Beyond big and little: The four c model of creativity.

Most investigations of creativity tend to take one of two directions: everyday creativity (also called “little-c”), which can be found in nearly all people, and eminent creativity (also called “Big-C”), which is reserved for the great. In this paper, the authors propose a Four C model of creativity that expands this dichotomy. Specifically, the authors add the idea of “mini-c,” creativity inherent in the learning process, and Pro-c, the developmental and effortful progression beyond little-c that represents professional-level expertise in any creative area. The authors include different transitions and gradations of these four dimensions of creativity, and then discuss advantages and examples of the Four C Model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Facilitating creativity by regulating curiosity": Comment.

Comments on the article by C. Martindale (see record 2001-00625-007) which discussed the intellect of Thomas Young. The current author discusses creativity as it relates to curiosity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Creativity and confidence: price of achievement?": Comment.

Comments on the article by C. Martindale (see record 2001-00625-007) which discussed Thomas Young. The author supports the views of Martindale and gives his own insight on the subject of creativity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Commentary: Divergent thinking is not synonymous with creativity.

Commentary on an article by P. J. Silvia et al. (see record 2008-05954-001) which discusses the topic of divergent thinking. On several occasions I have suggested that a modified scientific method be used in studies of creativity (Runco, 1994a, 1999, 2006). This is a fairly contrarian suggestion because it implies a less-than-maximally objective perspective. Yet creativity will never be fully understood using the traditional scientific approach. This is in part because creativity requires originality, and the novelty that signifies originality is typically unpredictable, or at least not predictable with much precision. Perhaps more important for a modified scientific approach is the fact that creativity depends on affect, intuition, and other processes which cannot be accurately described using only objective terms. Yet at the same time, we should be as objective as possible. And although I am intrigued by generalizability theory, as described by Silvia, Winterstein, Willse, Barona, Cram, Hess, Martinez, and Richard (2008), I am concerned about their decision to use subjective scoring of divergent thinking tests. Their rationale is weak, to be blunt about it, and they have overlooked some critical research on the topic. In this commentary, I could describe the attraction of generalizability theory, but Silvia et al. do a more than adequate job of that. So instead, I will try to fill some gaps in their review of the research on divergent thinking. I also have a few questions with several of their claims and methods. (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)     

Review of Evolutionary and neurocognitive approaches to aesthetics, creativity and the arts.

Reviews the book, Evolutionary and neurocognitive approaches to aesthetics, creativity and the arts, edited by Colin Martindate, Paul Locher, and Vladimir M. Petrov (see record 2007-00414-000). This book follows in the line of Jungian, Humanistic, and Existential theories in proclaiming that the arts are essentially connected to human nature in a meaningful way. Like May, many of the chapter authors agree that the arts have a purpose beyond mere amusement, entertainment, or stress relief. With Freud, they also agree that the arts emerged through the evolutionary process, but they disagree that this was merely a useful by-product of natural selection. Rather, the arts are innately connected to human survival and development. The approach in this book is very distinct from the methods of Freud, Jung, and May. The chapter authors use quantitative research, genetic research, and electroencephalographic (EEG) studies to examine the purpose of the arts, aesthetics, and creativity. Although their results often feel much blander than the mythical interpretations of Jung and May, they continue to provide important empirical support for the utility and need for the arts using more contemporary methods. Many of the chapters in this book provide important insights into the creativity process. Some chapters provide more understanding than utility, which is a major weakness of the book. It would have been helpful to have some of the chapters make more direct connections to the practical utility and meaning of the research presented or reviewed. However, in the end, this book provides a wealth of information from many different perspectives and, as a whole, provides a significant contribution to the psychological and scientific literature on creativity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Creativity as a decision": Comment.

Responds to the comments by T. B. Kashdan and F. D. Fincham (see record 2002-12932-014), J. C. Kaufman (see record 2002-12932-016 and J. Raven (see record 2002-12932-015) on the articles that discussed creativity in the April 2001 issue of American Psychologist. The current author does not disagree with any of the comments made. He states that although creative people differ in an astonishing number of ways, there is, in fact, one key attribute that they all possess, an attribute consistent with the original articles in American Psychologist's special section on creativity and consistent with these new commentaries as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond talent: John Irving and the passionate craft of creativity.

Although laypeople and creativity theorists often make the assumption that individual creativity depends primarily on talent, there is considerable evidence that hard work and intrinsic motivation-which can be supported or undermined by the social environment-also play central roles. In this article, the author uses the thoughts and work of the novelist John Irving to illustrate the prominence of nontalent components in the componential model of creativity. (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)     

Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience: Have We Underestimated the Human Capacity to Thrive After Extremely Aversive Events?

Many people are exposed to loss or potentially traumatic events at some point in their lives, and yet they continue to have positive emotional experiences and show only minor and transient disruptions in their ability to function. Unfortunately, because much of psychology's knowledge about how adults cope with loss or trauma has come from individuals who sought treatment or exhibited great distress, loss and trauma theorists have often viewed this type of resilience as either rare or pathological. The author challenges these assumptions by reviewing evidence that resilience represents a distinct trajectory from the process of recovery, that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma is more common than is often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected pathways to resilience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Knowledge of and compliance with privileged communication and child-abuse reporting laws": Comment.

Comments on the article by J. S. Swoboda et al (see record 1980-24066-001) and asserts that this article should not have been published in the journal of Professional Psychology. Perry considers the printing of this article to be irresponsible in the damaging effects that it might have on the public's view of psychology as a profession. Perry objects to the suggestion that a significant number of psychologists would ignore or break the law without that suggestion being based upon much better evidence than is contained in this article. While Swoboda et al. are careful to refer to their results as "exploratory" and "suggestions," they nevertheless use these findings as evidence in their discussion of the "negative attitude toward the law" and "ignorance of the law." In addition, Perry asserted that the high refusal rate and the fact that the sample was restricted to eastern Nebraska may indicate a restricted and biased sample. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discernment and creativity: How well can people identify their most creative ideas?

