Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater: A Case Study in Inside-the-Box Creativity

This article traces the development of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, perhaps the most famous private dwelling in the world, as a case study in creative thinking. It has been reported that Wright conceived the house in one creative leap when he first visited the site. Wright supposedly did nothing further on the house until 9 months later, when he produced complete plans in 2 hours.This story can be taken as support for the claim that creative products come about through “outside-the-box” thinking, in which the creator goes far beyond the present to produce something completely new. However, examination of the historical record supports a model of creative thinking that assumes that creative products—even extraordinary products such as Fallingwater—come about in small steps firmly founded on the past, in this case the early work of Wright and of other architects. It is not necessary to postulate any extraordinary form of thinking to understand the development of Fallingwater. This case study thus supports others in providing evidence for the conclusion that creative thinking involves inside-the-box thinking: ordinary thought processes, operating on a rich database, bringing about extraordinary results.     

The Propulsion Model of Creative Contributions Applied to the Arts and Letters

This article applies a propulsion model of creative contributions to the arts and letters. The basic notion is that creative contributions differ not only in the amounts of creativity they display but also in the types of creative contributions they make. The article opens with a general discussion of creative contributions and next considers some existing models of creative contributions. It then describes the propulsion model for understanding creative contributions and suggests eight types of contributions that follow from the propulsion model. Next the article describes some contributions in the arts and letters and shows how the propulsion model can be applied to understanding them. Finally the article discusses why such a model can be useful in evaluating the status of creative work, of individuals, and of a domain.     

Four Factors That May Predict the Emergence of Creative Writing: A Proposed Model

Factors that may predict that a child will become a creative writer as an adult are explored. Two areas of research are reviewed: studies documenting the incidence of mood disorders in adult creative writers and retrospective studies examining the childhoods of creative writers. The first body of research shows a clear correlation between creative writing and mood disorders. The second shows that children who later become creative writers experience an atypical amount of stress. It is suggested here that these 2 findings are related, because stress in childhood is associated with mental illness in adulthood. Stress cannot however be a necessary condition for becoming a creative writer because not all creative writers experienced stress in childhood. Nor can it be a sufficient condition since most children who experience stress do not become writers. It is argued that, along with the stress that many writers experience as children, 3 factors may be associated with creative writing ability: growing up in an enriched and child-centered family (which can co-exist with stress), having high verbal ability, and having an unusually rich imaginative life. These latter 3 factors may mediate against stress and foster resilience in these children and allow them to grow up to become writers.     

Process-Based Measures of Creative Problem-Solving Skills: V. Overall Prediction

Prior studies have shown that process-based measures of creative problem-solving skills can be developed that evidence some predictive validity and contribute to our understanding of creative thought. These studies, however, have focused on a single process. Because multiple processes are involved in creative thought, there is a need to examine their joint impact. To address this issue, 137 undergraduates were asked to work on 2 creative problem-solving tasks and complete a battery of measures examining relevant abilities and processing skills. Solution quality and originality scores obtained from the creative problem-solving tasks were regressed on these measures. It was found that the measures of process application were effective predictors of solution quality and originality, yielding significant gains in prediction when added to ability tests. The implications of these findings for the assessment of creative potential are discussed.     

Creativity training: An assessment of a novel approach

The right hand hemisphere of the brain is purported to be the seat of the perceptual, intuitive, synthetic, visual and non-rational activities. In it is believed to reside the creative ability. Evidence is presented which suggests that, by exercising specifically the right hand hemisphere using a series of carefully structured tasks, some aspects of creative behaviour can be enhanced. It follows that users of creativity training courses should not expect every aspect of creative behaviour to be enhanced by any given course.     

The Creative Brain/The Creative Mind

In the past few decades, neuroscience research has greatly expanded our understanding of how the human brain functions. In particular, we have begun to explore the basis of emotions, intelligence, and creativity. These brain functions also have been applied to various aspects of behavior, thought, and experience. We have also begun to develop an understanding of how the brain and mind work during aesthetic and religious experiences. Studies on these topics have included neuropsychological tests, physiological measures, and brain imaging. These different techniques have enabled us to open up a window into the brain. It is by understanding the functioning of the creative brain that we begin to understand the concept of the creative mind. It is through the use of emotions and other higher cognitive functions that the brain and mind can create ideas, music, literature, and ultimately our entire repertoire of behaviors. How these different creative abilities are derived can also be traced to various parts of the brain and how they function. Modern neuroscience allows us to begin to understand the creative aspect of the brain and mind and perhaps can take us one step further toward understanding the most profound types of aesthetic and religious experiences.     

Why Do Different Individuals Progress Along Different Life Trajectories?

