The lost object and the act of creation

The aim of this article is to discuss the idea of the lost object and to throw light on its relation to creativity. The main thesis is that what is called the original or primary object cannot be considered lost in an absolute meaning. The original object is according to this author not lost, for the simple reason that it never was. In the beginning was only an encounter and so the lost object can only be said to be lost after the fact or afterwards. From this statement the author takes up the question of what this implies for a discussion of creativity and ask the question, what it is the artist creates or re-creates in his work of art, and how the idea of the lost object may throw light on the act of creation. The chosen example for illustration is Freud’s study of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.     

Political pathology and societal creativity

Abstract

Complementing the hypothesized intimate relation between creativity and psycho‐pathology at the individual level are conjectures concerning the relation between creativity and pathology at the sociocultural level. This article reviews the empirical literature on the subject, with special focus on how societal creativity is affected by international war, external threat, political instability, and civil disturbances. Such events and circumstances are shown to affect both the quantity of creative activity and the form that any creativity takes. Although some of these effects are short‐term and transient, other influences operate after some delay and tend to be more lasting. There follows a discussion of what these results imply about how creativity at the individual level is shaped by the social context in which creative development and thought take place.     

The Emergence of Creativity

Creativity is one of the central dimensions of human achievement and social development and has always fascinated scientists and non-scientists alike. But what is the essential nature of creativity? And what is the role of consciousness in the emergence of creativity? If it is true that it has been explored in many aspects in the cognitive and neurobiological field, it is also true that the lore chest—from which the conscious mind through unconscious mechanisms extracts the rough material that is then brought to the surface—has been less investigated. The purpose of this article is to give an account of how the multiplicity of levels of awareness is made possible by a spontaneous order that has nothing to do with a monolithic view of creativity.     

Thinking Inside the Tool Box: Creativity,Constraints, and the Colossal Portraits of Chuck Close

This article presents a problem‐solving model to examine the often problematic relationship between expertise and creativity. The model has two premises, each the opposite of a common cliché. The first cliché asserts that creativity requires thinking outside‐the‐box. The first premise argues that experts can only think and problem solve inside the tool boxes of their expertise. The second cliché, that creativity requires freedom from constraints, points to the problem with expertise. Free to do anything, experts repeat what has worked best in the past. A solution is suggested by the second premise: to circumvent the liabilities of expertise, creativity requires constraints of a particular paired kind. The model is introduced as an expansion of prior process models focused on problem identification and construction. Problem‐finding is reanalyzed as constraint‐finding. A case study shows how one recognized creator, painter Chuck Close, uses constraints as a tool to solve the expertise‐creativity problem.     

Exploring the Interactions between Asian Culture (Confucianism) and Creativity

According to Csikszentmihalyi (1988), creativity is a very complex interaction among a person, a field, and a culture. In keeping with this approach, a look at Asian culture in relation to its impact on creativity is in order. While people may vary in their native capacity for creativity, it is in the individual's interaction with the macrocosm where creative expression can be found. Therefore, this paper will explore the four principles of Confucianism, and how they compare to creativity research in order to discover how Asian culture influences creativity; and what we can do to enhance our students' creative capacity.     

时间与创造力关系框架的构建

本文从时间对主体创造力的刻画与影响以及主体加工、处理时间的方式对自身创造力所产生的影响两个方面,整合了散落在各处的时间与创造力关系的研究,并构建丁它们之间关系的框架。讨论了以后时间与创造关系研究的方向以及从该方面培养创造性的前景。     

Innovation,illegitimacy, and individualism

Abstract

Simonton has reported an interesting set of findings concerning the relationship between creativity and what he terms social pathology. To speak of social or political pathology is to use a metaphor, the meaning of which would seem to be almost completely relative. For example, democracy is a pathological state for one who believes in the divine right of kings, but the latter belief seems delusional to one who holds democratic principles. Thus, creativity is related to certain social phenomena, but it is not clear if we should classify these phenomena as pathological. In my own research on British history, I have found that an egotistic and asocial emphasis in poetry consistently cooccurs with high rates of scientific and technological innovation, illegitimate births, and industrial productivity. In one way or another all of these phenomena have to do with individualism and independence or nonconformity. Whether such epochs of lessened social solidarity should be called pathological or healthy seems to be a matter of taste rather than fact. The gist of Simonton's explanations of how social factors influence the amount of creativity is reasonable, but some apparent flaws in the details of these explanations are pointed out in this commentary.     

