The Development of Creativity: Literature Review and Critique
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
For PSYC4176: Advanced Child Psychology
By
Brittany Basco
April, 17, 2017 Abstract The development of creativity has a history tied into many cultures, origins and studies. There are many traits that are related to creativity such as personality, intelligence, genetic factors, environmental factors and the “big five” in personality.
The Development of Creativity: Literature Review and Critique Creativity is a construct that is defined in two parts according to traditional psychology: originality and functionality (Kersting, 2003). It is the ability to formulate novel ideas that are worthwhile long term. (Zhu,
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(Simonton, 2001)” The Unusual Use test is more known and measures divergent thinking by asking a participant to make up as many uses as they can for a random object. Their responses are scored on fluency, originality, and flexibility. (Simonton, 2001) Some assessments, such as the How Do You Think questionnaire, target the individual differences in the creative personality. This questionnaire “gauges whether a person has the interests, values, energy, self-confidence, humor, flexibility, playfulness, unconventionality, and openness associated with creativity (Davis, 1976)”
History Creativity is has been a topic that highly of interests to many professionals for a while although it is often a field that is over neglected in research. This could be due to the complexity of its definition and due to its definition not being operationalized sufficiently. Guilford (1950) impacted the amount of research being done at the American Psychological Association convention when he called for there to be more research to be done in creativity. Its’ definition has a history of many contributions from a multitude of studies and is always changing as more research is being done. With in the 20th century, the topic of creativity has received much more attention. This could be due to the fact that psychology was not a formal discipline until the 1870’s. Simonton’s work hinted
The beauty of creativity is that it is abstract, yet ubiquitous: in art, music or how one decides to compose an essay. However, creativity has recently been declining among the human population. According to an article, named, “The Creativity Crisis,” by Newsweek.com in July 2010, authors, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, state, “the Torrance Test … indicates that the public’s “creativity quotient” has steadily crept downward since 1990” (Prompt 1). Bronson and Merryman report that the test, which evaluates one’s creativity, had been dispensed to myriads of people across the globe, and have concluded that creativity has been slowly diminishing. Kyung Hee Kim, professor at the College of William and Mary, also comments that this is most prevalent and grave among students from kindergarten through sixth grade (Prompt 1). Consequently, society, or in this case, the world fears that current students and future generations will not be nourished with the creativity required to thrive as individuals, affecting the world as a whole. Ultimately, this poses the question whether a creative thinking class, which solely focuses on the education of creativity, should be taught in the school. This school should impose a creative thinking class, due to the fact creativity is a vital element for the future and is the solution to the creative crisis.
Creativity is about risk taking and making connections, allowing children to explore and express themselves through a variety of media or materials including, dance, music, making things, drawing, painting and make believe and to make new things emerge as a result. Being creative is strongly linked to play and can emerge through a
In the context of creativity’s stated definition, we will proceed to group our arguments into three themes of factors: cognitive ability, expertise training, and environmental conditions. The human brain is highly adaptable and can continue to develop new cognitive abilities, even past adulthood (Norman, 2015). Proper cognitive expertise and training can help workers produce and operate in ingenious ways (Ginamarie, Lertiz & Mumford, 2004). Finally, the working environment can both motivate or stifle creative output. Managers can influence all three components: expertise, thinking skills, and motivation (Amabile, 1998).
The first thing that comes to our minds when we think of “creativity” is things that have to do with arts. This is not true. Being creativity and having creativity can also be used in many activities or professions such as in businesses, creating a sport team, and in any other things you name it. Robinson has taught this through his book, “Out of Our Minds” but also how writers and artist see the world a little different compared to how others, scientists, mathematicians, historians, and psychologists look at the world. Also how educations and ageing plays a role in our creativity.
Creativity is about risk taking and making connections, allowing children to explore and express themselves through a variety of media or materials including, dance, music, making things, drawing, painting and make believe and to make new things emerge as a result. Being creative is strongly linked to play and can emerge through a child being absorbed in their own actions and ideas.