ABSTRACT— The core marker of progress in psychological science is the degree to which our work enhances the welfare of people. In order to effectively enhance human welfare, we must develop comprehensive models that explain why different individuals progress along different life trajectories. Exciting theoretical accounts that describe transitional processes from gene polymorphisms through moment-to-moment behavior are beginning to emerge. These early accounts highlight opportunities to investigate specific transitional steps along that long pathway, the need to understand the universal and the contextual aspects of psychological processes, and the need to define and measure psychological constructs with more precision and clarity. It is likely that creative new research in each of these areas will bring enormous progress over the coming decade.     

Transforming Helplessness: An Approach to the Therapy of "Stuck" Couples

Therapists working with couples often find themselves frustrated when they proceed to negotiate conflicts, even when the historical antecedents and psychological dynamics seem well understood. Despite the genuine willingness of each member to negotiate a solution, they remain stuck in demands that the other take the first steps toward change. This article proposes that a crucial step--transforming helplessness--must precede efforts at fostering communication/negotiation skills. A four-square analysis of the situation helps to explain how this stalemate occurs. Also, it points the way to strategies that can transform the couple's attitudes from helpless complaining to empowered, creative action. Three case examples illustrate clinical applications of this approach.     

3~4岁幼儿创造性人格与气质的交叉滞后分析

以幼儿创造性人格倾向教师评定问卷、儿童气质教师评定问卷作为研究工具,对287名3岁和4岁组幼儿进行为期一年的追踪研究,考察幼儿气质与创造性人格的发展变化情况,以及幼儿气质与其创造性人格之间的关系。结果发现：随着时间的发展,幼儿气质对其创造性人格有显著影响。幼儿的情绪性、活动性、反应性及专注性均能够显著正向预测其创造性人格,而幼儿的社会抑制性则能够显著负向预测其创造性人格。     

Moderating Effect of Self-Esteem on the Relationship between Perfectionism and Creative Thinking among Collegiate Dancers

Social cognitive theory has supported the view that perfectionism can be a hindrance to creativity, and also considers self-esteem to have a moderating effect on their relationship. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the moderating effect of self-esteem on the relationship between perfectionism and creativity in college dancers. Two hundred and sixty-six college dance students completed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale of Frost, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and the New Test of Creative Thinking. The moderating effect was tested with a four-step moderated hierarchical regression analysis. Bivariate analyses showed that creative thinking was, as a dependent variable, significantly related to multidimensional perfectionism and self-esteem in college dancers. Additionally, the hierarchical regression analysis revealed that self-esteem moderated the association between multidimensional perfectionism and creative thinking after controlling for selected socio-demographic characteristics. It can thus be concluded that self-esteem might regulate the positive effect of multidimensional perfectionism on creative thinking. Professional dance instructors who are working with perfectionist dancers should, therefore, seek ways to improve dancers’ self-esteem as one of the strategies to improve their creative thinking.     

Linkographic Evidence for Concurrent Divergent and Convergent Thinking in Creative Design

For a long time, the creativity literature has stressed the role of divergent thinking in creative endeavor. More recently, it has been recognized that convergent thinking also has a role in creativity, and the design literature, which sees design as a creative activity a priori, has largely adopted this view: Divergent and convergent thinking are seen as occurring in cyclic phases within the design process. Neurological evidence suggests that frequent shifts between defocused and focused attention to stimuli in memory activation, which equate divergent and convergent thinking, are a hallmark of creative thinking. In this article, we use linkography to show that the shifts between divergent thinking—forelinking of design moves, and convergent thinking—backlinking of moves, are so frequent that at the cognitive scale they can be seen as occurring concurrently in the ideation phase of creative designing. It is proposed that in assessments of creative potential, shifts between divergent and convergent thinking should be the yardstick instead of, or alongside measurements of divergent thinking.     

Effects of Concept Mapping on Creativity in Photo Stories

This research tested the use of concept map planning to support the development of creativity in photo stories, hypothesizing that skills taught to support organization would improve creativity. Concept maps are a type of graphic organizer, used to represent an ordering of ideas with nodes and linking words that form propositional statements. They were applied to story development under the assumption that the creative development of narrative elements requires organization. Undergraduate education students were randomly assigned to either concept map or text-based planning groups for the production of digital photo stories. Creativity was operationalized using dimensions of novelty, interest, clarity, and ability to be understood. A multivariate effect of planning method was found for these dimensions favoring the concept map group, due largely to greater clarity in the photo stories. Clarity in photo stories adds to their utility as creative products. This study represents first steps toward empirically assessing concept maps for a creative purpose, and further investigation, with a larger sample in an authentic context, over a longer period of planning time is recommended.     