How well can people judge the creativity of their ideas? The distinction between generating ideas and evaluating ideas appears in many theories of creativity, but the massive literature on generation has overshadowed the question of evaluation. After critically reviewing the notion of accuracy in creativity judgments, this article explores whether (1) people in general are discerning and (2) whether some people are more discerning than others. University students (n = 226) completed four divergent thinking tasks and then decided which responses were their most creative. Judges then rated the creativity of all of the responses. Multilevel latent-variable models found that people's choices strongly agreed with judges' ratings of the responses; overall, people were discerning in their decisions. But some people were more discerning than others: people high in openness to experience, in particular, had stronger agreement between their decisions and the judges' ratings. Creative people are thus doubly skilled: they are better at generating good ideas and at picking their best ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sleeping Beauties in Psychology: Comparisons of "Hits" and "Missed Signals" in Psychological Journals.

Scientific publications tend to be forgotten quickly. A few works, however, are still cited 100 years and more after their publication. The author used bibliometric methods to compare "hits" (works noticed by the scientific community soon after their publication) with "missed signals" (works that went unnoticed until much later) by investigating 2 psychological journals founded in the 1890s: Zeitschrift für Psychologie and Psychological Review. All articles that were published in either of these journals up to 1920 and cited more than 25 times in the Web of Science up to the year 2000 were considered for inclusion in the analysis. It emerged that hits corresponded more closely to the focus of scientific attention at the time of publication than missed signals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Practice makes perfect and other myths about mental health services.

Expenditures for mental health services, as a proportion of health care expenditures, have plummeted in the past decade. Concurrently psychologists have been unable to muster scientific evidence for the effectiveness of typical services. The clinical world failed to collect such evidence while the academic world focused on laboratory studies. Beliefs in the mechanisms thought to assure the quality and effectiveness of typical services may have created complacency. Psychologists seem confident that effective services are assured by (a) more experienced clinicians, (b) degree programs, (c) continuing education, (d) licensing, (e) accreditation, and (f) clinical supervision. After reviewing relevant scientific literature, the author concludes that these are myths with little or no evidence to support them. The author suggests 4 ways to improve the quality and effectiveness of services. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Variable attention facilitates creative problem solving.

Traditionally, researchers have associated creativity with defocused attention. Recent experimental evidence contradicts this notion by demonstrating that in creative people, defocused attention is a variable state rather than a stable trait. Specifically, creative people are better at adjusting their focus of attention as a function of task demands. When the task is ill defined and ambiguity is high, attention is defocused, resulting in slower processing on the task. In contrast, when the task is well defined and ambiguity is low, attention is focused, resulting in faster processing on the task. This flexibility can confer distinct advantages to creative people in the course of problem solving as changes in the structure of the problem necessitate corresponding adjustments in solution strategy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A psychotherapist's lessons from the philosophy of science.

A number of issues are discussed, but the major themes have to do with the way causation is understood in psychology, the resultant image of humanity as mechanical rather than teleological, and the fact that psychologists can and should be framing people as freely willing agents in their theories even as these views are submitted to rigorous empirical testing in the traditional scientific method. Although the scientific method unavoidably commits the fallacy of "affirming the consequent" in an if–then sequence of logical reasoning, the author opposes adopting substitutes for this approach to knowledge. Teleology needs to be furthered in psychotherapy because it is a genuinely accurate portrayal of human beings and because there is a pressing need for improvement in ethico-moral realms of behavior that mechanical models fail to capture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Geographical spread of bacterial and fungal diseases of crustaceans

The author discusses the way in which bacterial and fungal diseases of crustaceans can be and have been transmitted via commercial movements of stocks. Two classic examples of such diseases are presented, namely gaffkaemia (a bacterial disease of marine lobsters) and crayfish plague (a fungal disease of freshwater crayfish). In both cases, there is ample evidence that much of the disease spread can be linked to the commercial movement of infected animals caught from infected wild stocks and transported over large distances for wholesale and retail. In the case of crayfish plague, much of the relentless spread of this disease through Europe for nearly 140 years can also be liked to the movement of contaminated fishing equipment without disinfection.     

Jerome Kagan.

Jerome Kagan is recognized for his achievements in psychology. This article provides a citation explaining his accomplishments, a biography and a selected bibliography. The citation is as follows: "For scientific leadership of the highest order, for a research career marked by never-failing zest and creativity, and for findings that have helped us understand the constant vs. the changing in the human personality, the early organization of mind and temperament, and the formation of ideas about the self. As much as any American, Jerome Kagan has led the great growth of developmental psychology in our time. He has been an inspired textbook writer and teacher. He has brought our scientific findings, mixed with his own special vision and wisdom, to the service of social programs and policies for children." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Big C, little c, big M, little m.

Comments on the article Multicultural experience enhances creativity: The when and how by A. K. Leung et al (see record 2008-03389-003) which discusses how many practices aimed at cultivating multicultural competence in educational and organizational settings (e.g., exchange programs, diversity education in college, diversity management at work) assume that multicultural experience fosters creativity. In line with this assumption, the research reported in this article is the first to empirically demonstrate that exposure to multiple cultures in and of itself can enhance creativity. The current author, Grant J. Rich, feels that despite the reviews of a number of recent studies that seem to justify at least to some degree the value of such programs for enhancing creativity, Leung et al left a number of vital questions unanswered or unasked. Leung et al seemed to focus the majority of their attention on little c creativity and Big M multicultural experience. Rich hopes that their continued endeavors focus on the relationships between other forms of creativity and other forms of multicultural experience as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)