S. I. Hayakawa wrote and published an article named "What lt Means to Be Creative". This article challenged how a creative person could be defined and identified. In Hayakawa’s essay he presents several points of view an individual could be characterized as being creative. His writing forces you to contemplate on how a person’s aptitudes are categorized. Hayakawa tests your ability to be opened minded and makes you visualize how a person could be described as a creative individual but may discredited themselves due to society’s standard of this word. After reading his writing, I believe I can summarize his analogy.
In addition, Figure 1 shows the number of publications on psychological safety and creativity from 1970-2015. The study of those topics increases year by year. However, it shows only limited studies are addressed in the reputable journals. An opportunity for future study is widely open.
Creativity is all about the 21st century skills and the future students. One form of creativity they will use is brainstorming. It includes elaborating, analyzing refining, and evaluating ideas to improve and maximize creative efforts (Syrett, 2002). Creativity involves originality, and working with peers to come up with ideas. It will allow you to fail and work on what went wrong and recreate it. They will have the tools that are needed to be creative. Creativity is an important aspect for every student to
Creativity is often more about the process rather than the end project, it is useful for many reasons:
In this essay I will explore the correlation between intelligence (IQ) and creativity (DT), and whether one is influenced or can be predicted by the existence of the other. The relationship between IQ (intelligence quotient) and creativity has been an anchor point for psychological research. Numerous amounts of psychologists have carried out research in order to find evidence to support this idea of a correlation or evidence to disprove the hypothesis that IQ and creativity could be related.
Paulus & Nijstad (2003) defined creativity as “the development of original ideas that are useful or influential”(p.3). That is to say,
According to Baird and colleagues, mind wandering can enhance creativity goals and problems that were encountered. Creativity finds solutions that are novel, and high quality (Matlin, 2009). J.P. Guilford researched how we measure creativity. Creativity should be measured by divergent production. This research demonstrates the number of different responses that are made for each test item (Matlin, 2009).
The term creativity is used for the purpose of describing the ability that is concerned with the process of creating something new or valuable. This ability allows a person to surpass the rules, practices, methods, forms or similar kind of activities that the traditional society may be performing at that time. Creativity is one of the most important things that have allowed the people of the society to move forward and urge for development. All the development that has been made in various aspects of human life can be directly connected with the creativity. All the industry leaders of the world have secured this place because of the level of creativity and innovation that they showed. They used this creativity for creating something new that has allowed them to develop completely new methods for this purpose.
One of the most important cognitive skills is the ability to solve problems. It is manifested through the capability to find solutions to complex issues. By comparing two theories of child development, namely, the Piaget 's approach to cognitive development and Vygotsky 's social constructivist perspective, it will become clear that the nature of epistemological beliefs held by teachers might influence the development of children. This in turn suggests that problem-solving abilities in children can be influenced and improved by contextual factors. The similar pattern of influence has been observed in research on creativity in adults which have demonstrated that the context in which the individual is placed in improves one 's creative processes. If we assume that the problem-solving ability depends, at least partially, on finding novel solutions to complex issues, creativity would play a key role in finding such solutions and thus, can be improved by the contextual factors. On another hand, there are certain factors such as individual differences and cultural background which play an important role in creative processes. Personality type is usually quite stable throughout the lifetime and thus, difficult to change by changing the context. Traits such as openness or schizotypy has been found to correlate with creativity thus acting against the idea that creativity can be improved by mere contextual changes. By describing the evidence for and against the notion that
Creativity is the ability to produce work that is original yet appropriate-something that others have not thought of but that is useful in some way (Kaufman & Sternberg, 2007; Sternberg, 2003b). The significance of creativity for children’s development is very high. Creativity helps children develop the overall areas of development; physical, social, emotional, language and cognitive. A child learns to innovate as well as invent while doing creative activities. Through creative practices child finds multiple methods of looking at various situations, assessing these situations and finding new solutions. Children often desire to be able to express themselves without any