Where does it come from? Collaborative emergence in creative work practices

This article presents a case in which analytical tools coming from the tradition of distributed cognition are able to account for what has been defined collaborative emergence (Sawyer & DeZutter, 2009; Sawyer 2012) in creative practices. With this article, we aim to contribute to the debate of distributed creativity by discussing an empirical case of collaborative emergence and providing the analytical tools able to account for its analysis. Introducing the concept of a creative network of interactions, we stress the importance of selecting, describing, and analysing the interactions that give rise to the collaborative emergence in creative work. Introducing the concept of collective creative imagination, we account for the collective emergence of the scene. We suggest that collaborative emergence is the result of a process of collective coordination and improvisation, emerging from moment-to-moment contingency in collective cognition and imagination. The new unpredictable outcome does not emerge from a sudden singular intuition avulsed from the environment, but it is the result of several coordinated steps made by the participants.     

The clinical inference process and the role of theory

Perhaps the most challenging and creative aspect of clinical testing is the clinical inference process, the sequential steps the examiner takes in transforming the raw test data into a clinically relevant testing report. Unfortunately, this part of the testing process has received little attention in the testing literature. In this article, the specific steps in the inferential process are outlined. In addition, the ways in which theory enter into the inferential process are also discussed.     

The Clinical Inference Process and the Role of Theory

Perhaps the most challenging and creative aspect of clinical testing is the clinical inference process, the sequential steps the examiner takes in transforming the raw test data into a clinically relevant testing report. Unfortunately, this part of the testing process has received little attention in the testing literature. In this article, the specific steps in the inferential process are outlined. In addition, the ways in which theory enter into the inferential process are also discussed.     

The ethics of creative accounting

Creative accounting, which generally involves the preparation of financial statements with the intention of misleading readers of those statements, is prima facie a form oflying, as defined by Bok.¹ This paper starts by defining and illustrating creative accounting. It examines and rejects the arguments for considering creative accounting, in spite of its deceptive intent, as not being a form of lying. It then examines the ethical issues raised by creative accounting, in the light of the literature on the ethics of lying. This literature includes the evaluation of various excuses and justifications for lying, and these are examined here in relation to creative accounting. It is concluded that even in circumstances in which creative accounting would arguably serve a worthy purpose, that purpose would be at least as well served by honest communication.     

Creativity in Early and Established Career: Insights into Multi‐Level Drivers from Nobel Prize Winners

The freedom to try new things plays a vital role for employees engaging in creative endeavors. This freedom can be influenced by one's relationship with her supervisor, relationship with her team, and various work pressures. One of the first steps to reaching creative output is to have a playful attitude toward work where there is encouragement and processes that allow individuals to take risks and try new things. However, we argue that what allows someone to try new things earlier in their career and when they are more established might be different. Noteworthy progress has been made in conceptualizing the multi‐level factors that are important for creativity. In the current study, we identified variables associated with a willingness to try new things, part of the exploration phase of creativity, and divided them by the early and established careers of 59 Nobel Prize winners. Using a historiometric approach, we rated individual and team‐level variables to identify what makes someone try new things either earlier or later in her career. Findings indicate that willingness to try new things is related to autonomy, the relationship with one's mentor, team climate, and team network, but not to personal initiative.     

Paradoxes of “creativity”: Examining the creative process through an antenarrative lens

Accounts of the creative process tend to be retrospective and implicitly ground the creative act within the person, the mind, the moment, the idea; in doing so, they often miss the larger sociomaterial qualities that can provide us with important insights about the social relationality and playfulness of the creative process. In this article, we examine the creative process through an antenarrative lens that we consider very useful for theorizing the creative process from a cultural and sociomaterial perspective. More specifically, we argue that ‘having an idea’ is a contextualized and embodied process that can be regarded as an antenarrative of the overall creative process. We also discuss how the paradoxical relation between the formative and sudden manifestations of the creative act can be understood through the notion of play.     

An Investigation of the Relationship between Age,Achievement, and Creativity in Mathematics

In this exploratory study, I investigate the relationship between age, knowledge, and creativity in mathematics, by looking at to what extent does grade level, controlled for mathematical achievement, influence mathematical creativity and what characterizes the relationship between grade level, mathematical achievement and mathematical creativity. This was accomplished in two steps. In the first part, 301 students, 184 grade eight students and 117 grade eleven students, were given a creative mathematics test. A 3 × 2 ANOVA indicates that the older students were more creative; however, there was a significant interaction effect between grade level and achievement in mathematics on mathematical creativity. In the second part, an inductive content analysis was performed on the solutions of high achievers in grade eleven and grade eight. The results indicate that high achievers in grade eight are more creative than high achievers in grade eleven, but the nature of the task mediates the relationship between creativity and knowledge.     

具有创造成就的科学家关于创造的概念结构

运用Q分类及多尺度分析方法,研究具有创造成就的科学家关于创造成就的概念结构。被试是30名来自物理、化学、数学、地学和生命科学领域的具有创造成就的科学家。研究发现,具有创造成就的科学家关于创造成就的概念结构由“成就取向/内心体验取向”、“主动进取/踏实肯干”两个维度构成;取得科学创造成就的重要特征是“成就取向”和“主动进取”。作者进一步讨论了主动进取对于取得创造性成就的意义