creativity was consistent across a number of creativity measures (including those measuring insight, association, and generation), as well as with masters of business administration and undergraduate samples, both in the United States and Europe, demonstrating the robustness of this phenomenon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Group genius: The creative power of collaboration.

Reviews the book, Group genius: The creative power of collaboration by K. Sawyer (2007). This book is written for a popular audience. It takes several themes from the author's past work on the sociocultural approach to creativity, particularly his research on improvisation and his book Explaining creativity, and develops them into an innovative analysis of improvisation and collaboration. The message of this book is that creative ideas emerge from collaborative webs, not from the minds of lone creators. Sawyer proposes that creative teams and organizations have moved beyond conventional notions of innovation--isolated Research and Development departments, for example--and instead harness collaborative webs. These webs include obvious ones, such as collaboration within the organization, as well as surprising ones, such as collaboration with consumers and with competitors. Researchers in the psychology of creativity will find a lot of food for thought in this book. The reviewer notes, however, that little attention is given to individual differences. This omission will madden many researchers. Researchers will also find a nascent integration of the sociocultural approach and the cognitive approach. Criticisms aside, he suggests that Keith Sawyer is one of psychology's finest writers: his books have a graceful tone and an understated erudition. The distinction between content and form is specious--writing unifies "what" and "how"--but creativity researchers will get as much out of this book's "how" as its "what". (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a broader conception of creativity: A case for "mini-c" creativity.

In this article the authors argue that a new category of creativity, called "mini-c" creativity, is needed to advance creativity theory and research. Mini-c creativity differs from little-c (everyday) or Big-C (eminent) creativity as it refers to the creative processes involved in the construction of personal knowledge and understanding. The authors discuss how the category of mini-c creativity addresses gaps in current conceptions of creativity, offers researchers a new and important unit of analysis, and helps to better frame the domain question in creativity research. Implications for creativity research are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of hypnotically induced dreams on creative problem solving.

A wealth of anecdotal evidence supports the age-old notion that the nocturnal dream is a source for creative inspiration. Unfortunately, scientific research on so-called creative dreaming has not been forthcoming. Using hypnosis in an effort to bring the phenomenon under experimental control, the present investigation induced dreams in 24 undergraduates representing a number of occupational and educational backgrounds. Each S was at an impasse in the course of working on an academic, vocational, avocational, or personal problem or project at the time of participation in the experiment. As hypothesized, when compared with a rational-cognitive treatment group that emphasized a linguistic and logical approach to creative problem solving, a significantly greater number of Ss who were administered the hypnotic dream treatment were able to overcome their creative blocks within 1 wk of treatment. Treatment success was assessed in accordance with criteria derived from an operational definition of creativity developed in the introduction. The hypothesis is considered to have received conditional support, pending the outcome of suggested research. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive regularities in creative activity.

Theories of creativity have not traditionally considered whether novel ideas or inventive behaviors can result from regularities in the cognitive processes responsible for such activities. Most of these traditional theories are based on the evaluation of products as meeting (or not) some abstract metric of creative output. However, cognitive theories of creativity can be proposed in which creative activity is a function of more traditional cognitive processes that are not unique to inventive behaviors. The purpose of this article is to review the cognitive regularities of creative activity and organize the research on this topic into a framework that might be useful in understanding and extending investigations directed at studying creativity. To these ends, cognitive processes underlying generation, synthesis, and selection of information in creative activities are delineated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creativity: Cognitive, personal, developmental, and social aspects.

Although many psychologists have expressed an interest in the phenomenon of creativity, psychological research on this topic did not rapidly expand until after J. P. Guilford claimed, in his 1950 APA presidential address, that this topic deserved far more attention than it was then receiving. This article reviews the progress psychologists have made in understanding creativity since Guilford's call to arms. Research progress has taken place on 4 fronts: the cognitive processes involved in the creative act, the distinctive characteristics of the creative person, the development and manifestation of creativity across the individual life span, and the social environments most strongly associated with creative activity. Although some important questions remain unanswered, psychologists now know more than ever before about how individuals achieve this special and significant form of optimal human functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creativity and discovery as blind variation: Campbell's (1960) BVSR model after the half-century mark.

This article assesses and extends Campbell's (1960) classic theory that creativity and discovery depend on blind variation and selective retention (BVSR), with special attention given to blind variations (BVs). The treatment begins by defining creativity and discovery, variant blindness versus sightedness, variant utility and selection, and ideational variants versus creative products. These definitions lead to BV identification criteria: (a) intended BV, which entails both systematic and stochastic combinatorial procedures; and (b) implied BV, which involves both variations with properties of blindness (variation superfluity and backtracking) and processes that should yield variant blindness (associative richness, defocused attention, behavioral tinkering, and heuristic search). These conceptual definitions and identification criteria then have implications for four persistent issues, namely, domain expertise, ideational randomness, analogical equivalence, and personal volition. Once BV is suitably conceptualized, Campbell's theory continues to provide a fruitful approach to the understanding of both creativity and discovery. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

A propulsion model of types of creative contributions.

This article proposes a propulsion model characterizing 7 different types of creative contributions in any domain. Four of these types of creativity accept current paradigms of work; 3 of the types reject these current paradigms. The basic notion is that creative contributions differ not only in the amounts of creativity they display but also in the types of creativity they display. The article discusses (a) creative contributions and why there is a need for a taxonomy of them, (b) some existing models of creative contributions, (c) a propulsion model for understanding creative contributions and 7 types of contributions that follow from the propulsion model, (d) why such a model can be useful in evaluating creative work, and (e) some phenomena that have been observed in the field of creativity and how they can be explained in terms of the model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scientific creativity as constrained stochastic behavior: The integration of product, person, and process perspectives.