WHITEHEAD,CHANCE, AND THE IMMANENTLY CREATIVE SPIRIT

In this essay, it is argued that God through the Spirit is both the immanent and eminent principle of creativity, ever wooing and empowering the advancements in complexity within biological evolution. I argue herein also that God, particularly in and through the activity of the Spirit of creativity, was fully present in and with and under what is oft called “creation,” from the very beginning of created time—and will be to the end of time, proleptically present as the expression of the principle of creativity. I maintain that the Spirit, by her kenosis into the natural world, imbibed the nature with an evolving fertility that has continually manifested itself in and through the increases of complexity in the natural environ. This primal imbibing of herself into the world of nature caused the world to become marked by what principally amounts to an activation of the naturally occurring, inherent potentialities within nature, thereby producing a distinctive self‐creativity within the world. Somewhat akin to Peirce, who said that we need a “thorough‐going evolutionism or none,” I contend that we need a thoroughly immanent God or none, all the while noting that both immanent creativity and self‐creativity are marks of this overall poietic process known as biotic evolution.     

Personality and creativity in realistic,investigative, artistic,social, and enterprising college majors

Despite much research on how interests are related to personality and creativity, comparatively little work has focused on how different college majors as categorized by the RIASEC model compare on these constructs. In this study, 3295 college students (207 Realistic, 1945 Investigative, 447 Artistic, 480 Social, and 216 Enterprising) completed a five-factor personality measure, a brief self-report of creativity, and the Compound Remote Associates Task (CRAT). Investigative and Artistic majors scored higher on openness and self-assessed creativity than Realistic and Social majors, and Investigative majors were much more agreeable than other majors.     

Satisfaction with Creativity: A Study of Organizational Characteristics and Individual Motivation

In answering the question of what influences satisfaction with creativity in the workplace, this work takes into account the extent to which the organization supports human aspiration to act creatively. The work throughout reflects a pragmatist approach to creativity and fulfillment, bridging it with needs theory in psychology. The empirical model uses survey data encompassing over 4,000 workers in Italian social enterprises. Results show that satisfaction with creativity is supported, at organizational level, by teamwork, autonomy, domain-relevant competences, as well as by inclusive, fair processes and relationships. At the individual level, satisfaction with creativity is enhanced by the strength of intrinsic initial motivations. The analysis of interaction terms shows that teamwork and workers’ initial motivations are complementary in enhancing satisfaction with creativity, while a high degree of domain-relevant competences appears to substitute advice and supervision by superiors in accomplishing the desired level of creative action.     

American and Chinese Similarities and Differences in Defining and Valuing Creative Products

This review of the literature explores how Americans and Chinese view creativity and what they expect from creative products. American and Chinese explicit beliefs about creativity (i.e., expert opinions) share many similarities. Implicit beliefs, however, show more divergence: Americans tend to value novelty and more “groundbreaking” types of creativity, whereas Chinese tend to appreciate creativity within constraints, such as reworking a traditional concept. The context of how people respond to creativity obviously varies by culture, although there are also some communal and universal creative ideals.     

Mind,Machine, and Creativity: An Artist's Perspective

Harold Cohen is a renowned painter who has developed a computer program, AARON, to create art. While AARON has been hailed as one of the most creative AI programs, Cohen consistently rejects the claims of machine creativity. Questioning the possibility for AI to model human creativity, Cohen suggests in so many words that the human mind takes a different route to creativity, a route that privileges the relational, rather than the computational, dimension of cognition. This unique perspective on the tangled web of mind, machine, and creativity is explored by an application of three relational models of the mind to an analysis of Cohen's talks and writings, which are available on his website: www.aaronshome.com .     

集体心理所有权、地位晋升标准与团队创造力

基于动机性信息加工理论, 本文首次实证探讨了集体心理所有权对团队创造力的影响机制。一项来自国内企业91个工作团队数据的统计分析发现, 集体心理所有权正向影响团队创造力; 信息深加工中介集体心理所有权与团队创造力的关系; 地位晋升标准显著性调节集体心理所有权与信息深加工之间的关系, 其中刻度型晋升标准增强集体心理所有权对信息深加工的正向影响, 而竞赛型晋升标准则减弱集体心理所有权对信息深加工的正向影响。     

Creativity in the Workplace: People,Problems, and Structures

In a dynamic global economy, creativity and innovation are essential requirements for organizational success. Creativity, unfortunately, has not always been seen as playing an important role in the design and structure of organizations. In this article, we argue that creativity and innovation are key requirements for the growth and adaptation of organizations. Subsequently, we review a series of articles, appearing in this issue, about how we might encourage creativity and innovation in the workplace. Some potentially useful directions for future research are discussed along with the methodological issues likely to arise as we seek to understand creativity in the workplace.     