Psychologists have primarily investigated scientific creativity from 2 contrasting in vitro perspectives: correlational studies of the creative person and experimental studies of the creative process. Here the same phenomenon is scrutinized using a 3rd, in vivo perspective, namely, the actual creative products that emerge from individual scientific careers and communities of creative scientists. This behavioral analysis supports the inference that scientific creativity constitutes a form of constrained stochastic behavior. That is, it can be accurately modeled as a quasi-random combinatorial process. Key findings from both correlational and experimental research traditions corroborate this conclusion. The author closes the article by arguing that all 3 perspectives--regarding the product, person, and process--must be integrated into a unified view of scientific creativity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Peacocks, Picasso, and parental investment: The effects of romantic motives on creativity.

Four experiments explored the effects of mating motivation on creativity. Even without other incentives to be creative, romantic motives enhanced creativity on subjective and objective measures. For men, any cue designed to activate a short-term or a long-term mating goal increased creative displays; however, women displayed more creativity only when primed to attract a high-quality long-term mate. These creative boosts were unrelated to increased effort on creative tasks or to changes in mood or arousal. Furthermore, results were unaffected by the application of monetary incentives for creativity. These findings align with the view that creative displays in both sexes may be linked to sexual selection, qualified by unique exigencies of human parental investment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creativity, masculinity, femininity, and three models of psychological androgyny.

Five empirically derived indices of creative self-concept correlated positively with several indices of psychological masculinity in 85 female and 105 male undergraduates and somewhat negatively with indices of psychological femininity among males and females. Among the measures used were the Bem Sex-Role Inventory and Adjective Check List. Production on the Alternate Uses Test correlated positively with masculinity and negatively with femininity in a subset of 50 males explicitly instructed to "be creative." As a reflection of this positive association between masculinity and creativity indices, Ss defined as masculine or androgynous, using conventional median-split methods, obtained significantly higher creativity indices than conventionally defined feminine or unclassifiable Ss. Results are discussed in terms of (a) the applicability of balance, additive, and multiplicative models of androgyny to the study of creativity; (b) the factorial complexity of several currently used masculinity and femininity scales; and (c) possible conflicts between sex-role expectations and the self-concepts of creative females and apparent congruencies between sex-role expectations and the self-concepts of creative males. (85 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When the presence of creative coworkers is related to creativity: Role of supervisor close monitoring, developmental feedback, and creative personality.

Study 1 was conducted to examine the contribution of the joint condition of supervisor close monitoring and the presence of creative coworkers to employees' creativity. In addition to replicating Study 1's results, Study 2 examined (a) the joint condition of supervisor developmental feedback and presence of creative coworkers and (b) whether creative personality moderated the contributions of the 2 joint conditions. Converging results from the 2 field studies demonstrated that when creative coworkers were present, the less supervisors engaged in close monitoring, the more employees exhibited creativity. Study 2 also found that the contribution of this joint condition was stronger for employees with less creative personalities and that when creative coworkers were present, the more supervisors provided developmental feedback, the more employees exhibited creativity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a more complete understanding of the link between multicultural experience and creativity.

Responds to G. J. Rich's comments (see record 2009-01602-011) on the current author's original article (see record 2008-03389-003) which presented evidence supporting the idea that multicultural experience can facilitate creativity. Rich has argued that our review, although timely and important, was somewhat limited in scope, focusing mostly on smaller forms of creativity ("little c": e.g., paper-and-pencil measures of creativity) as well as on larger forms of multicultural experience ("Big M": e.g., living in a foreign country). We agree with many aspects of Rich's assessment. The issue of whether different forms of multicultural experience can affect Big C creativity is of interest to both scholars and laypeople because creative breakthroughs can literally alter the course of human progress. The response to our article, including Rich's reply, supports our view that the interest in multicultural experience and creativity is far from exhausted; future research will certainly uncover important new insights. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent": Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by D. W. Mackinnon (American Psychologist, 1962, Vol 17[7], 484-495. The last sentence of the fourth paragraph, page 487, should read as follows: "The mean rating of creativity for each of the three groups-the ratings having been made on a seven-point scale..." (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1963-04959-001): "Creativity... is a process extended in time and characterized by originality, adaptiveness, and realization." Except for mathematicians "where there is a low positive correlation between intelligence and the level of creativeness, we have found within our creative samples essentially zero relationship between the two variables." A research study of the characteristics and background of creative architects is extensively discussed. Implications of the nature of creative talent for the nurturing of it in school and college through the processes of education are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rational versus intuitive problem solving: How thinking “off the beaten path” can stimulate creativity.

We compared the effects of rational versus intuitive problem solving on creativity. We argued that the relative effectiveness of these approaches depends upon an individual's typical thinking style such that individuals will be more creative when they adopt a problem-solving approach that differs from their typical style of thinking (e.g., individuals who avoid rational thinking will exhibit higher creativity when they are instructed to rely on rational problem solving). We tested this hypothesis in a sample of undergraduate students generating creative ideas in response to a real-world problem. In support of our hypothesis, we found that problem-solving approach and individual differences in thinking style interact such that creativity is highest when individuals use a nontypical problem-solving approach. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)