预期交流与创造力的关系:解释水平的调节作用

该研究探讨了预期交流对创造力的影响, 以及解释水平在其中的调节作用。实验1采用结构性想象任务探讨预期交流是否影响创造力。结果表明, 相较于没有预期交流, 预期交流条件下的个体表现出更高的创造力。实验2采取了创意产生任务, 并探讨了解释水平在其中的调节作用。结果表明, 当完成抽象的、高解释水平任务时, 相较于无预期交流, 预期交流条件下个体在新奇性和变通性两个维度上表现出了更高的创造力; 当完成具体的、低解释水平任务时, 预期交流的效应不复存在。也就是说, 只有当创造力任务要求高解释水平的抽象思维时, 预期交流才能促进创造力的发挥。总结而言, 本研究在过往对于交流与创造力以及解释水平与创造力的研究基础上进一步发现, 对于抽象创造力任务, 虽然真正的信息交流尚未发生, 但仅仅对于交流的预期就会提高创造力水平。     

Positive psychology. An introduction

A science of positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions promises to improve quality of life and prevent the pathologies that arise when life is barren and meaningless. The exclusive focus on pathology that has dominated so much of our discipline results in a model of the human being lacking the positive features that make life worth living. Hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage, spirituality, responsibility, and perseverance are ignored or explained as transformations of more authentic negative impulses. The 15 articles in this millennial issue of the American Psychologist discuss such issues as what enables happiness, the effects of autonomy and self-regulation, how optimism and hope affect health, what constitutes wisdom, and how talent and creativity come to fruition. The authors outline a framework for a science of positive psychology, point to gaps in our knowledge, and predict that the next century will see a science and profession that will come to understand and build the factors that allow individuals, communities, and societies to flourish.     

The Creativity Matrix: Spotlights and Blind Spots in Our Understanding of the Phenomenon

In this paper, we organize past and present theories and models of creativity by using a new conceptual framework—the creativity matrix—with the aim of highlighting the dimensions of creativity we know a lot about and those we tend to either ignore or find difficult to study. This matrix is formed by bringing together a developmental model of creativity (the 4 C's) and a structural one (the 5 A's). We start by briefly describing these two conceptual frameworks, and then, we proceed to exploring the matrix itself by describing how the 5 A's are dynamically organized at each “level” of the 4 C's. Importantly, our overview of the matrix is informed by existing models and concepts that address one of more of the C's and the A's. This gives us a unique opportunity to take stock of what has been studied so far and, toward the end, consider new avenues for the development of theory and research agendas within creativity studies.     

The Effects of Task-Specific Divergent-Thinking Training

Although there is a growing body of evidence indicating that divergent-thinking skills may be very task specific, there has been no research testing how narrowly divergent-thinking training can be targeted. Seventy-nine seventh-grade students received training in poetry-relevant divergent-thinking skills. These subjects and a matched control group later wrote poems and stories, the creativity of which was judged by experts. There was a significantly greater impact on poetry-writing creativity. Implications for creativity theory and training programs are discussed. Numerous research reports (Baer, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994a, 1994b, in press-a; Runco, 1987, 1989) have shown that the skills underlying creative performance may be quite task specific, and this suggests possible limitations on the potential benefits of divergent-thinking training. One response to this task-specific understanding of divergent thinking has been to design divergent-thinking training programs that include practice in a wide range of task-specific divergent-thinking skills. This approach has been shown to have a general effect of enhancing creativity in diverse domains (Baer, 1988, 1992, 1993). An alternate approach would be to target training to specific kinds of creativity; however, there has been no research investigating just how narrowly such divergent-thinking training can be targeted. The present investigation was designed to test what effect divergent-thinking training focusing on a single task would have on creative performance on that task and on a different, but closely related, task. The larger goals were (a) to help creativity researchers better understand the nature of divergent thinking as it impacts creative performance and (b) to be of practical value in helping educators design training programs better suited to specific training objectives. Seventh-grade students were trained in divergent- thinking skills hypothesized to be related to poetry — writing creativity. Following this training, trained subjects and a matched sample of untrained subjects wrote both poems and stories in their regular English classes. Poems and stories were judged for creativity by experts who did not know the subjects. It was predicted that training in poetry-relevant divergent thinking would result in a greater increase in creativity on a poetry-writing task than on a story-writing task.     

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.     

<Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">Special Topic:</Emphasis> Creativity in Christianity and Confucianism

In order respectfully and adequately to compare Confucian and Christian conceptions of creativity, it is necessary to have proper comparative categories. Put roughly, we need to know what creativity is in order to see how Confucianism and Christianity have various versions of it. In respect of what do they agree or differ? So the first order of business is to put forward, however briefly, a theory of creativity in light of which comparisons can be made. Creativity, of course, is a very complicated notion in the West and in East Asia. Two philosophical topics can reveal something of its complication: the problem of the one and the many, and the nature of change.